It's been a little over a month since I started this blog and I must admit, even though there have been a lot of setbacks in my quest for a better life, the results have amazed me.
In my first post I wrote out my short term goals for the first stage of my conscious personal development and quest including: Save 50% of my salary, Get a perfect score on the HSK, Get a promotion, Perform at lush confidently, and write a blog that follows my progress. Looking back on things every once in a while to see progress and to re-adjust goals is necessary in order to re-focus your energy and better understand yourself - sometimes we have to look back to go forward.
1) Saving 50% of my salary seemed like a great goal and a way that I could easily put my student loans behind me: if I can just save half of this money and use it to pay back the bank, I'll be free in no time! right? Wrong. This was too naive, lacked knowledge and real direction, and was impossible. First, saving 50% of my salary isn't a target figure and there was no budget backing up the claim that I can actually save this much if I tried and that it would make a difference. Basically I set myself up for failure by making such an arbitrary goal.
Now I have a different short term goal: to set up a financial budgeting and organization system that propels me toward my long term financial goals. Medium term (5 years): Financial security. Long term (10 years): Financial independence. My initial "50%" is now 30%, but that 30% is split into 2 directions: 1 is for extra loan payments, and the other is towards setting up various investments - an emergency fund and an investments portfolio. I have come a long way from my initial naivety, but there is still so much to learn and this goal will become even more focused and refined in the coming month. I anticipate that my budget will fluxuate quite a bit as I analyse what expenses are important to me and where I can adjust, save more, or even need to spend more.
2) Getting a perfect score on the HSK was a great goal that I'm glad now for. I haven't been very confident about my chinese ability, so I thought that I could prove to myself that my Chinese is "good enough" by passing a test. I was wrong: I proved to myself that my chinese is good enough simply by preparing for the test. I enrolled in an HSK preparatory class and scored very high on the practice tests, without much study. I also found out that I need to work on writing with a pen rather than simply writing on the computer, but any form of writing will do me a lot of good.
I am now quite confident in my Chinese ability, but of course that is never enough. I want to improve my writing ability, my vocabulary, and the number of idioms I know and possibly even can use. I want to start writing a blog in Chinese to work on my writing and my vocabulary, and do the "daily idiom" practice a few times a week. This way I can feel more relaxed about learning Chinese. I may re-enroll in classes again, but definitly not an HSK class, but perhaps something a little more focused on my needs, or even do a language exchange instead.
3) I got a promotion. Actually I no longer want to consider purely work/salary related goals into goal sheets. These kind of goals can be very frustrating and are often out of my hands. This whole month I was trying to talk to my boss but was constantly avoided, or he was out of town, and at one point I really gave up. Promotions, raises, etc may come, or they might not come, and it should not be a factor in my personal development.
Instead I will have another goal that happens to relate to work. I will work hard as long as there is appreciation and reward for working hard. I want to work smarter not harder. This is more of a motto towards work rather than a goal, but I really want to keep this in mind. It no longer makes sense for me to waste energy on certain activities
4) Perform at lush confidently. While I did happen to play a song due to random circumstances at a bar at the lake, I have also decided to give up this goal for now. There are so many other things going on in my life that I can't be also focusing on music. I have grown up a lot in this last month and now want to "fix" the more important parts of my life first before I go off in spontaneous directions. Music remains a medium/long term goal.
5) I have written more entries this month than in my entire time at myspace. Writing this blog has felt amazing for me and has really helped me clear my head, grow, and achieve. I love writing and have a lot to say, so setting up this blog and getting myself in the habit of writing here has brought me a lot of happiness. I will absolutely be keeping this up for the following month.
I would say that this month's outter growth was good and a lot of understanding acheived, but there was no significant change. I gained a level of understanding in personal finance and I wrote some blog entries. I gained confidence in my Chinese, but I dropped two other goals.
What has been most important is my inner growth. Through this process I realized that there was a huge barrier that kept me from really taking off, which was mostly fear. I have one entry in which I say that steve pavlina's guide to personal development was wrong and that not everyone can it that way, but actually as I reflect back he never told anyone how to do it - he simply gives people motivation and tools that they can use however they see fit. What WAS wrong was that I was starting at the wrong place.
Steve Pavlina's personal development starts at the courage level of consciousness, and if you aren't there than you cannot continue on. After reading his description of the different levels of consciousness I placed myself above courage without realizing that his definitions weren't strict and different parts of your life can have different levels of consciousness. In actuality I had still been living at the level of fear in many places in my life and have not fully shed my previous mindsets that are keeping me from truly blooming. I finally got rid of my fear at work, and now I can relax completely in this scene without worrying about the artificial threats to my survival. I have taken my financial / career security into my own hands and no longer live in fear of it.
There are still quite a few places in my life that I am living in denial or fear, and without correcting those I have no one to blame but myself for my personal development failures. My inability to wake up early, my spending habits, drinking habits, video game addictions, and relationship problems won't solve themselves, but I can't solve them until I break the mental barrier.
This is my goal for this month: to learn to live courageously in the face of fear. I want to be truly ready to change my life for the better, and not just motivated for a few days or weeks just to sink back into my old habits. I want to be ready to make real changes. Perhaps just continuing to write this blog will get me there, or perhaps it will take some meditation and deep thinking. However I get there, I want to unlock these chains and start a completely honest, relaxed, and free life.
In summary, my goals for the upcoming months are:
1) Financial budgeting and organization
2) Write a chinese blog / learn idioms a few days a week
3) Work smarter not harder : live this motto
4) Continue working on my blog
5) Gain the courage to live life with honesty, relaxed, confident and free from fear.
I expect that the more focus I put on my 5th goal, the easier it will be for me to reach my other goals. I am confident that I will be able to reach this level, as I can already feel myself moving in that direction and gaining speed.
If this is what one can accomplish in a month's time, I'm going to be doing a lot in my lifetime.
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