Think back to a year ago. What were you doing with your life? Where did you work? Who did you hang out with? What was the most important thing to you?
Now think about now. What are you doing with your life? Where are you working? Who do you hang out with? What is the most important thing to you?
Recently I’ve been thinking about the differences in myself between now and every year since I’ve graduated high school. The Tanner you talk with today is a completely different person than the Tanner five years ago. I’m sure regardless of whether you have proactively attempted to better yourself or not, you are a different person as well.
If, just by the virtue of being alive, we constantly change, shouldn’t we want to be in charge of who we are becoming?
Elder M. Russell Ballard, a general authority in the LDS church said “I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”
I think a lot of the time we underestimate ourselves. I know I do. I’m very aware of my weaknesses and I’m always striving to improve, but sometimes those weaknesses get in the way of dreaming big. Not the weaknesses themselves, but the power that I give to them. I imagine I’m not alone. We’ve become like the fully grown pet elephant that “can’t” break the string because he never was able to as a younger elephant.
In order to bring about great change in ourselves we need to let go of what we think is possible of achieving, and start chasing what we want to achieve.
While this is easy to say, there still needs to be a realistic plan for how we are going to achieve what we want. Personally, I achieve my goals more often if I have a lot of accountability. I don’t like to let people down and if I tell someone I’m going to do something, I don’t want to have to tell them that I didn’t do it. There are a lot of tools, tests, and quizzes out there that help us to understand ourselves better. One that I recently came across is Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies quiz. However you’ve come to know and understand yourself better, it’s only as good as what we do with that information. My challenge to you is to stretch yourself a little more. I recently realized that even though I’ve made strides to become who I am today, there is still a lot more room for improvement and I’m committing to doing better. Will you?