"An Exercise In Changing Yourself"

I happened upon this blog posting, "An Exercise in Changing Yourself" by Marshall Goldsmith, an executive educator and writer for a Harvard Business Review management blog in my travels on Twitter one day last week. I've been thinking about it ever since because it seems like such a simple, but powerful way to pick out one solid goal to work on this year and to determine why you want to pick this goal out of so many that I'm sure we can all think of.

One of my favorite passages from the article is, "I have conducted this exercise with several thousand people. Many start with benefits that are "corporately correct," such as: "This change will help my company make more money," and finally end with benefits that are more human, such as: "This change will make me a better person." I will never forget one hard-driving executive who chose: 'When I get better at letting go' as the behavior he should work on. His first benefit was that his direct reports would take more responsibility. His final benefit was that he would probably live to celebrate his 60th birthday."

The exercise goes like this:

1. Pick something that you'd like to improve in your life that fits into the end of this sentence: "When I get better at [this] ..., then [resulting consequence of change] ..."

2. Do it again.

3. Do it again.

4. Do it again.

5. You get the picture ... do it until you really get to the root of why this change that you would like to make will have an impact.

Mine? Here it is: When I get better at not letting the word "should" influence my decisions, I'll follow the path that leads to meaningful work, life, and everything in between.

Next steps: The article doesn't get into the implementation of how to change the chosen behavior or into creating an action plan for change (it is only one little blog post after all), but that's what I went to graduate school for, now isn't it?