Every now and then it is good to do an internal 360-degree survey, conducting a status check with the variety of emotions, goals, priorities, responsibilities (direct or indirect), dominant thoughts, passions, fears and joys that make up that entity you know as you. What should I find the courage to be moving toward and why? What should I be moving away from; what is outdated that should be left behind? And why have I not already done so?
Am I doing as well as I know?
Am I coasting anywhere?
What am I avoiding?
What am I galloping toward and why? Habit? Internalized Cultural Norm? Reflex? External stimuli not fully vetted? Outdated or no longer relevant goals?
What am I running from I’m not fully aware of?
What fears or anxieties have I buried so deep, so internalized, so normed, that I am no longer aware of their influence?
What am I in denial about?
What am I carrying forward into the future that I should leave in the past?
What new, different, better things can I, should I, create in my future?
How am I programming myself? For the better and for the not so better?
How am I limiting myself?
What have I told myself about myself that is no longer true… or doesn’t have to be true anymore? That no longer serves me?
Closing Quotes:
“If you aren’t actively dismantling your routines and rewriting your self-narrative, you aren’t growing; you are just solidifying your current limitations.” – Adam Grant, Think Again
“We question our handling of problems, but we rarely question the underlying rules that dictate how we see the problem in the first place. This is the ultimate denial: executing a flawed script with perfect efficiency.” – Virginia Satir
“Many people spend their lives chasing goals that were programmed into them by an outdated environment. They are running a marathon on a track someone else built, running away from a phantom fear, unaware that the race ended years ago.” – Dr. James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
