So a few years ago, I’m sitting across from a now former colleague discussing work related stuff. I’m not being lazy in using the word “stuff” cause I honestly cannot remember what we were talking about. I can’t even recall who initiated the meeting. I do remember though that the conversation took a left somewhere and folks, I was called out. Not in a Jack Nicholson’s “you can’t handle the truth” way! No, it was a statement delivered as fact. I was described as a ‘leaf in the wind’.
Okay Olanta, what’s the big deal about that? Well, I’ll tell you, in detail. We’ve all seen a leaf caught in the wind. One thing is clear: the leaf moves. There is activity and depending on the strength of the wind, the leaf gets swept along, sometimes forcefully and quickly. Typically though, the wind creates a vortex, and up and around goes the leaf at the mercy of atmospheric pressure. Is there progress in its flight? Yes…the leaf might end up a few yards from its original position, or it might be swept into some obscure location. Either way it is safe to say that such movements create inconsistent results. It is movement without purpose.
Who wants to be referred to as that? A lighthouse on a moonless night. Sure! The wind in my sail. Definitely! Uber after a wild night on the town. Heck yeah! Sign me up for any of those. But do you know what the worse of it was? She was right and I had to own it. I was aware that I was struggling with keeping things together. I thought though that I was doing an awesome job at guarding this secret. I was stuck and I had no clue as to how to fix it. Have you felt that way about your ‘deficiencies aka your dirty little secrets’?
All the areas in my life—I like to call them domains—were in severe flux. I had to decide if I should leave my PhD program as there was a serious disconnect between my feelings about the program and my actually wanting to complete it. My job, which was to play a supporting role in my career, grew to have more meaning in light of the fact that I was struggling with the decision to revamp my career choices. I was doing a lot of busy work at my job and for years I’d been amassing skills upon skills but had no real plan as to how I was going to put them to use. On the home front, I was challenging the main relationships in my life. I don’t even recall what my spiritual life was like, so it must not have been that great. I’d also put aside my rational thinking and spat in the face of what I was taught by getting myself into financial ‘ish. Bet your bottom dollar there’s going to be an article on emotional spending/retail therapy! I had nothing to ground me, so yeah I was that proverbial leaf in the wind. Movement without purpose.
Fast forward to now and I’m here talking about pursing progress. As I see it, this idea is the antithesis of being a leaf in the wind. To pursue something is inherently a proactive decision. For instance, “I pursued the sales clerk to find out the price of these hot pair of shoes.” I’m determined to buy those babies and I’m not waiting on the off chance the clerk might swing by where I’m sitting or Heaven forbid someone else snagging them up before I can purchase them. So in the past, I did make proactive decisions. Whenever I volunteered to take on a new role at my job, it was always with the intent to learn something new, be of service to my team, and to expand my skill set. But there was no plan aside from that.
Enter stage right the concept of progress. On its own, to progress at something is to become better at it. “I progressed in curbing my enthusiasm in the face of an advertised sale.” A true statement, thank you very much! To take it a step further, progress implies that there is some means of keeping tabs on whatever the activity is, in essence, I can measure or gauge the movement of the activity. Again, here is another proactive idea.
When I started to make sense of my life and what I’d hope it would become, I’d started, without knowing, to pursue progress. I wanted to proactively decide to seek out the people, things and ideas that would make my life better in a purposeful way.
I didn’t need to start from scratch, we seldom do. I know some people who instinctively know how to pursue progress. Folks like me? Well, we’ve got to work a little harder at it, especially in light of life’s plot changes! Don’t get me wrong…I’m wired to pursue progress. It’s just a matter of my figuring out how to do it efficiently.
There’s a whole lot of fundamental work I had to master, which I will talk about in upcoming articles. In a nutshell though, here’s how I pursue progress in my life to reduce the chances of the chaos of yore making an unwelcome reappearance:
- Identify the key areas or domains in my life.
- State why these domains is important to me
- List the goals I have for each domain
- State how I will achieve the goals along with actual and needed resources that contribute to my following through with said goal.
In upcoming posts, I will put this list to the test. What I’ll say now is that in some domains and with certain goals, it’s much easier to accomplish what I set out to do than others. I don’t think that I’m wrong about the approach though. Some things just take longer and are harder to get right. There’s no two ways about it.
As my skit in my About Me page intimated, I’m still working out the kinks in this system. I know that it would be challenging. Over the past few months, I’ve been immersing myself in the world of personal development. I heard Les Brown once say, “By the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch”. I also came across the saying, “A goal without a plan is just a wish”. I hold these two inspirational quotes near and dear to me whenever I feel I’m being pulled off course. I’m done with taking on too much and I’m done with wishing. At my bedside is placed the framed saying in the picture taken above. It’s one of the first and last things I see everyday. I am a work in progress…and I’m fine with that!
How do you pursue progress?
Catch you later,
Olanta
Photo by Olanta Chandler; © 2016-2017 Just Me, Maybe You ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Great job!
Thank you! Love the vote of confidence!