The 5 Most Important Meta-Skills for Personal Growth
Over years of goal-setting and personal growth efforts, we’ve learned that progress is not just about the particular goals you achieve or the exact changes that you make.
Real progress happens when you learn the meta-skills of personal growth -- those higher level skills that enable you to succeed in ANY area of life. If you work on these skills we promise you’ll find the progress you’re looking for.
The 5 most important meta-skills for personal growth:
Intuition-led decision making
Managing your emotions
Committed goal setting
Developing trust in yourself
Evaluating your results and making adjustments
Today we’ll teach you how these 5 simple skills can enable you to make progress in ANY area and reach ANY goal you want to set!
Last week we talked about the temptation to overhaul your life when you feel like things aren’t working and how you can find the growth you need by focusing your energy on just one area at a time.
The biggest reason focusing on one area improves your entire life is because working at any goal is teaching you META-SKILLS -- these higher level skills that enable other skills to develop too. And that enables you to apply them to anything to achieve any goal.
These are broad, foundational meta-skills. They are required to succeed at ANY goal. So no matter what area you choose, you can practice these skills that transfer over to any future area of life!
That’s why we no longer get nervous about setting ambitious goals -- because we know how to commit, plan, make strong decisions, follow through, and manage my emotions along the way.
You might have something in mind if you’ve already read last week’s post, or you can use this process to help you choose an area of focus where you want to progress.
Okay, let’s get started!
1. Intuition-Led Decision Making
If you’ve struggled with following through on your goals in the past or haven’t made the kind of progress you’re proud of, it could be because you’re missing this step of intuition-led decision making.
So many times when we start new projects or set new goals we let our minds be in charge of the decision making.
This can happen when you start a new goal because it was something you thought you “should” do. Or when you’ve taken on a project because it seemed like a good opportunity even though you already had a full plate.
From now on, you want to make sure you’re making decisions that are led by your intuition. This way you can have confidence and trust in yourself and your decision, which will help you to move forward with your goals even when things get hard.
How to practice intuition-led decision making
Choose ONE area that you want to focus on growing.
You can either choose the area that is causing you the most negative feelings right now OR you can choose an area you are most excited by.
If you’re not sure where to put your focus then be sure to check out this article: Need A Life Overhaul? Start Anywhere.
Marriage
Spirituality
Business
Parenting
Finances
Eating habits
Fitness & exercise
Creativity
Adventures
Your Home
A skill or hobby
Find the specific question you want to ask your intuition.
Not sure how to ask your intuition? Then you’ll love this article: Mind vs. Intuition: 4 Steps to Access Your Intuition Anytime.
Make sure you can define your question as clearly as possible and then ask it.
Have something that you’ve thought through intentionally first.
Ex. Is now a good time to focus my time & energy on my new writing project that I’m excited about?
Make sure your focus aligns with your overall purpose statement.
This way you don’t end up down the rabbit hole on starting a business that doesn’t support your ultimate goals.
Make a decision from your intuition and MOVE FORWARD!
Once you’ve uncovered answers from your intuition, you are ready to make a decision in confidence and trust!
*Pro Tip: Be sure to watch for when your mind tries to sneak back in to “solve problems.” It sounds like, “But what about…” or “It’s just that…” or “It might not work because….”
There’s nothing wrong here, it’s just a signal that you need to tune back into your intuition. The more you dial back into that frequency, the more it will become standard and default for you.
If this is the meta skill you’d like to work on you can dive more into intuition-led decision making HERE.
2. Managing Your Emotions
If you want help making more progress or reaching your current goal then this is the meta skill to focus on! Working on managing our emotions has been a game changer for us when it comes to making progress where it really matters and achieving those goals we never thought we could.
How to practice managing your emotions while working on a goal
Make some guesses about what emotions will come up for you as you work on your goal.
Ex. guilt, regret, uncertainty, fear, worry, not feeling “good enough,” etc.
Expecting ups and downs is often enough to not be derailed by them later.
Check out Ep. 138 How To Feel Your Feelings to help you process those negative emotions and then MOVE FORWARD!
Identify your typical form of resistance when it comes to working on a goal
Ex. avoidance, procrastination, fear of judgment, not knowing enough, doing too much research, no time, no money, being busy, getting distracted, family not giving you time, etc.
Remember: THERE WILL ALWAYS BE RESISTANCE!!!
See it as proof that this goal matters (resistance as a force in the universe conspiring to stop you from doing something that matters)
Know how to get re-inspired and re-energized when you lose those positive feelings
Check out Ep. 121 How To Generate Excitement
When you know how to get re-inspired and re-energized you’ll be able to keep moving forward and making the progress you’re proud of.
Ex. Learning always re-inspires us. Finding a book or podcast on the subject, talking to someone else who’s into the same thing, following a great IG account that teaches it, etc.
3. Committed Goal Setting
The key word here is COMMITTED. When you read the phrase “committed goal setting,” what feelings arise? Does that sound like you? Is that something you wish you were better at, but always struggle with? If you can strengthen this meta-skill of committed goal setting then you’ll be able to finally follow through, stick with it, and see it to the end!
How to practice committed goal setting
Set the specific goal you’re working towards.
Could be a big goal or a few mini goals
Create a system that will accomplish it.
Think little steps
Decide specifically what you’ll change, where you’ll progress.
Write down a specific result -- define what success looks like to you
Write down specific feelings you’re looking for (ex. joy, peace, excitement, confidence)
Period of time (month, quarter, year)
Example: This quarter I’m mentally focusing on spirituality, Q2 will be for moving some business projects forward more aggressively
The specific outcome I’m working toward: spiritual practice every single morning
The feelings I want: worthy, peaceful, love
Now make your goal LESS ambitious.
It’s better to follow through on one small thing than to fail at a big thing.
Remember: It’s not about perfecting this area of your life -- it’s developing the meta-skill of setting good goals and following through.
4. Developing Trust In Yourself
If we had to pick the most important meta-skill out of these 5, developing trust in yourself would be the most important in our book!
If you can strengthen this meta-skill you can do ANYTHING! Seriously, this is the one that has changed our lives completely. Trusting yourself and doing what you say you’ll do leads to more growth and progress than anything else we’ve tried.
This skill of trusting yourself HAS TO start small. The hardest part is showing up.
How to develop trust in yourself
Follow through on your goals
The best way to develop trust is to set and accomplish your goals. This gives you pure evidence that you can trust yourself. That you do what you say you’ll do.
This skill of trusting yourself HAS TO start small. Start with tiny things you KNOW you can do.
The worst thing you can do is set unrealistic goals because you inevitably fail or burn out -- which only provides evidence for the belief that you can’t do this.
So start tiny. Make a daily habit too easy to not do. Make the action fun in some way. Tell a loved one so you have accountability.
IT IS NOT ABOUT THE GOAL -- the priority is developing the skill of being reliable and doing what you said you’d do.
Take the actual actions
We use to spend so much time researching our goals, but we wouldn’t take actual actions steps to move us forward.
Try embracing discomfort. (The more you practice, the better you’ll become.)
Try stuff, experiment, have fun!
Let it be imperfect
Ask yourself the question, “What does showing up look like for me?”
Involve God in deciding what specific actions to take and how to solve problems that come up.
If you want to work more on this meta-skill be sure to check out one of our all-time favorite podcast episodes and most listened to: Ep. 64 How To Trust Yourself
5. Evaluating Your Results And Making Adjustments
When we complete a goal, it’s tempting to keep barreling ahead toward the next achievement without stopping to evaluate how the previous goal went.
We’re so excited about the next goal that we don’t take a moment to evaluate the current goal. This mistake can prevent us from internalizing all we learned.
How to evaluate and tweak your results
Track your progress as you work toward your goal is a good way to begin. Track with a list, chart, spreadsheet, app, or anything else that works for you. Often writing down that we actually DID the action is a reward on its own!
It also makes later evaluation easier when you see what you accomplished in black and white.
After the time period you’ve set for your goal has passed, it’s time to evaluate your results. We like to ask these questions:
What worked?
What didn’t work?
What’s next?
Once you’ve taken a good look at your progress, you’re ready to make any adjustments you want and keep going! You can choose to continue on with the same goal or start a brand new one.
For more on this meta-skill, check out this article/episode: 3 Questions For A Monthly Review.
Not everyone will need this kind of detailed process to make progress on their chosen area/goal. But if you’re feeling stuck on knowing you WANT to make progress in something but you’re not sure HOW to actually do that, hopefully this will help.
Again the 5 skills are:
Intuition-led decision making
Managing your emotions
Committed goal setting
Developing trust in yourself
Evaluating your results and making adjustments
If you’d like some homework, use your current goal and choose one of these meta-skills to apply to it. You got this!
-Kristin + Laura
Listen to our conversation!
Click below or on apple podcasts & choose episode 152 to listen to the full podcast episode.
You can also search The Progress Project on any podcast app including Spotify!
Podcast Ep. 152 The 5 Most Important Meta-Skills for Personal Growth
If you’re itching to super-charge your personal growth, this is the episode for you! Over years of goal-setting and personal growth efforts, we’ve learned that progress is not just about the particular goals you achieve or the exact changes that you make.
Real progress happens when you learn the meta-skills of personal growth -- those higher level skills that enable you to succeed in ANY area of life. Today we’re talking about the 5 most important meta-skills for personal growth:
Intuition-led decision making
Managing your emotions
Committed goal setting
Developing trust in yourself
Evaluating your results and making adjustments
Listen in to learn how these 5 simple skills can enable you to make progress in ANY area and reach ANY goal you want to set!
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