Ponder This: Are You Growing?

By Alonzo Byrd.

As often stated in business, “if we’re not growing, we’re dying.”  And because I am unaware of any business that wants to die – or fail – growth is likely to be a top priority.

If your first answer to the question was “no, I stopped growing at age 15,” let me restate it:  Are you growing personally and professionally?  Do you approach every day as an opportunity to learn something new?  Or do you make a conscious effort to examine the way you think or feel about daily occurrences?

Because your answers won’t be tabulated now (maybe there’s a poll in the future), let me share with you some food for thought on the subject.  In his latest book, “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working,” author Tony Schwartz presents convincing evidence that we all could do more to grow personally and professionally.

A key to attaining growth, Schwartz says, is through “self-knowledge.”  In order to know more tomorrow than we do today, we have to understand what motivates us.  No, this is not another book on motivation.  It’s about a subject we rarely discuss – energy: how we expend it and what we do, or don’t do, to replenish it.

To operate at our optimal level, Schwartz says human beings need four sources of energy:  Physical (sustainability), emotional (security), mental (self-expression), and spiritual (significance).  These areas are discussed in detail throughout the book in what Schwartz describes as “focus quadrants.”

While my plan in this space is to explore each of these topics over time – as well as others – for now let me leave you with a thought on self-knowledge – an imperative for personal and professional growth.

Even as we continue to evolve and make great strides through science and technology, we’ve done little to understand our inner world.  “We’ve accumulated vast knowledge but woefully little self-knowledge,” says Schwartz.

There’s plenty of research on why we’re reluctant to find out who we really are.  Could facing the truth about what makes us tick be too daunting?  Could an honest assessment of ourselves burden us with the need to take immediate action to change?  Or are we afraid to have a Michael Jackson moment to really see that “Man (or woman) in the Mirror.”

Whatever the case might be, we should summon the courage to act and to be intentional about our future growth.  As Schwartz says, “Each of us has an infinite capacity for self-deception.”  And it’s this deception, I think, that keeps us from growing and reaching new heights.

Alonzo Byrd is Assistant Vice President, Public Affairs at Enterprise Holdings Inc.
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