GROWING INTENTIONALLY (PART ONE)

Working hard doesn’t guarantee success. Hope isn’t a strategy. Let me ask you some questions. Think about them thoroughly. 

1. Do you have a plan for your personal growth? 2. How do you get better at what you do? 3. How do you improve your relationships 4. How do you get more depth and wisdom as a person? 5. How do you gain insight? 6. How do you overcome obstacles? Is is by working harder? Or by working longer? Or by waiting for things to get better?

W e all need to figure out how to bridge our growth gaps because if you have dreams, goals or aspirations, you need to grow to achieve them.

You have one or more mistaken beliefs that creates a gap that keeps you from growing and reaching your potential. Potential is a very wonderful word. It looks forward with optimism. It is filled with hope. It promises success. It implies fulfillment. It hints at greatness. Potential is a word based on possibilities. When you think about your potential, you often get excited. Everyone has a potential but most people end up having an unfulfilled potential.

I remember a friend of mine who always wanted to be a singer but never was. He enjoyed singing but never got the chance to showcase it to the world. He died with the music still inside him. That’s an apt description of an unfulfilled potential. Not reaching your potential is like dying with the talent still inside of you unexplored and unexploited. No one is born without a potential. I believe you have the desire to reach your potential. The Question now is how do you do it?

I have no doubt that the answer is growth. To reach your potential, you must grow, and to grow you must be highly intentional about it. Let us now go back to the 8 misconceptions about growth that maybe holding you back from being as intentional as you need to be.

1. The Assumption Gap

Here, you assume that you will automatically grow. As children, our body grows automatically and we become taller, stronger, more capable of doing things and facing new challenges. Many people carry into adulthood a subconscious belief that mental, spiritual and emotional growth carries a similar pattern i.e as times goes by, we simply get better.

The main problem is that we don’t improve by simply living. We have to be intentional about it. As Bruce Springteen once said “A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be”. No one improves by accident. Personal growth doesn’t just happen on its own.

Apart from your formal education, you need to take complete ownership of the growth process, because nobody else will do it for you. No wind favours him who has no destined port. If you want your life to improve, you must first of all be ready to improve yourself. You must make that tangible target. Do not Assume that God will do it without taking any steps. There is no automatic growth. Imbibe yourself with things that will make you grow and stop assuming.  

2. The Knowledge Gap

Here, you assume that you don’t know how to grow. If u asked 10 people if they had a growth plan. 9 of them would answer “No”. Most people don’t know how to grow.

Like Lawretta staples said “If you are clear with what you want, the world responds with clarity. If you know what you want and you want to grow into your new job. You need a way to accomplish the big goals you have set for yourself.

Many people learn only from the school of hard knocks. Difficult experiences teach them lessons “the hard way”, and they change- sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The lessons are random and difficult.

It is much better to plan your growth intentionally. You decide where you need or want to grow, you choose what you will learn, and you follow through with discipline going at the pace you will set. Learning from mistakes opens doors of personal growth. You will be able to accomplish more, learn more, lead and help others, then you will begin to see opportunities in an entirely different way. The decision to grow definitely has positive impact on our lives. 

3. The Timing Gap

Here, you have the idea, you know what you want to do yet you assume that this is not the right time to begin. There is a big difference between deciding and doing something. Frank Clark once said “What great accomplishments we’d have in the world if everybody had done what they intended to do”. Most of us don’t act as quickly as you should on things that are beneficial to us. We find ourselves subject to the law of diminishing intent which says “the longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the odds that you will never actually do it.

You may be under a personal or professional pressure right now. You might be probably anxious to start growing and developing, but what if you are not? Whether you feel prompted to or not, Now is the time to start growing.

According to Professor Leo Buscaglia “Life lived for tomorrow will always be a day away from being realized. The reality is that you will never get much done unless you go ahead and do it before you are ready. If you are not already intentionally growing, you need to get started today. If you don’t, you may reach some goals, which you can celebrate, but you will eventually plateau. Once you start growing intentionally, you can keep growing and keep asking “what’s next?

4. The Mistake Gap

Growing can be a messy business. It means admitting you don’t have the answers. It requires making mistakes. It can make you look foolish. Most people don’t enjoy that. But that is the price of admission if you want to improve.

Robert H. Schuller once said “What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?” This is a word of encouragement to try things to try things you believe are beyond your capabilities.

If you want to grow, you need to get over any fear you may have of making mistakes. Warren Bennis asserts that “A mistake is simply another way of doing things”. To become intentional about growing, expect to make mistakes everyday, and welcome them as a sign that you are moving in the right direction.  

5. The Perfection Gap

Here, you desire to find the best way before you start something. A lot of us waste a lot of precious time looking for the best way to start something which in turn delays us in taking some timely decisions. You have to get started if you want to find the best way. Its similar to driving on an unfamiliar road at night. Ideally, you’d like to be able to see your whole route before you begin. But you see it progressively. As you move forward, a little more of the road is revealed to you. If you want to see more of the way, then get moving.

6. The Inspiration Gap

Here, Majority of us don’t just feel like doing it, You feel this thing is just not for me, I cant do it. One of my favorite examples of the inertia of motivation is the phrase “Just Do It”., You’ve heard it before right? We hear it almost every day. Majority of us be like “I just can’t get myself motivated to start that business, to lose weight etc. Well, Motivation isn’t going to strike you like lightning. Motivation is not something that anyone can bestow or force on you. The idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation and Just do it.

Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever you need to do. Just do it without motivation and then guess what. After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it. You start deriving joy in doing it.

Motivation is like love and happiness. It’s a by-product. When you are actively engaged in doing something. It sneaks up and zaps you when you least expect it. As Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner says, “You are more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action”. So Act fast! Whatever it is you know you need to do, Just Do It!

7. The Comparison Gap

Here, It keeps ringing your head that others are better you. This is a major limitation that stops you from achieving your goal. The fact that others are better than you doesn’t mean that you can’t improve yourself and be better than them take for example., When Tecno entered the Nigerian market, Nokia was the main thing, obviously Nokia was better than them at that time but they gradually worked their way into the market, look where they are now, same is the story of Infinix in the Nigerian market also, they gradually worked their into the market by becoming better and improving themselves. The fact that others are better than you doesn’t mean they will better than you forever. Keep working on you and improving yourself. Keep doing what you are good at and stop comparing yourself with others. Your journey is quite different from others. Stop trying to catch up. Get over the comparison gap and become comfortably with being out of your comfort zone.  Trust me, it will be worth it in the end.

8. The Expectation Gap

Once you start doing something you’ve always wanted to do, you start thinking it would have been easier than this. This is one gap that affect many youths nowadays. I don’t know any successful person who thinks growth comes quickly and climbing to the top is easy. It just doesn’t happen. People create their own luck. How? Here’s the formula:

Preparation (growth) + Attitude + Opportunity + Action (doing something about it) = Luck.

It all starts with preparation. Unfortunately, that takes a lot of time. As Jim Rohn said “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight”

If you want to reach your goals and fulfil your potential, become intentional about your personal growth. It will change your life and make you better prepared for the challenges that lie ahead.