7 Tips for your Personal Evolution

Evolution:  the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex

form.

Evolution is not simply a theory but an active force, one that has been actively present in shaping your life since birth.  As children we embraced this evolutionary force.  It helped us to learn and to grow; to crawl and then walk, to speak, to write and to read, to ride a bike and drive a car, to play ball, to paint, to add and subtract, to swim, to ski and to sing.

When we were younger we evolved rapidly and continuously.  We were almost like sponges, soaking up new experiences, experimenting and trying new things, simply to learn something new.  This rate of evolution slowed down as we aged though, as we began creating boundaries for ourselves, restrictions and limitations on 'who' we thought we were or could be, until our growth and evolution did not become a constant but an exception.  It became ruled by choice, and so many of us, as we age, begin to choose not to grow or evolve further.

I understand that this wasn't always a conscious choice, that no one explained to us that giving in to our negative beliefs and our fears meant that we stopped evolving, that we stunted our growth, but it happened none the less.  Additionally, few of us were ever told that the more we gave in to our fears and held ourselves back from evolving further, the more we would begin devolving, becoming less.

We were all born to be 'more' though.  When young you weren't satisfied with who you were, what you knew and what you could do.  You continued to push, to learn more, to do more, to try more.  When did that slow down or stop for you?  Why?  Are you done?  Have you evolved to be the best 'you' possible?  Is there nothing left for you to discover about yourself, to learn or experience?

We are built with an infinite capacity to evolve.  We can continue to learn new things, to experience new things, to develop new skills, to uncover hidden talents until our last breath.  Why then do so many of us 'settle' along the way?  At what point did you decide that you were 'enough'?  Often it wasn't even a conscious choice. We maybe took a break, sat back and got a little too comfortable, complacency stealing over us like a warm blanket we became reluctant to kick off.

You can choose to take notice though, to remove the blanket of complacency and to begin actively making choices that jump start your evolutionary path.  Use the following suggestions to help you continue your evolutionary journey...

1. Surround yourself with new ideas.   This may mean speaking with people unlike yourself, or reading a book or journal outside your current area of expertise.  You never know what you are likely to think about something until you put yourself into the position of needing to think about it!
2. Recycle your beliefs about... you!  It is often our beliefs about ourselves, who we are, what we can do or what we should do, that create limitations to our growth.  Question old beliefs to uncover new ones.  You are far more capable than you likely give yourself credit for.
3. Try things on, see what fits.  Things we may dismiss out of hand may be a better fit for us than we thought, but we won't know unless we give it a try first.  Nobody expects to 'like' raw fish, but you have to try Sushi to know for sure.  Taste it, try it, take it for a spin. The old adage 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' is your mantra here.
4. Resist Resistance.  Still the little voice inside your head that is telling you No, that is scrambling to pull the Complacency blanket back over your head.  Expect resistance.  Embrace it and lead it forward with you, helping it learn that there's no point in resisting what you're going to do anyway.
5. Focus on Learning, not Teaching.  Teaching is great, but if all of your energy goes to teaching then your focus is solely on 'what you know'.  Learning is all about discovering 'what you don't know'.  Learning leads to your growth, teaching leads to someone else's.  
6. Feed your Curiosity.  One of the greatest sources of learning is our curiosity.  The more that you feed yours, rather than stifle it, the more you create a learning mindset.  Have a question about how something works?  Seek out the answer.  It doesn't matter whether it leads you to something that enhances your job prospects or not.  Train your brain to realize that it is all right, once again, to ask questions, to admit to not knowing something and to seek answers.
7.  Choose a goal bigger than you are.  If the goals you set for yourself are all within your current level of capability then you are not required to stretch or to grow.  Choose a goal that is larger than yourself to push you to learn, grow and evolve further.  

Constant evolution should be the goal that we all strive for, to be constantly pushing ourselves to be more, to know more, to do more.  With this mindset it means that our choice is not to 'Evolve OR die trying' but instead to 'Evolve AND die trying'.  We should all end our lives with the same curiosity and dedication to growth that we entered the world with.  

Making Your Luck

My eldest son is 'lucky'.  He has won more contests and free stuff over the years than anyone I know. Most are envious of his luck, typically lamenting how they just aren't that lucky, that fate somehow hasn't treated them the same.  However I know from first hand experience that he makes his luck.

He wins more contests because he enters more contests.  If there is a chance of winning anything, he drops his card into the slot, fills out a ballot, completes an entry.  Most people I know don't do that.  They determine that it isn't something they are interested in, not something they'd use, they don't want everyone to have their contact information... and they don't 'win' as often.  In essence, you can't expect to win 'it', if you're not in it!

This discrepancy though got me to wondering about whether this same attitude relating to contests and giveaways exists within the larger context of 'luck', especially when it relates to life opportunities. According to Dr. Stephann Makri, in looking into why some people seem 'luckier' than others, serendipity is more than just an accident.  Apparently 'lucky' people all recognise opportunities that present themselves and take action on them.  In his book The Luck Factor, author Richard Wiseman concurs that some people aren't necessarily luckier than others, they are just quicker to spot and take advantage of opportunities.

There is some research supporting the view that extroverts tend to be a little luckier than others, but this is simply because they tend to engage more people and more connections tends to correlate to having more opportunities.  It stands to reason then that luck can be cultivated, we can indeed create our own luck.

The following are some key tips to help you increase your Luck Factor...

Prepare yourself for Chance.  All of the studies indicate that those considered to be lucky tend to be much more open to new opportunities.  Exposing yourself to new opportunities and perspectives increases your chances at continuing to have more opportunities.  To practice your openness begin by looking at a situation that you have an established view and opinion on and then come up with 5 plausible alternative views.  Learning to broaden our perspectives helps prevent us from closing ourselves from new opportunities too quickly.

See Serendipity everywhere.  Serendipity is described as chance encounters that lead to happy outcomes. Don't just prepare yourself for chance, begin actively seeking it out.  Serendipitous events surround us, but we have to see them in order to act upon them.  You have probably experienced them a couple of times in your life, a chance encounter with someone that connected you to an unexpected opportunity.  However, as with anything, you see more of what you attune yourself to see.  You may feel that you saw no orange cars on your drive in to work but, primed to watch for them, you see five on your drive home.  Watching for serendipity helps to see and experience more of it in your life.

Take a Break.  Although conscientiousness has its benefits, it is no true friend to serendipity.  Being too rigidly focused on the tasks at hand creates a tunnel vision that limits your ability to give chance a... well... chance.  You have to allow yourself to be a little off track and loose in your thinking sometimes to be open to 'interruptions' to the process.  As we get older it may be more difficult for us to experience 'luck' in our lives because we often become more set in our thinking and our habits of behaving.  We need to relax and loosen up a little to give room for chance to step in.

Say Yes.  When we are first faced with new opportunities our first reaction is usually a combination of Intrigue and Anxiety.  Your path is determined by which one of these feelings you give in to.  Over time, we tend to develop our habitual responses and patterns of behaviour by selecting one response more than the others.  This is why some people's path is paved with more happy coincidences and opportunities, while someone else's path is riddled with regrets and roads not taken.  Managing your fears, developing your courage, increases your 'luck'.

Embrace Failure.  Not every opportunity turns out well or works out for us the way we would have liked. However, lucky people are resilient.  They don't view failure as a reason not to try again in future, they simply learn what they can and need from the failure so they can apply those learnings to the next opportunity.  Most successful business owners have had failed businesses first.  That's what taught them what it took to be successful.

Use the above tips to strengthen the 'luck' that you experience in your life.  We get more of what we work on and for in life.  Some may describe the result as 'luck', others may see it is a the by-product of work and focus.  Gary Player, a professional golfer once said...

"The harder I practice, the luckier I get"

Cultivate and build your luck by building your awareness and openness to it.  There is no reason to simply sit back and wait for opportunity to knock.  Why not open the door and invite it in?


To check out more on this subject, and to get even more ideas on boosting your luck, check out The Luck Factor for yourself...