Comparing Measurements
As I looked around my gymnastics class I realized I was double the size of all the other girls…, but I was also double the age. I was barely getting into gymnastics when I was 10 or 11 and boy did I feel out of place next to my new 6-year-old friends. Compared to the other girls my age who were currently at an advanced level, yeah I sucked. Compared to me though, only me, hey I was doing pretty good for a beginner.
In the many aspects of life, how do we know how we are doing? Are we progressing fast enough or at all, how do we measure our progress from start to now, or what even is the starting point? What is appropriate to deem our skill level as good, bad, excellent, disastrous, or mediocre? Is my sister better than me because she can do 30 push-ups and I can only do 20?
Even though we are all at different points in life, we often compare ourselves to teammates, classmates, co-workers, friends, and family with an expectation to be at a certain level or have achieved a certain status at a given period of time. For example, in life we are supposed to graduate at 18, go to college for four years, get THE job, be married by 25, “x” amount of kids at 30, earn the promotion, move into the dream home, and so on and so forth. In reality, I think what we truly want is to be measured against ourselves on the level we are on, not against 6-year-old girls, not against sisters who can do 30 push-ups, and certainly not against societal standards because honestly who deemed these absurd expectations as law?
You only see improvement in yourself when you are measured against yourself. It may be hard to see or know that you are improving if you aren’t making big leaps, but it is easier to climb the ladder than box jump to the top. A tricky aspect of all this is keeping it balanced. Sure, when I was in college my main focus was school where I saw great progress in my learning, but looking back I wasn’t as on top of my finances, I didn’t make some of my relationships a priority that should have been, my mental health was eroding, and my nutrition could have been better. Balance is key and the more I learn the more I realize that each area that we want to develop doesn’t need intense devotion, each area just needs a small amount of CONSISTENT attention to make the world go ’round.
The hard part is knowing where we are or how we are doing. That self-awareness and understanding is a constant goal of mine and a huge reason for me starting this blog. Ultimately, what we are trying to achieve is the development of our 8 areas of wellness. Everything falls into one of these categories and it’s less overwhelming, at least for me, to think that I want to improve in 8 ways rather than an infinite amount of ways. The eight categories of wellness are physical, spiritual, social, emotional, intellectual, financial, occupational, and environmental which you can read more about HERE in my first post.
So how can we gauge where we are? I created the solution: The Self-Reflection Quiz. The quiz is comprised of the 8 categories of wellness each having five questions that are meant to be as generalized and inclusive as possible. They are meant to help you get an idea of what your position is in each category. Now the quiz is meant to be more than choosing a, b, or c or writing the correct answer, it’s meant to extract an honest answer. The quiz is reflecting on where you were in the past and where you stand presently so you know where you are going in the future.
The Self-Reflection Quiz
You can download this pdf and take the quiz however you like, but here are my three favorite ways.
- A read through. This is the easiest option, but it still gets your brain thinking and the wheels turning.
- A score. If you are a number person this is for you. Rate yourself a number 0-5 on each question. There are 8 categories and 5 questions per category which means there are 200 points possible so your score would be “x/200”.
- A graph. This is my personal favorite and great if you are a visual person. Grab a highlighter and highlight each sentence according to the amount you believe it to be true for you. For instance, “my favorite candy is chocolate”, I would highlight the entire sentence because that is 100% true. However, “I love spiders” I would highlight maybe 1/4 of the sentence because though spiders are fascinating in their own right they still scare me. Overall, the best part about this method is that you can highlight any amount you want.
**After taking the quiz I like to keep a copy so that when I take it again in the future I can compare my results.
The real magic happens after the quiz in future posts and discussions. However, the main thing to keep in mind is to keep things simple. Simple creates a base foundation that we can rely on and eventually build upon. Moreover, simple is less overwhelming and simple we can remember compared to complex.
Thinking about changing your life, making the move to become a better person, or desiring to have that well-rounded awareness can be scary and a little intimidating especially if you don’t know where to start. Like my gymnastics class, our age, build, gender, or talent doesn’t matter compared to other people. We are trying to improve ourselves, our 8 areas of wellness, and it’s a personal thing because only one person can do it and that is ourselves.
In hindsight, you don’t learn to run first you learn to crawl so don’t be discouraged by the process because in time things will fall into place. However, if you were ever in a similar spot that I was where life only seemed like a burden to bear with problems to solve the advice that helped me put action to my hope of creating the best well-rounded version of myself was this:
Don’t simplify complex, start at 0.
Have you ever had a moment of confusion where you didn’t know what you were doing anymore? Besides the example of walking to the basement to grab something and having no clue what I was doing down there, I once wrote my mom a card for her birthday and I had decided I wanted the greeting “mom” to be big and fancy. I searched calligraphy on Pinterest and found an alphabet I liked and began drawing the first M. When I was done my M’s looked like H’s so it looked like HOH instead of MOM. How bizarre. Instead of trying to salvage my horrible heading and simplify the crazy complexity, I scratched it and started again. By starting at 0 my advantage this time was that I knew where I wanted to go and I knew a little bit more of what I shouldn’t do.
Often, having a clear mind is simpler than constant detangling, so if you are feeling a bit muddled by your methods scratch them, and let’s begin again together. This is exactly why I try to keep it simple and take one step at a time. That is why our first step is to take the quiz. That’s it. You have to start and this is the starting point.
Have you ever reflected back on your life and asked yourself if what you are doing is good, if it is really helping you, or if it is making you happy? Do it now! Don’t let yourself be where you don’t want to be, so reflect accept and move on.
TAKE THE QUIZ!!
xxx Karlie
