The friends of personal growth: part 2 Dedication

We have spent a good bit of time talking about things to avoid when trying to make changes in our lives, procrastination, distractions, and doubts just to name a few. Lets call these the enemies of personal development. With the holiday season directly on top of us now I thought it would be nice to shift from talking about personal growths enemies and start talking about its friends. While we have been hanging out with honesty over at the punch bowel a new guest has arrive. Lets go and say hello to Dedication.

Of all of Personal Growths friends Dedication is the most reliable, it is there when ever Personal Growth is feeling down and needs some one to help shoulder the load. When Honesty has said to much Dedication is there to sit quietly and hold personnel growths hand saying we can do this, we can change this.

Once we have decided to make a change in our lives dedication is the strongest tool we have to make that change become real. What does dedication mean? It means we put our selves wholey in to our goal, giving our selves up to the proses of change with a willingness to see the proses to it's end. If you are not willing to dedicate your self to personal growth then don;t even bother starting. All you will do is waste your time and energy to wind up were you started, if you are lucky, if you aren't lucky you will have reinforced your weaknesses and be even more unhappy then when you started. But if you are willing to put in the effoert and make a dedicated effort to change then you can not fail as failure is just the result of giving up.

So what steps can we take to increase our dedication and bolster it when we are feeling weak?

1 Self assessment. Taking the time each morning to review your goals and the time each night to review what you have done to accomplish them. Dedication does not demand that you hit the mark every day but that you try to hit the mark every day.

2 Don't stop. Dedication is not about quick successes it is about the power of slow constant effort.

3. Form habits. When we make a habit of doing anything it stops being something we concouisly focus on doing and becomes a part of our lives. By turning the behaviors we want to see in our lives in to habits we begin to do them with out thinking about it.

4. Start early. Build the practice of dedication into your efforts to change from the beginning, or as close to the beginning as you can. Knowing you committed to change and unwilling to give up at the beginning of a project creates a condition of expected success.

When times get rough, it becomes easy to slack off on our goals, to get boged down in the ires of hardship. However if we have cultivated an attitude of dedication to our goals we will be more inclined to keep on keeping on when we need it. The practice of dedication can become a source of peace from the turmoil of daily life.

When we choose to work on some aspect of our lives or any task we deem important we must dedicate our selves to it. Put all our effort in to the task and see it through to the end. As for Dedication we will show it over to a nice chair by the fire were it can watch Personal Growths holiday party while it waits to help clean up the dishes afterward.