Your Personal Measuring Stick

Imagine that, at the end of your life, you get to meet the future best version of yourself. The very best person that you have it in you to become, the person who maximizes life’s opportunities and has a positive impact on those around them. 

Are you working now to meet your potential to become as close as you can to the best possible you?

OK, no eye rolling here. Let’s actually think about this for a minute.

What would your future best version of yourself say about what you are doing now? About who you are right now?

Would they say that you are living at your maximum potential on a daily basis?

These are questions that I think about quite often. And to help myself process them, I created a short exercise that has really helped me think through who I want to become.

Basically, I’ve developed my own measuring stick that I imagine my future best self would use to evaluate my current life.

Let’s call it Jon's Personal Measuring Stick to Evaluate Progress on Becoming His Future Best Self. And, although it is constantly evolving, I currently use these 5 measures to evaluate my personal progress:

1)      Am I Maximizing Quality Time with My Family? 

This includes time spent day-to-day, being present in the moment, sharing experiences together, building deep connections, creating life-long traditions, helping to create life opportunities, and instilling our family values for legacy. Am I increasing the time and quality of experiences that I devote to these?

2)      Am I Maximizing My Dollar-Per-Hour? When I'm working, I am focused on maximizing my ability to earn an income that allows me, my family, and those I care about, more financial freedom. We live in a financial world; I don't want financial restrictions to limit what I can do with my life. So, when it comes to work, I pick and choose where I can capitalize on my strengths to earn the highest dollar-per- hour.

3)      Am I Maximizing My Personal Strengths to Help Others? As part of working toward a high dollar-per-hour, I want to have the freedom to use my personal strengths to help those around me. We each have our own individual and unique attributes. My goal is to use mine to the fullest extent possible in order to have a positive impact on those in my world. And, that includes using my strengths to help others maximize using theirs.

4)      Am I Sleeping Well at Night? I want to live within my values and be confident in my inner self that I don't lose sleep over the judgement of others, nor take actions that are incongruent with my personal value system.

5)     Am I Checking My Ego at the Door? I want to be the same person in every room I walk into. I don't have to adjust what I do or say to anyone just to satisfy their preconceptions and expectations. I am committed to living my life as my true, authentic self and remaining genuine in my connections and relationships with others.

How about you? 

Have you thought about taking measure of your life?  

I challenge you to come up with your own measuring stick, based on at least three metrics personal to you. And, of course, to write it down.

Inevitably, those metrics it will grow and change over time, but let’s start the new year by measuring up.

Let's connect.