That's right. In your quest to achieve your goals, you must give yourself challenges along the way. Not necessarily every day, but at least once every week. Measure your progress. Set regular points at which you can view how well you are progressing along your path to achieve your goals. Challenge yourself to apply the new skills you are developing to fuel your progress. Apply the techniques you are adopting to encourage your forward movement.
Why challenge yourself?
Because most of us have been conditioned to compare ourselves to others as a measure of how we are doing in Life. Of course we fall short or over-value our progress or skills during such comparisons. Why? Because we do not know what the other person's true motivation is for their life. We do not know their true level of preparation. Maybe what we think are important to those persons have no importance in their reality. We, therefore, base our lives on unfounded assumptions.
DEALING WITH REALITY
When you challenge yourself, you are in no doubt as to the results you are seeking. The skills you display are real. You are either effective or need improvement. Those are the measurements you need to accomplish your breakthrough at this moment in your quest to achieve your goals. There are no false messages here. You are either able to move forward or you need more information and practice to achieve your goals.
THE BENEFITS
There are immediate and measurable benefits to be derived. Giving yourself regular challenges allows you to become familiar and comfortable with your new skill-set. It allows you to see and feel how application of your new skills affect you. You get to develop firm opinions about yourself and your state of readiness. You have real data to contemplate upon in your times of reflection. This data is not confused with irrational and unfounded emotions or false feedback from others. You are dealing with reality here.
THE GREATEST BENEFIT
Best of all, you get to know where you are along your road to self-achievement! Most of us have been conditioned to rely on others for approval to recognize ourselves. Because of this false conditioning we hesitate to follow our desired paths. We hang upon every fleeting, fickle opinion of people we don't really know for motivation to excel in our lives. Opinions are easily and often changed. Truth be told, almost everyone you ask for an opinion has no firm basis for the one given. Opinions are like belly-buttons, everybody has one, they don't know why, they just do. So go ahead, challenge yourself today ; get the best opinion for achieving your goals!
