By Shazad
What did your parents measure when you were a child? Your Grades in school? How pretty/handsome you were? How well you played sports? Like many children, we all try to live up to our parents expectations on what they thought was important in life. When we are adults, we also try to live up to some things our parents taught us and we add the yardsticks our friends and society. As a result, we are always trying to measure up to OTHER people’s metrics…and they are often materialistic, incomplete or superficial in nature.
To get more Awesome outcomes in life, you have to watch for and measure those things that really make people Awesome in your eyes and according to your true values. Things that don’t depend on fame or money or power and are open to everyone. Character, Integrity, Resilience, Honesty and Kindness are some of the most Awesome attributes that many would people agree are worth having. Working hard, giving full effort to good causes and constantly learning - especially from mistakes, are also very important. A person who is persistent and doesn’t give up easily or complain often is also considered superior to one who doesn’t have these abilities even if the latter person has wealthy background and a famous family name.
I am very blessed to have parents who helped me on the road to Awesome by NOT telling me to focus on how much money I’m earning, the assets I’m building, the grade I earned in school or how well I played a sport. Instead, my parents encouraged me to become MY BEST SELF through the attention to and the measurement of very important life skills such as Hard Work, Generosity, Humility, Courage, and Patience. These are some of the qualities of a great human being that I learned from them and these are ones that anyone can possess if you invest the time to measure these things in your life.
If you didn’t have Awesome parents like me, how do you develop these important qualities in yourself? You can start by developing friendships with those people who have the qualities you want more of so you can learn from them. You can find one or more mentors to help you develop certain measurable life skills to improve yourself. You can also practice being more of the kind of person you want to become, with the people around you. You have to be around people who are a model for you to follow and you must immerse yourself in the doing of those things that will change your personality for the better. Just knowing these good things and watching others perform at their best is not enough to change your condition. You must actively be involved in changing yourself and measuring your results along the way.
We all know that having lots of assets or money in the bank or many properties DO NOT “automagically” make a good human being, despite what society or some of our friends say. In fact, many sad examples of people exist who have worldly things but not much of the truly valuable assets that are important to life. Such people are often unhappy, have bad relationships and end up losing their worldly assets because of many bad decisions as a result of weaknesses in their character. Don’t be like these supposedly ‘successful’ people!
Becoming measurably Awesome is not a destination… we all need to keep working on it for the rest of our lives. I’m constantly trying to level up my skill level on each of those valuable attributes that really matter to me and you can do the same. Anyone can be part of their own life transformation towards more Awesomeness. Just stop and reflect on what you want to measure and become more of in life and then figure out what you are going to do to become the most Awesome at all of those things.