Making Progress

Transcript

Id like to talk about making progress.

I was doing this Neurolinguistic Programming Course by Rain Ramsey on Udemy.com.

It’s interesting because at different points in the course he tells you to take a pen and paper and reflect and do some journaling and think about your own life, the structure of how you absorb beliefs and how you absorb information.

As the saying goes, I think it’s from Albert Ellis “we can only understand others to the extent that we understand ourselves. So that’s why knowledge is so important for people practicing therapy and for people intending to communicate in general which is most of us.

If you’re not a hermit then self knowledge is very important for understanding your place in the world.

He asked the question do my daily efforts bring me closer to my ideal state?

So I sat down and thought about it, I had to wonder. I haven’t been writing down my goals too often lately. Sometimes it seems with certain areas of my life are just maintaining.

I might be going to the gym once or twice a week but if I really want to improve I should be going 3 times a week to increase the amount of weight and increase my strength, watch my diet and avoid sweet things.

That’s one of my worst vices, my sweet tooth. And I had to wonder “Okay Im still studying this course, perhaps I am not applying myself as much as I could be, not being as disciplined as I could be.

Of course you don’t want to lead myself into being auto exigent or too demanding of myself because that would be a path that leads to unhappiness or various emotional swings because I did something right one day but maybe the next you don’t have all your ducks in a row and you’re hard on yourself.

You say “why didn’t I get everything done?”

I don’t want to be auto-exigent but I do want to be disciplined. I want to practice and if I miss things, then I will say let’s be honest and lets correct.

Let’s move on a clearer path towards success. I do think this question is a bit loaded, because its talking about an ideal state, that can be an invitation for auto-exigence.

But I think it’s important because you can ask how are my daily habits moving me toward what I want in life? Analyzing some of my habits I can wonder am I on a course for mediocracy or not actually reaching what I want to achieve?

Now we do have the opportunity to look at our own behavior, be honest with ourselves. Of course karma is the result of the consequences of our actions.

We don’t always taste it in the purest form, but especially it is our repeated actions we almost certainly will taste the results because as a great man once said, I can’t remember who to attribute this quote to but it says “the way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives.”

So I invite you to have a think about that question. What ways are your daily efforts bringing you toward the results that you want in life? In what ways are you moving forward?

In what ways are you regressing, in what ways are you just maintaining, what ways are you excelling?

Its a tough question for me to be honest but I think its a valuable one, one that can concern us for a very long time.