Olawunmi Adegoke: Committing to Your Personal Growth

Every now and then, we hear of the importance of getting better, the need to set goals, make plans, take steps, and move forward. This is for sure a good practice, but what happens when we do not get the kind of result we want? Do we back out or still remain committed to the journey?

Being committed means being dedicated, to a cause or an activity. This means that regardless of what might come your way, you are resolute at getting what you want. I like to believe that most times, what happens to a lot of us that makes us feel like we aren’t growing, is that we aren’t so committed to what we say we want to achieve. We often set goals in our note pad, journals and somehow expect that we will have some kind of smooth sail all through. Interestingly, this seldom happens.

Committing to your personal growth requires a lot of dedication, resoluteness, and doggedness. It demands that at each stage of your life, you are able to give a very critical evaluation of where you are and what you need to do to get to where you truly desire.

No doubt, there are a lot of reasons why some people might not be able to commit to a journey. It could be some very personal reasons, experiences they are facing, or even how the environment is treating them. But what makes us truly successful in life is learning how to navigate and pull through every challenge that comes our way.

Here are 3 ways we can stay committed to our personal growth:

Evaluate your growth more frequently

Self-evaluation is a great practice if done very frequently. A lot of times, we leave self-evaluation for special occasions like when we go on a yearly retreat. I believe that having more frequent reviews will be more beneficial to our growth. For example, you can have weekly or monthly review sessions or daily evaluations of the goals you’ve achieved. This helps us identify key areas we are lagging behind in and should pay more attention to.

Do just one thing

Having evaluated where you are presently, it is essential to take the necessary actions to move. What I realize most of us like to do, when we discover that we are faring poorly in an area, is to choke ourselves up by setting so many unrealistic goals. Doing this might get us so overwhelmed and paralyze us from even making moves at all. To enable you stay focused and committed to your growth, try doing just one thing in a particular area in the next 30 days, and commit to doing it. For example, if you realize you need some skills to help you advance in your career, you can commit to learning one skill set, taking an online course, or even reading a particular resourceful book in a month.

Stay Resolute

Committing to your growth takes a lot of self-discipline. This means that regardless of what happens to you, you are ready to give it all it takes to get what you want. By this, you should be ready and willing to give up some bit of your usually comfortable lifestyle to push and achieve what you truly want. It could be cutting down some sleep time, chat/gist, avoiding some unnecessary visitations and anything that usually waste your time. Be ready to give it what it takes.

Making a commitment helps you to do away with some things so that you can grow into becoming a certain kind of person. Remain resolute, give yourself a time frame to achieve definite goals, give it all it takes, enjoy your growth process, and live a truly fulfilling life.

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