How To BackTrack & Finish 2020 Strong! [Accelerated Personal Growth]

2020 has brought more than its share of challenges about whom, how, and what life is all about – for me at least. Knowing that you are here joining me for this series and especially for this article, accelerated personal growth, I can’t help but think it has been the same for you.

The reason I started this How To BackTrack & Finish 2020 Strong Series is to find my way through the mire that 2020 has brought and still finish the year having achieved the goals I started out with.

That is not to say 2020 hasn’t brought its own special brand of growth, it certainly has. Social anxiety is not something I had experienced previously. These days I am learning how to overcome it!

Just to recap, this series has covered the following topics so far:

• Habits & Goals
• Daily Morning Routine (with a nice little freebie in the form of a checklist)
• Night Time Habits
• Self Care
• Mindset & Limiting Beliefs

Make sure you don’t miss any of the How To BackTrack & Finish 2020 Strong Series! Click on the image below which will take you to a quick sign up form:

Accelerated Personal Growth – Here We Come!

For me, the best way to accelerate my personal growth is to start off by creating awareness of where I am at.

Questions work very well. It’s like peeling an onion layer by layer. You start out asking one question, unpack the answer, and then unpack that some more.

Allow me to give you an example.

If you are lagging in energy, lacking in focus and direction you could start out by asking:

1. How do I feel right now? Write down your answers

2. Why am I feeling this way? Write your answers down.

3. What can I do to change this?

4. How do I go about doing that?

My Recent Real Life Process

Here is what has worked for me:

Question 1. How do I feel right now?

My Answer: I am lacking in energy, enthusiasm and direction.

Question 2. Why am I feeling this way?

My Answer: This shift has been due to changed habits during lockdown – eating out of boredom, lack of exercise, too much time on social media & watching Netflix, keeping irregular hours, and sleeping too much.

Question 3. What can I do to change this?

My Answer: To change my situation I can detox, exercise, and set mini daily goals

Question 4. How do I go about doing this?

My Answer:

• Detox: Cut out coffee, dairy, sugar, and wheat products (gives me ghastly headaches for the first 2 or 3 days but awesome energy levels after that)
• Increase: Measure daily water intake to ensure hydration, increase fresh fruit & veg and healthy proteins
• Tech Detox: Spend less time on social media and restrict Netflix to one movie over the weekend.
• Exercise daily (even if it’s only for 15 minutes to half an hour),
• Set Mini goals:
  • do something every day that challenges my mind (I chose crossword puzzles, Sudoku and Wordsearch) and intentionally commit to training within the online platform I belong to) This keeps me off social media too
  • adjust my nighttime routine to ensure I don’t get to bed late
  • adjust my morning routine to ensure I set the right tone for the day

(If you’ve ever read The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, you will know that small daily actions are the route to achieving great things).

Results: Increased energy, more enthusiastic about life, weight loss, increased fitness and I am so much happier These results make sense from a physiological perspective. Our energy will increase when we fuel our bodies correctly. Weight loss is a natural outcome of ditching high sugar and fatty foods, not to mention including exercise. Our chemicals change too, we produce dopamine and serotonin and all those fun happy hormones when we eat, hydrate, exercise, and sleep right.

Following the above recommendation will set up for accelerated personal growth – if you stay the distance. Day 3 is extremely challenging for some reason, I encourage you to push through and know that this “new” lifestyle will become easier the more you do it.

Spiritual Connection & Growth

Something I nearly didn’t mention because I don’t want to come across as preachy with you, but is extremely important to me. My spiritual connection and growth also impact me in bigger ways than any of the above.

I am a Christian and though all my church activities have been continued online, there have been times when I’ve felt afraid and let down because of just how much the virus has affected all of us.

To counteract that I have made an effort to spend more time praying, reading my Bible, and Christian literature. Getting back to basics in my relationship with our Heavenly Father.

I have done the Christian version of affirmations by choosing Scriptures and meditating on them.

Here is are two of my favourites:

Jeremiah 29: 11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

John 14: 27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

As a church, we have focused on Psalm 91, which has also really helped me.

Perhaps you believe in something different to me, and that’s okay. I encourage you to find a place of connection and peace from a spiritual perspective too.

Here Is The Plan Going Forward

I have a plan for the last 3 months of 2020 – October, November, and December – and hope you will be joining me on this journey.

One of my all-time favourite books is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey. I am going to start working through it.

As I work through the chapters, I shall write about them. It will be great to do this journey with you. So, get your hands on a copy of the book, and let’s do this together.

The first part of the book is about Paradigms and Principles, it is extremely interesting. Allow me to whet your appetite with one of the stories from this chapter:

I hope you enjoyed that paradigm-shifting experience, it describes perfectly what a paradigm shift is – something that “puts the situation in a totally different light”.

It would be awesome if you join me working through the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey. I have decided to create an email course and you can sign up for it by clicking on the image below:

I hope you have enjoyed this series. Please feel free to pop me a comment below and let me know how you are doing with Finishing 2020 Strong and especially after this session of Accelerated Personal Growth!

Blessings as always