What is “Service to your Future Self?”
Service to your future self is more evolution than revolution.
No great personal transformation happens without investments in time and effort.
Most people who fail in self-improvement endeavors fail because they quit. Some quit because it is too hard. However, I believe most quit because they seek instant gratification and want overnight success and when change doesn’t happen per their expectations, they quit.
Any progress you make, regardless of size or impact, is an investment in your Future Self. By consistently making investments (progress) in your goals, your investments in your Future Self grow. And over time, the miracle of compounding kicks in. There is math behind compounding in the financial world, and how to calculate the benefit of compounding is simple. Calculating the benefits of compounding when it comes to personal growth is not so simple.
Compounding in personal growth means the sum of all your investments is greater than the investments you have contributed. The bigger the investment, the greater the difference. In the financial world, they call it return on investment (ROI), which is measured in capital. In personal growth, ROI is measured by momentum. Making consistent investments in your personal growth creates momentum that, over time, becomes so great you cannot fail.
It takes time and effort and patience. There will be good times and bad times in the financial world, and the best strategy is to tweak investments rather than make wholesale changes. The same is true for personal growth. You change, the world changes, and nothing in life is linear. Think of the consequences when making significant adjustments.
Remember, it is evolution and not revolution. Most overnight successes are 10 – 15 years in the making. The funny thing about success is when we reach the pinnacle, we often forget the time and effort invested and take our success for granted.
What is the proper investment you need to make in your personal growth?
That is a good question.
It depends on where you are in life.
If your world is so out of control and you don’t have enough time for your tasks and the thought of taking on another task is beyond overwhelming, the easy answer is to say, “I can’t do it.”
Not so quick there. Remember, it is about evolution.
For example, you could wake up Sunday morning before everyone else rolls out of bed and take thirty minutes to invest in your personal growth. Do it consistently. If you miss a Sunday, it is not the end of your journey. Take five minutes to align with your feelings, feel sorry, blame yourself, or whatever negative feeling you might have. Then close your eyes, take a deep breath, hold it for a couple of seconds, and as you exhale, say, “I cannot change this.”
It is OK to miss a day because perfect is just an illusion. What is essential is that you don’t miss two appointments with yourself in a row, even if the second day is crap, because while you do not want to make crap a habit, crap is better than zero when your object is to invest consistently and build momentum in your growth journey.
And what do you do with the momentum you have earned? Define boundaries in the domains of your life that are out of control and bleeding into other domains. Place constraints on your time to create margin to invest in your priorities and not the demands of others.
Follow these simple rules consistently, and that thirty-minute Sunday investment in your personal growth will balloon into bigger investments and one day, you will wake up with overnight success.
Choosing not to start investing a little time and effort in your personal growth guarantees your life will continue on its current track, and we do not want to go into the nightmare of negative compounding.
