Growing yourself Part 1: Where do I start?

Before I share my process for growth, I want to highlight that you must take time to acknowledge your strengths and your successes. How are you ever going to grow yourself if you don’t know what to maintain? Answer: you’re not (at least not at the rate you want). So my process is balanced and allows time to celebrate both sides of the coin.

Step 1: Define your purpose and reflect on your strengths: Why do you want to grow? Who do you want to be? What should you maintain? This is what will ground you and remind you on those tough days to keep going even when it gets hard.

Step 2: Identify one area of growth to focus on and visualize what it will look like for you to achieve success in this area. Defining your success is key because, again, success is different for all of us. This allows you to take ownership of your growth.**Note: Be honest with yourself. If you struggle with follow-through then pick a growth area you will be successful with the soonest. Why? Once you feel that success, you will be more motivated to continue and push yourself even harder.

Step 3: Ask yourself, what type of learner am I? Am I a lone wolf or collaborator or a bit of both? Do I like to read to learn, google/youtube it, get feedback from others, listen to others, etc.?

Step 4: Create your action steps - what will you do to achieve your version of success? I tend to lean on the power of 3 and give myself 3 actionable next steps - one I can cross off the list quickly (again, it’s about motivating yourself and feeling real success quickly), one long-term action, and one in between the two. This allows you to create milestones of success for yourself.

Step 5: Set a realistic timeline and develop a plan to monitor your progress - this could be creating a bullet journal spread; asking yourself at the end of the day/week/month: what did I do to contribute to my own growth?; having a buddy to hold you accountable and check in with on a weekly basis. This step is key to your success and you need to make this something that works for you. Otherwise, you will never know if you achieved it or feel like a failure for not.

Step 6: Go back through the steps, once a quarter, semester, year. This will allow you to analyze your successes and struggles and continue to revise and redefine your own growth. It is human nature to adapt, adjust, and need something different at different stages and chapters of our lives and it’s up to us to listen to ourselves , be kind to ourselves, show ourselves grace, and, ultimately, hold ourselves accountable to what we want to achieve.

I wish you luck - you got this! :)