I was having an interesting conversation with a client today, who when prompted what he might change in his evening routine to improve himself, chose to work on his emotional understanding, responses and communication. But he noted, he won't. And I think a lot of us are there, because while we want to do something to improve, we struggle to actually make the changes necessary. This might be exacerbated for those who work all day problem-solving, because when they get home, they just want to relax. But as we discussed in the session, when we are problem solving at work, we Aren't solving our own problems.
So when do we have a chance to work on ourselves?
A problem in and of itself.
For convenience sake, I split the whole human into four main categories; the physical, the cognitive, the emotional and the social. When all of these parts are relatively healthy, we have a pretty good sense of wellbeing. However, when one of them is suffering, it tends to have an effect on the others, though precisely how impactful it is, will depend on each individual. Still, as a heuristic, it is an effective way for me to approach personal development.
For example, if I were to improve something in each category it might be,
Physical: Eat predominantly healthy food.
Cognitive: Actively learn new skills.
Emotional: Understand before reacting
Social: Spend more time in attentive conversation
When I asked my client about his evening routine once home from work, he mentioned that they might spend an hour deciding what they are going to eat. It is a habitual process they go through, with the rest of the conversation kind of centred around the topic of dinner. Is that a good use of the opportunity? Perhaps, perhaps not - but it is what they do.
We "do" a lot of things by default, working on autopilot without really questioning if we should review and make some changes. And then, when we do, it is very easy to make the mental note of "I will" but then the physical change, is far harder to implement. After all, we have a phone in our hand most of the time that can give us all the information we need in order to do just about anything, yet - even when we have the information, we fail to make the change.
Change is inevitable.
Change is hard to enact.
For example, the list of four things above are very easy to work on and I know multiple ways to tackle each that take very little relative time. Yet, do I? And I suspect that I am not alone, despite a lot of people believing and pronouncing that they are actively developing themselves. We may all be the "best version" up until this immediate point, but with the potential we have right now, could we be a better version tomorrow?
Most of will not be better, we will be worse.
Only very slightly perhaps and it could be that in some areas we are a little better and others a little worse. But if we are looking at the net outcome, we are probably getting worse across the four facets of the whole human. At least I am. You are probably getting better each day, physically, mentally, emotionally and socially.
We have a lot of things clamouring for our attention these days, whereas a few decades ago our lives were more conducive to development. We had some more time, less distraction, less consumer noise. We would get home from work and the time was indeed ours. Now, we give our time away frivolously to what doesn't move us forward, doesn't challenge our factors. We scroll and stare, read and collect - but what are we doing?
Just like while we might benefit from having a job and getting paid, what we do for a job itself is for someone else's benefit, a lot of what we do with our free time is not actually for us. We have been fooled into believing we are benefitting, without investigating if it is the truth. Scroll TikTok or Instagram and feel like we are learning, but if we aren't changing our behaviours, what have we learned?
It doesn't take much to reverse our personal course, but it does take being attentive to what we are doing, or not doing. The challenge for many is that our attention is already occupied feeling like it is benefitting being spent elsewhere. It is a bit of a catch problem, because of instead of getting the trigger warning to move us along, we are getting the feedback that we are doing exactly what we should be doing. It feels right emotionally, even though logically we know it is the wrong thing to do.
Addicts.
I don't know about you, but I am not enjoying the current direction of the world and my experience of it. But, while I can't change the world at scale, my experience of it can change. This isn't just about reframing the problems into positives, but rather being active in designing the kind of behaviours that help me grow across those four areas. There is no perfect outcome, but improvement is possible.
Where to start?
Anywhere. Just start.
Taraz
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