Measuring Internal Growth

What gets measured gets improved.

Robin Sharma

I was thinking about this quote today as I was trying to come up with some ideas to help a friend improve her business. It’s a simple business concept that means when you track a certain metric, whether it’s sales, profit margins, customers through the door, or inventory levels, you are better able to measure it’s progress and there by use this information as a bench mark to either correct, increase or advance the outcome.

If you don’t know where you are, how can you know where your going?

Personal progress is no different. In a learning environment, we use grades to show progress of knowledge. If we want to lose weight we measure fat loss with a scale. Our bank accounts measure our financial success and our fancy cars, houses and adornments measure our status in society. These are all quantifiable measurements that show our personal life improvements.

But how would we measure our internal growth? What metric do we use to grid out if we are happier than last year? What scale tells us that we have gained more compassion? What meter gives us a true reading on our sagacity?

To improve our internal growth we must use our own personal emotional scale. To do that we need to use our whole body as a measure and collect the data intuitively.

When we experience growth towards being wiser, calmer, altruistic human beings our bodies respond in kind. We experience less stress, less aches and pains and we even look healthier.

Have you ever noticed that when life is going really well for you outwardly, everything seems to go really well on a physical level too. How many people do you know that, while they are at the beginning of a new love affair, experience poor health? Everyone I have ever met, including myself, practically glow with energy. Alternately, the end of a relationship can have the opposite effect.

If you want to improve your internal life you need to take a measure. Where are you at right now on an emotional level. If you don’t trust your ability to gage using your intuition, then use a 1-10 scale. Health practitioners have for years used this system to better understand a patient’s pain level. One being no pain and ten being severe pain.

Once you have a benchmark, check in with yourself from time to time. By focusing your attention on your emotion levels you will be able to form a pattern that you can use to make internal improvements.

We are all here on earth to experience and grow as eternal souls yet so many people never consider tracking their internal progress. By that I mean, emotional and spiritual growth. It is in our vary nature as living beings, to evolve, we would still be sitting around fires in caves if we didn’t.

The world we live in today has advanced at an astoundingly accelerated rate. Our lives are moving faster and faster. Yet our emotional and spiritual growth rate has not kept up with the pace. I suspect that is one of the reasons we are experiencing such turmoil in the world. We are living in a 21st century world with 20th century attitudes and beliefs. It is time to take a measure.

When you know better, you do better. Once you are aware of your internal progress and can gage your emotional and spiritual growth it can’t help but make you happier, wiser and motivated to improve even more.