Pretend you wanted to get really good at freehand drawing straight lines. How would you measure your improvement? By checking your work against a ruler.
Every personal development goal has a metric, an external standard to gauge your progress against. If your goal is being able to run two miles, the metric is distance. If your goal is having three months worth of expenses in an emergency fund, the metric is money. If your goal is spending fifteen minutes a day meditating, the metric is time. Those personal development goals, while not always easy to do, are easy to measure.
But what about goals that aren’t so clear cut? Like being more loving? More patient? More wise? These are where things get murkier for me. I’ve pursued personal development for over forty years, and I still struggle with measuring my progress on some of my most important goals.
What’s helped me clear the waters is choosing a person as my metric for those more nebulous goals. Someone to emulate. Someone who best embodies who I want to become. For me, that person is Jesus. Yours might be Mother Theresa or Steve Jobs or Maya Angelou or Oprah Winfrey or Michelle Obama or Mahatma Gandhi or Buddha or Muhammad or Warren Buffett or your grandmother. Who you pick depends on your goals.
The point is to have a clear mental picture of someone who has lived the way you want to live. Get to know as much about them as you can. How they acted. How they thought. How they spent their time. Their habits. What they said. What they believed. Then look in the mirror. How does your life compare to theirs?
That’s a dangerous question to ask. If your chosen “person metric” is a global icon with incredible success in their field, you’ll inevitably feel crushed by comparison. That’s why it’s important to not measure outward success, but inner alignment. You will probably not found a culture-shifting company or inspire millions around the world or spend a lifetime serving the poor. But you can still measure your traits and actions against your model. While recognizing that you are a different person in a different situation, do you work like them, speak like them, think like them, give like them, serve like them, love like them, all within your particular context?
Even with focusing only on inner alignment, traits, and actions, I still often fall far short of my particular model, Jesus. Sometimes it feels defeating, leaving me wondering if I’ll ever “get there.” When those feelings hit, a concept I learned from author and teacher Richard Rohr has been incredibly helpful to me. He makes the important distinction between image and likeness. As a follower of God, he believes that humans bear the image, the stamp, the essence of God in our very DNA, and that is unshakeable. He goes on to say that our likeness, how closely our actions, words, attitudes, and behaviors match those of God, varies widely. But lack of likeness does not diminish the inherent value or worth of every human being. Nothing can change the image.
I believe holding on to that distinction between image and likeness is so encouraging, regardless of your role model or where you place yourself on the spiritual spectrum. No matter how closely your likeness matches your “person metric,” your image, your value, your worth is not up for debate. It is not “to be determined.” It is not dependent on how well you succeed in emulating your model. You are good. You are valued. You are wanted. You are needed. You are loved. You are enough. Just as you are.
So as you chase greater likeness to your model, remember that your image is secure. Let that comforting thought give you the courage to take yet another step toward Becoming Yourself.
I’ve tried those first two options before. Many times. I’ve pretended that I didn’t see people suffering because it made me feel sad and guilty. At other times I’ve hardened my heart to the pain caused by injustice because I felt powerless to do anything of significance to stop it. But over time, I’ve learned that if I’m going to become the kind of person I really want to be, I have to choose the Servant Response. To go even further, I think if there’s any hope for the world to become what I believe it should be, most people have to choose option #3. I’m guessing many of you would agree.
2. What one practical step can I take to make a difference in that area?
As you enter into the battle against injustice, it’s easy to feel defeated at times and wonder if what you’re doing really makes a difference. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that feeling but kept himself and others going with this insight: “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Keep fighting. In the end, justice wins.
A boy was walking on the beach and saw that the tide had stranded thousands of starfish on the sand. The sun was coming up and the starfish were going to dry out and die. He began to pick them up, one by one, and throw them back into the ocean. A man came along and said, “What difference can you make? There are thousands of them and you’re just one boy. Who cares?” The boy bent to pick up one more. As he tossed the starfish back in the water, he said, “This one cares.”
