Making Progress
We all need to see or feel like we’re making progress in our daily lives. This sometimes leads us to tell ourselves we’re making progress when we’re not.
We ordinarily fall into one of two categories:
The first category comprises those who fool themselves into thinking they’re putting in maximum effort, but in reality, they’re not putting forth enough effort to achieve any progress or move toward their goals. The hard truth is if you’re not passionate and your heart’s not in it, you will most likely fall into this group and fail because you’re just not working hard enough to be making progress.
The next category is more focused on making progress. These people genuinely desire to attain their goals, and they’re not afraid of working hard to do so. Unfortunately, they don’t have the skills required to see the process through to fruition. They just don’t understand how to execute their plans successfully.
Take Control of Your Decisions to Achieve Progress through Self-Doubt
Sometimes, we find ourselves doubting or second-guessing decisions we’ve made. Often this type of self-doubt is viewed negatively. However, I think it can be used positively. Use your uncertainty as a tool for good. Make it the trigger that causes you to reflect and continually assess your decisions and the reasons behind them. Above all, view your self-doubt as an opportunity for growth and put forth a real effort to improve. Look at this process from the perspective of discovering areas you need to work on. Then, take responsibility and act on the information you’ve obtained to keep pressing towards becoming more productive and achieving your goals.
Endorphins are happy hormones that are responsible for the good feelings we experience after a workout. They also cause the “runners’ high” many athletes describe. This is a feeling of euphoria coupled with reduced anxiety and the lessened ability to feel pain. If you thought exercising causes tiredness and exhaustion, you thought wrong! It does the exact opposite; it helps clear our minds and increases our energy levels, allowing us to accomplish what we set out to do on any given day.
Measure Progress
Once you have identified areas for improvement and formulated a strategy to address them, it becomes crucial that you measure your progress. If you don’t track these areas, you won’t have the data you need to show you the way, to see what’s working and what isn’t. You’ll lack direction and progress will stall.
The act of writing down your improvement goals and what you’ve done to progress towards them keeps you laser-focused and moving in the right direction. In other words, the act of continually measuring progress provides a road-map to help you keep on-track and pushing towards your next goal.
Measuring your progress can be done with something as simple as a word document. There’s no need to make the process overly complicated. Just write down the areas you’ve identified that need improvement as goals and detail the steps you intend on taking to address them. Always be ready to review and tweak your process. As each phase or goal is successfully completed, mark it as such on your list and reap the benefits the process provides. This adds to your sense of accomplishment and keeps you on the path of constant improvement.
-Andres Pira
About Andres Pira – philanthropist, real estate tycoon, author, speaker, and global citizen. Andres Pira enjoys living in Thailand where his journey began from ไม่มีที่อยู่อาศัยให้กับมหาเศรษฐี.
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This is really helpful, thanks.