Personal Growth From the Bottom Up
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

Accomplishing a goal doesn’t happen or even progress without power. It’s weird looking back when I did this review of Personal Development for Smart People I thought that I was pretty well aligned with the power principle. Boy was I wrong.

I want to build my power. On a day to day basis I succumb to distractions and procrastinate on small tasks. When I look back on the day, I see that nothing gets done. I can start something, but I don’t finish as much as I would like to. When I look back on my life, I see a trail of uncompleted goals. Leaving a task uncompleted has become a habit in itself, so I want to break that habit and replace it with the habit of completion.

The Power of Completion

It’s funny how when I made a decision to build my power I unconsciously started reading more powerful articles and buying books with power in the title. The Power of Less, Unlimited Power, Time Power, The Power of Now, The Power of Partnerships. If you’ve ever completed something that has tested you or pushed your limits, then you understand that there’s power in completion. To know that you have the power to finish what you start makes it a lot easier to start in the first place. You don’t have this voice in the back saying “Is this just one of your stops before you jump onto the next big project that you also won’t finish?”

Finding this focus was pretty huge for me. Since I know that my focus is very important in growth, I’ve gone back and forth on where to put that focus. Do I focus on money and finances? Health? Education and knowledge? Putting a focus on any of those mean nothing if there’s no power to complete the day to day tasks to get to those desired goals.

I started writing this article at 10:00am and I’m done at 12:00am. I went straight through with no distractions, and I’m feeling pretty powerful now. I feel this is a start in building the habit of completion.

What does being overwhelmed mean? That simply means you are trying to take on too much and that can lead to depression, escape, or just a stop in the progress towards your goals. This is the information age. An age where emails, requests, and endless information are often thrown at us non-stop. It’s easy to be overwhelmed if we don’t consciously make decisions as to what we will do and what we will not do. When I look back at any time I was depressed, it was always partially due to trying to overwhelm myself and it all happened unconsciously.

“Above all be of single aim; have a legitimate and useful purpose and devote yourself unreservedly to it.” – James Allen

The biggest key to being unoverwhelmed is a single focus and simplicity. When you feel overwhelmed, simplify whatever you want to do and focus your energy and attention on one goal and doing the least possible. Understand this does take into account that you have a goal to begin with. Take some of the stuff off your back so you have a load you can successfully carry.

Personal Example

When I first decided to step foot in personal growth I had a hard time focusing on one aspect of it. That’s why I wrote this post.

I also remember Brian Tracy saying that when you first stumble into personal growth and development it’s like walking into a jungle. There’s an “awe” feeling because you stumble onto books and tapes and seminars. Today we can even add blog posts . After you take a walk in this “jungle” you want to try everything because it all seems so enticing. That’s what happened to me. I tried to improve all the areas at once. I started working towards becoming a lucid dreamer, a raw foodist, a musician who was putting out music, while also reading books, listening to tapes and working on this website. Soon I found that none of those goals were really progressing like I had hoped and eventually they all came to a stop, including this blog. In the midst of all that confusion I was left feeling

The Power of Less

This whole idea that less is more really became evident to me after reading The Power of Less. The whole book is focused around productivity through simplicity, less, small victories, building simple habits, and presence with what you do. It helped me see that there is so much power in less.

While trying to simplify your life down to the essential you might run into some resistance in the form of other people or even your fear or guilt itself. Dealing with that resistance and overcoming your fear or guilt is a totally different monster that I’ll probably address in a different article, but for now just know that what you do is a choice and you don’t have to do anything.

You don’t deserve to be overwhelmed. It’s often a source of stress and stress is a power drainer. BUT being overwhelmed is an unconscious choice that you’ve made. You have overwhelmed yourself by making decisions to take on too much. Simplicity and ease is also a choice you can make.

“When money comes in quantities known as “the big money,” it flows to the one who accumulates it as easily as water flows downhill.” – Napoleon Hill

Hey…I’m not there yet, but it’s definitely where I want to go. That’s one of my favorite quotes I’ve read so far.

I’ve been trying to lose weight for a long time. I started gaining excess weight about 15 years ago and ever since I’ve been trying to reach the ideal weight for my age and height. I’ve tried lots of diets. Tried purely exercising it off. Thought about surgery. Stopped trying to lose weight all together. Started trying again. Lost weight. Gained it back.

I stayed on this cycle until my counselor said something that totally shifted my life in a new direction.

Advice from a Counselor

When I came off the semester with straight F’s, I went to see a college counselor for depression and she told me something that completely changed the way I thought about things.

She asked me what I thought was causing my depression. I told her it was all the extra weight. I went on and on about different weight loss programs and diets that I had tried and told her that nothing I did was working.

After I was done rambling on and on about weight loss, she gave me some advice. She said, “How bout we take the focus off of weight loss and focus more on being healthy”.

As soon as she said that it really got me thinking.

Shifting Focus

This was such a simple sentence but I can see now it was absolutely necessary. Living a truly healthy lifestyle would take a lot more work in the beginning than just trying to lose weight, but it would be a long-term solution. A focus on health and wellness would take into account my environment, thoughts, emotions, eating habits, exercise habits, sleeping habits, energy level, stress level, awareness level, etc. It would force me to take time and truly evaluate what’s healthy and what’s not. It would be a change to who I am on the inside and shifting focus might even force me to address the reasons why I started gaining excess weight in the first place and why it’s been so difficult to get off this weight loss roller coaster.

Where “Weight Loss” Can Take You

If you’re trying to lose weight focusing on weight loss alone can take you to many different places you might not want to go – especially if you watch television. When I watched TV, I noticed that there were tons of commercials and ads trying to cash in on weight loss. Seemed like every news station, commercial, or sitcom had something to say about weight loss. I didn’t really see that much on holistic health (maybe because I wasn’t really looking for it). “Lose that 20 pounds you’ve been trying to lose for years!” or “We’ll guarantee weight loss!” with this pill, that new diet, this new program, that surgery.

I am not saying that those won’t help you lose weight. I lost weight on the Atkins Diet. I’ve heard of several other different diets and people having weight loss success while on them. I lost weight in Weight Watchers. I lost 40 pounds by just walking 2 or 3 hours a day and eating whatever I wanted and I’ve learned a lot from all those attempts. However, when I got clear and detailed about what I really wanted, it didn’t end at weight loss. I wanted to be more energetic. I wanted to be a more positive and productive person. I wanted to not have to worry and feel guilty over what I was eating, but I still wanted the food to taste good. I wanted to decrease my stress level as much as possible. I wanted to be muscular. I wanted weight loss to happen naturally as a result of living a healthy lifestyle. I wanted change that would work for the long run.

A Focus on Health

Focusing on health has already led me down a different path. It’s crazy to think how that one sentence changed the whole direction of my life. When I was focused on weight loss I found the Atkins Diet (and other diets), tried purely exercising all the calories off I ate, Weight Watchers, different doctors, possible surgeries. When I was focused on good health I found books that got to the heart of issues and I found articles on blogs with practical advice. I found the truth about processed carbs, refined sugar, and fast food. I joined a gym and hired a personal trainer. I found out that there are people that actually eat 100% raw foods. I bought books on productivity, cash flow, spirituality, achievement and success. I found authors like Deepak Chopra, Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle – all authors who paint holistic pictures of life in their work. It’s like a whole new world has opened up.

If you think about it, it makes sense. If you’re overweight and you want different results you would have to take different actions. Many people already know that so there next move is to “go on a diet”. But when you “go on a diet” that’s a signal for a temporary change. After I lost the 40 pounds I gained it right back when my environment changed because I had not changed on the inside. That’s why there wasn’t any long-term success. You could say I didn’t lay the foundation so whenever I built something on top if it I might have some success, but eventually things came crashing down every time. This could be a possible reason people go up and down with weight. They change something about the way they eat or their exercise habits but can’t sustain it because it wasn’t meant to be a permanent change in the first place, so they go back to their comfort zone and lose all the progress they made OR they spend a lot of time and stress trying to “keep the weight off”.

Health and The Law of Attraction

It also makes sense if you’re using the Law of Attraction. When using the Law of Attraction, the first step is to ask for what you want and to be clear and precise about it and focus on that. If you constantly focusing on weight loss, “weight” is constantly being run over and over again in your mind and you will attract it. You attract more of what you don’t want because your thoughts are on weight.

If you’ve been trying to lose weight and you’re frustrated with the weight loss see-saw, I would encourage you to take your focus off of losing weight or weight loss and focus on being healthy. It doesn’t seem like that much of a change, but the results can be tremendous.