Personal growth....

The nice thing about working on your personal growth is that when you make a concerted, dedicated effort to improve some part of your life, there’s an excellent chance that you will succeed in the long run.

You may have a lot of thoughts to clear out in terms of limiting beliefs, and you may be starting from a disadvantaged position, but given enough time, it’s entirely possible to completely rework some part of your life for the better.

For example, you have the potential to go from rags to riches, from shy to socially confident, or from unhealthy to vibrant and fit. It may not be easy to make such transitions, but there are numerous successes to model.

These are transitions that many, many people have already succeeded at, and they’re often more than happy to help out people who are interested in taking similar journeys. You certainly don’t have to stumble forward blindly.

This, of course, is the grand promise of personal development, that you can consciously remake some part of your life, re-sculpting it from what it is now to what you desire it to be.

But there are two very common problems that prevent many people from receiving the full delivery of this promise.

First, most people never get clear about what they want. Since they don’t decide, there’s nothing for them to move towards. Moving away from where you are now is not a specific heading.

An “away from” mindset is like a bunch of crazy, chaotic arrows pointing off in all different directions, but in most cases that isn’t enough to get moving with any consistency. “Not here” isn’t a goal.

When I ask people what they want out of life, most of the time I get a very vague answer. They can’t tell me. So of course their lives aren’t going to change much. They have no direction. If someone asks you what you want out of life, offer up a clear and specific answer.

Don’t look to life to tell you what you want. That’s your burden — and your privilege — to decide. Not deciding is still a choice.

If you can’t decide, then you’re deciding to continue the status quo, and you’re broadcasting the intention that more than anything else in the universe, you want to continue experiencing what you’re experiencing right now.

And so essentially that is what you’ll get. So when you keep getting what you’re already getting, be grateful that the desires you voiced are being fulfilled. You are simply receiving what you’ve been asking for.

Don’t pretend that your life will change until you first make a clear decision about where you want to go next. You can complain and moan about the burden of having to make that choice, but there’s no point in that.

It’s better to celebrate the honor and privilege of having the freedom to make that choice. Be grateful that you can choose. Appreciate the fact that you get to decide where your life goes next. Consider yourself lucky that you have a choice.

Making a choice is really, really simple. Most people overcomplicate the process tremendously. Ask a child what they want for their birthday, and they’ll probably rattle off a number of specific items. How do they decide?

They just decide. They don’t worry so much about making wrong choices. They voice intentions based on what experiences they feel drawn towards. It’s that simple.

If you feel drawn to a certain experience, then that’s an excellent candidate for a new decision.