"Life is lived forward, but understood backward. It is not until we are down the road and we stand on the mountain looking back through the valley that we can appreciate the terrain God has allowed us to scale.” Jill Savage

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Little Things to Help You Succeed In Life

Little Things to Help You Succeed in Life

While some people face life-changing events, most of what defines and redefines us as people is not the stuff of big-budget epic movies, but rather the boring, mundane stuff of everyday life.

How can we grab hold of those little things that say so much about who we are -- and use them to move us closer to who we want to be? We have to go through an ongoing process that involves:

1. Discovery

The key to change in your life -- and really, the key to satisfaction as well -- is self-knowledge. Take some time to go over and record the moments that reflect problems you’re dealing with, as well as the moments that are typically “you.” The idea is to see patterns emerge. These patterns will be the grist for your analytical mill in the next stage.

2. Analysis

Look at your inventory of “totally you” moments -- what do they say about who you are? Now, who do you want to be? What’s meaningful for you, what values do you want to realize in your daily life?

3. Intention

At this point, it’s time to think about change: what do you intend to do about all this? The trick here is to be positive, not negative. It’s important that you find the motivation and intention within yourself if you’re to make real change that sticks. Doing things because you know others think they’re what you should do, or worse, to “show them,” might get a short-term shift out of you, but over the long term isn’t likely to be very satisfying -- or self-sustaining.

Personal change is hard, and harder still because there’s so much little stuff going on in our lives that all push and pull us in different directions. Which is precisely why it’s so important to pay attention to the little things, no matter how trivial they might seem.

Sources:

Lifehack November 5, 2008

1 comment:

ClassyChassy said...

Interesting thoughts here - but too 'deep' for me today! I'm off to visit mom for some light hearted crafting!!!