3 Things to Master ASAP
Today I want to talk about 3 things I believe you should master ASAP! These aren’t specific hard skills that are going to help you in a particular job, but these are three areas of self-mastery that will absolutely help propel you forward in achieving what you want to achieve, and in creating your best work life.
The first thing that I want to talk about is self-discipline. This concept may make some people uncomfortable. Many don’t necessarily love the thought of discipline at the first hearing of that word, but self-discipline is something that I believe is absolutely critical to achieving our ideal life. Whether it comes to our physical self-discipline in terms of health habits or exercise habits, or self-discipline in terms of how we spend, plan, and use our time. Do we make it a priority to spend time on learning new things or learning new skills? The list goes on, but when I really look at achieving the life that I ultimately want to have personally and professionally, it comes back to self-discipline with those little habits that are going to help me achieve being my best self and producing my best work. Really take a hard look at your self-discipline. Do you hold yourself accountable? Do you keep the commitments that you make to yourself? If you don’t, that’s a really good place to start, because if you don’t believe you, nobody else is going to believe you either.
Number 2 is goal setting. This is an area where some people do really well and some people never even touch it. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, work on getting in the habit of setting goals for yourself. They can be small daily or weekly goals, monthly goals, or big new year’s resolutions, annual goals, or even life goals. Whatever they might be, I highly recommend you set goals. The practice keeps you focused, it keeps you driving forward to achieve, and in many cases, allows you to learn something new. So look at what you do in terms of goal setting and set an intention for yourself to set some new goals consistently, either on a daily, weekly basis, or quarterly basis, whatever works for you, but start small if you’re new to the goal-setting.
Third is self-reflection. I personally think self-reflection is the key to utilizing the lessons we learn and actually experiencing the growth and transformation we should, from life’s challenges. Self-reflection helps us to apply those lessons to our lives and careers. It’s one thing to get through a hard experience, but it is quite another to actually take the time to absorb the lesson from it and then integrate it into the daily action that you take. If you’re being self-disciplined and you’re setting goals on a regular basis, take that extra step of then reflecting on how you’re truly holding yourself accountable. How you are doing in achieving those goals, are you moving forward in the way that you want to move forward, are you being the person that you want to be, are you saying the words that you want to say in the way that you want to say them, or are you letting your emotions get in the way? Are you trying to take the easy way out and blame other people, or other circumstances, for why you’re not achieving certain goals? If we can’t be honest with ourselves about why things are or are not a certain way, it’s going to be very hard to move past them. I highly recommend that you learn self-reflection, as it will absolutely change your life for the better.