Honoring Your Process, Perspective, and Preferences
January 21, 2025
As we near the end of the first month of 2025, now is the time to revisit the vision you set for yourself—code for resolutions and goals, two words that often feel overused and easily forgotten by now. Whether you’ve stayed consistent or let them slip, it’s important to hold yourself accountable and assess your efforts.
Your roadmap to success may have initially seemed straightforward, but as I tell my clients, your path is unique to you and not linear. Your compass is personal, guiding you through contextually relevant factors as you make decisions, overcome obstacles, and experience both tangible and intangible outcomes.
Challenges come in many forms: personal, professional, and societal. For example, a busy working mom might struggle to prioritize her well-being amidst all the demands of work and family. At the same time, a manager at a growing company might face difficulty maintaining productivity while managing a team. For many of us, there are also broader societal struggles like the economic pressures of increased cost of living, which can foster a sense of uncertainty about the future.
When obstacles inevitably arise, you may respond by diving in headfirst to fix what’s gone awry or feel defeated and consider quitting altogether. I’m not saying either reaction is right or wrong; rather, I’m inviting you to explore a different roadmap—one with various paths from which you can choose. These paths don't rely on universal reactions to hardships. Instead, they offer personalized options and considerations tailored to your experience, focusing on how you think and feel about the situation. Imagine what it would be like if your mindset and motivation shifted, allowing you to concentrate less on the outcome and more on the process—working through obstacles rather than simply avoiding or going around them.
Your roadmap is personal and explains your process (the path you’re taking), perspective (your individual view), and preferences (making choices that align with your intentions and specific situation). It helps shift away from blaming someone for causing the problem and instead encourages identifying the factors contributing to it—such as what’s actually happening, who’s involved, and how you want to respond—and broadens your perspective by seeing the same situation through a personalized lens that guides you down the path of your choosing.
The benefits of creating a personalized roadmap are plentiful. It not only sets the stage for embracing the journey and experiencing the satisfaction of tackling roadblocks head-on. It also offers lessons in resilience and perseverance that can help you confront challenges you might want to avoid but choose to address instead.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” Take this to heart as you work toward achieving your goals. Set aside time each month to assess your progress, review your next steps, and reflect on how every effort is an opportunity to honor your process, perspective, and preferences.