“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.” — Stephen Covey

Taking the decision to prioritize your growth is hard. But it is made even harder because you don’t always know if you’re growing in the right direction.

On your self-development journey, it can feel like you take two steps forward one day and three steps backward the next day.

That’s okay. It’s all part of the journey. I’ve been there too.

While your daily results might fluctuate, you’re still building momentum that is trending in the right direction.

Just like investing in the stock market, you want to focus on the trend, not the fluctuation. The trend provides a clear signal. The fluctuation is noise or the result of randomness.

But even when you feel like you’re going backward, you are still making progress. You are learning what works. Half the battle of growing is knowing what not to do and avoiding pitfalls.

Here are the 5 signs to focus on as you are becoming the person you always wanted to be.

#1: You Look To Compare Yourself With Yourself:

Competing against others makes you bitter.

Competing against yourself makes you better.

Become better, not bitter.

Your biggest competitor is the person staring back at you in the mirror every morning. You know you’re growing when you look to run your own race and beat the person you were last year.

If you don’t look back on your life this time last year and don’t think: “I was a complete idiot back then” you haven’t grown enough.

The person you were last year becomes your only benchmark for growth. Everything else you ignore.

#2: You Look To Take Consistent Action

A goal without a system of action is a delusion.

What separates winners and losers in any domain is not the goals they have, since they all have the same goal, but rather how they design their life to take action.

If you ask any random person: would you like to improve your life? You can almost bet that everyone would respond with a resounding: Hell yes!

But ask a follow-up question: what daily action(s) do you take to make your life better? And you’ll get a blank state or a stuttering response.

Everyone wants improvement, but no one wants to do the work.

I’ve got 5 daily habits I do every day that helps me grow 1% closer to the person I want to become. These actions aren’t huge. They are small. But they are consistent.

While you grow, you look to accumulate 1% improvement every day. Over the course of one year, these 1% improvements compound to make you 37 times better than when you started.

1% improvement can look like this:

• Reading 10 pages per day

• Exercising for 20 minutes

• Eating more healthy meals

Taken by themselves, these aren’t monumental changes. But you’re taking consistent action every day.

And the consistency of action beats the intensity of action.

#3: You Look To Build Long-Term Momentum, Not Instant Gratification

“Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.” — James Clear

Rome wasn’t built in a day. And your life won’t change overnight.

Your everyday actions, no matter how small, either take you towards your goals or away from them. You can make decisions that will either make you evolve into a new version of yourself or repeat mistakes of the past.

Evolve or repeat.

At this point in my life, I can safely say that I’ve read over 100 personal development books. All effective self-help boils down to this concept: delaying gratification.

If you’re able to make decisions that improve your life in the long term while finding joy in the short term, you’re on your way to creating a better life for yourself.

Growing is a constant process, not a once-off event.

Many people stunt their growth by giving in short-term temptation. They want results instantly.

They get so motivated that they dive headfirst and work at an unsustainable pace. When they don’t see immediate results, their energy drops and they stop working. They are left wondering what they did wrong.

The stop-start pattern is detrimental to their growth. You would rather be consistently good than occasionally great.

But not you. You take the long view. You are impatient with your action but patient with your results. You put in the work every day and don’t expect results until much later.

You embark on the road less traveled. And take actions that may seem boring at the moment but help you to build long-term momentum and steady progress.

It might be lonely and difficult at times, but that’s the point. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

#4: You Look To Take Responsibility For Your Environment

A lack of responsibility creates a lack of opportunity for growth.

There are 3 environments you control:

1. Social environment: Who do you hang around with every day?

2. Physical environment What do you surround yourself with?

3. Psychological environment: What story do you tell yourself every day?

Show me your environment and I’ll show you how successful you’ll be in 10 years.

The aggregation of these 3 environments is the greatest predictor of how far you’ll get in life.

As you are growing, you start to take more action for what type of people you surround yourself with. Are they negative or positive? Open to new experiences or closed off from learning?

You will also start to realize how much of your built environment impacts you. What food do you keep around the house? Do you stock your fridge full of beer and convenient food? Or look to have fresh fruit?

Lastly, when you grow, you’ll notice how much the story you’ve been telling yourself impacts the limitations you place on what you can achieve. Stories don’t have to be true to have power either.

Your environment can be a launching pad for your success or a prison that keeps you trapped in mediocrity. And the most secure prisons are the ones we create for ourselves.

“Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder,” writes Jordan Peterson in his book Beyond Order.

#5: You Look To Prioritize Your Own Learning and Growth

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune — Jim Rohn

You are unique.

But there is nothing you are currently experiencing that hasn’t been already experienced by someone else.

Books, podcasts, and online courses are the cheat codes to life. When you are looking to grow, you are constantly seeking out unique individuals who have done what you want to achieve and learn from their journey and experience.

You start to look at every opportunity, even those that may fail, as a way to learn and grow. You become addicted to your learning and seek opportunities to challenge yourself. You fear plateauing more than failing.

You start to prioritize your learning and growth above drinking, partying, and scrolling through social media. You become unattracted to people who are intellectually closed off and never take chances to grow or learn.

Your mindset changes. Your growth becomes a certainty, not a random outcome of events.

There will be people who won’t like your growth. Both family and friends. Your growth reminds them of how little their life is changing. I’ve personally experienced this.

While it can be emotionally painful, it is inevitable. When you are on the road to growing into the best version of yourself, you’re going to have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

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