How to Measure Progress on Your Goals
I’m on a mission to help women build #healthconfidence.
When I left my job six months ago to embark on this mission I could have never articulated it that way even though it feltclear back then. It’s amazing what gets clearer with time. But that’s the thing about progress and looking for meaningful guideposts that tell you you’re moving forward. They aren’t always clear.
Measuring progress by “likes” and subscriber list size is brutal, and they don’t help me know the quality of a connection which is more important to me than volume. So when my friend Amy suggested I see new moments of clarity on the journey as a measure, that immediately resonated.
So, looking through that lens here’s to little moments of hard-earned clarity earned over the last six months.
My emotions are both a friend and a foe.
The emotional landscape I have traveled over the last six months has been some of the most interesting terrain of me, ever. It has revealed a low capacity to be with some kinds of emotions, especially the ones that generate from insecurity and doubt. And when I have taken time to get curious about them they reveal an intense desire to be liked and accepted and to make sure I eliminate failure from the menu completely. Even just writing that makes me squirm but it’s so true. And so now that I know that about me, then what? I have not shored up that chapter in the learning yet. Here is one of my go-to practices for the journey: Hand on Heart
People want to support.
(Whhaaaaatttt?) As I reflect on all the gestures of support ranging from “you can do this Susan” to participating in pilot courses to very concrete offerings of a marketing plan, to editing my work, to volunteering to be my Facebook group admin to a friend refusing payment for (all) the graphic design work she’s done for me, it’s like WOW. Just when my insecurities cause me to turtle inward they show up with their open hearts ready to help in any way they can. I am so grateful. And I’m learning about the magic that happens when you’re feeling vulnerable and then people still accept you as you are. My cognitive mind has noted this learning, my heart is still being touched by this magnificent reality.
It’s okay to be in kindergarten.
Oh wait, I don’t have a choice. Believe me, I truly love learning but the learning curve of the last six months has been the steepest curve yet. My stomach regularly bottoms out, especially with the technology and social elements of this online world. So much so that I usually have no idea how long a task will take (although I continue to try to estimate) and can almost guarantee that I’ll hit some point of frustration (another emotion I am becoming intimate with). Grace and permission to play in the new. And given the relative number of new things to learn to be patient with progress.
Guard your confidence & stay close to the reasons why.
After reading the earlier points this one should have been obvious. It clicked when I very seasoned business owner speak of her own daily practice of guarding her confidence. To me that was akin to getting centred daily and nurturing the mission I wake up with each morning. What I love about this one is that it allows me to start my day from a more resourceful place of generating action and allows me to honour my fear not squish it down.
Despite it all, impact still happens.
In my pursuit to “get it right” and “get it perfect” (read fear of failure) and invariably needing to keep moving forward without being able to accomplish neither of those, lives are still being touched in tiny little ways. Women approach me with comments like “I’m drinking more water now” and “I’m eating more fruit”. I never underestimate small changes because I know that it’s the small things that create massive shifts over time.
So back to Amy’s advice. If progress is about those small little shifts that reveal new insight I’m doing okay.
What small insights and shifts, hard earned or not, tell you you’re moving forward? Leave a comment below.
