Every so often while having a green tea at one of my favourite cafes, I like to take stock of my current situation and review what has gone well along with what could be even better. This is quite an important thing to do because it sets the scene for the future – Whether imminent or distant.
I look at my current situation and ask myself, “what’s happening now and how can it be better?” I also like to include the 5 w’s which are: ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and some even go as far as adding a 6th – how. This I actually picked up years ago whilst studying and I found it a really effective tool for understanding and planning.
There is also another very effective discovery tool which works by asking the question “why” 5 times to in order to understand a root cause to a problem. Both of the above I’ll talk about in future posts.
Back to my point of my original point before I digress too much, evaluating yourself and current situation can sometimes force you to face up to reality and get you on the path to where you want to go.. Not many people do this and could be one of the reasons that people do not seem to progress. The steps to perform my self-analysis was simply a pen and paper. I used a technique that I love called mind-mapping. At first glance it might seem very simple, but do not let it fool you. It is a very effective mind working tool that can make light work of the complicated.
I’ve spoken about mind mapping before here and here and I also show you an example mind map that I used to cruise through university acquiring a first class honours degree (UK classification).
To start with, I took out my pen and paper and drew a rather badly drawn version of myself in the centre along with the words ‘analyse’ and ‘Goal’ in a semi artistic way. This would serve as my central point where I would begin adding branches from the center with keywords relating to where I was currently and where I would like to be in the future. Once completed, I transferred this to a larger A3 sheet of paper and added colours, pictures and other detail I may have missed in the prior session. Once done, I would put this next to my workstation where I could see it every day. This would serve as sort of a vision board.
This is quite a powerful technique for self-discovery as it pushes to reveal things that you may not have initially thought of. One recommendation I would mention is that you should push to do this is fast as possible to avoid your logical brain interrupting whilst trying to rationalise or explain away any shortcomings that you may find.
One of the first things that I discovered was that my social environment at the time was not supporting. I then needed to make a change and stopped hanging around the same old people. This can be one of the biggest blockers for people – Hanging around those that do not support your goals and instead are leeches – This could be mentally, emotionally, financially and not forgetting, a drain on your time etc.. If this is happening to you, my recommendation is to bail out of that environment ASAP.
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