I saw this trailer yesterday and the adverting caught my attention. Anyone who has ever done anything with landscaping knows it is a continuous investment of time and resources to keep it growing the way you want. It is an investment that literally grows or doesn’t depending on what you do with it. So here we are at the end of week one of the personal growth challenge. We made the commitment to intentionally grow in an area of skill and an area of choice, like an attitude. The question for today is how is your investment in you growing?
Last week I made the commitment to grow in the area of gratitude. Overall I’m a pretty positive person but I had noticed some areas of my life where I had started to become more focused on what I “had” to do rather than what I “got” to do. It’s amazing how a subtle difference like “have to” vs. “get to” can be the difference between a positive and a negative outlook.
With this personal growth challenge I have been looking at a lot of areas in my life and looking to adjust some of my disciplines so I can be more effective. However, when I started adjusting my internal dialogue sounded something like a task master or a drill sergeant saying, “drop and give me 20!” It’s amazing how hard we can be on ourselves. We would never allow someone else to talk to us the way we talk to us.
At any rate, I realized that instead of being motivated to make the changes I wanted to make I was fighting myself because of the negativity that was creeping in. Thus the reason for choosing to work on an attitude of gratitude. This past week I caught myself several times needing to make an adjustment. lIke when I was dragging myself out of bed at 4:45 a.m. to go exercise. As I was lacing up my sneakers I remembered that I was working on gratitude and started thinking about the fact that I get the opportunity to exercise. I wasn’t doing it out of some crazy obligation. I was exercising because my body is a gift to me that I am thankful for.
By the time I made it out the door I was so motivated I was shocked. In no time at all I went from a negative attitude forcing myself to do something to a positive attitude that was propelling me. I’m loving the intentionality of the personal growth challenge. If I hadn’t made the commitment to actually choose gratitude I’m sure I would still be fighting against my internal drill sergeant instead of gaining the momentum of working with myself to get the results I want.
Now the real work starts. Anyone can do anything for a short period of time. Consistency is where the real change occurs. Experts say it takes 21 day of consistency to change a habit. Here is to week 2 in choosing gratitude in all things.
How about you? Have you made a commitment? Have you joined the challenge to grow? Have you seen your investment in you grow?
