PurpAnd

She found a spot she liked.

The other day I introduced you to the start of a series of posts discussing my core values. The series continues with my #4 - Personal Growth.

You’ve seen my posts relating to this topic if you’ve been a regular reader. I am at a point in my life where I am taking inventory of myself and making changes where I see fit. I can’t say whether I will always be in this mood, but for now it’s a pretty high priority.

When I wrote about Financial Security, I explained how it gives me comfort. This is similar in the sense that each little thing that I learn or improve about myself gives me more self confidence and contentedness with who I am. I’ve enjoyed ‘meeting’ myself again as I have uncovered things that I had forgotten. I picked up the guitar a week ago for the first time in a year and a half. I can’t say that I play as well as I used to, (ya, way rusty) but I had a blast and a couple nights over the past week I’ve played for over an hour straight. My fingertips can prove it. I’m also reading a lot more than I had been. Work had been getting in my way and I would just come home and watch TV to decompress, but I’ve found reading decompresses me much better. These things I’ve found again through getting in touch with what brings me joy and if I hadn’t opened up to figure that out, I’d still be stuck.

Personal Growth is sometimes a tricky thing to talk with people about. Some see it as self-help stuff in disguise. Some see it as something that is needed by only those who can’t deal with stuff on their own. I disagree. Personal growth, to me, is about balance, being open to the world and its people and ideas, and most importantly, recognizing weaknesses and embracing them instead of hiding behind them.

I believe that there is always room to improve (show me someone who is perfect, I challenege you) and it’s those who take the opportunities to improve who become extraordinary individuals. I want to be one of these people. I’d be ok without being extraordinary per se, but I would like to be an ordinary person who is always looking to better himself. With Personal Growth as one of my core values, I can use it as a cross-check in decision making. i.e. Will this lead to something that will make me a better person? Or maybe more importantly, will this lead to something that will prevent me from becoming a better person?

Keeping this in mind all the time is tough, I don’t expect to (cuz sometimes the most fun is had when you’re doing something that makes you a pretty uninspiring individual), but for some of the more important decisions I think it can certainly play a part. I like writing for this blog, in fact, my sharing stuff on here has, at times, opened my eyes to things that I may not have seen otherwise. I choose to continue writing because I feel like it makes me a better person.

I think people reach a point in their lives, and its different for everyone, when they embrace this feeling that I am talking about. The feeling where you want to get things right, figure out what life is about, what is most important, and be surrounded by positives. For me that is happening now and I’ve been told that I may be hitting it rather early in life, but I have friends who I think reached it in high school and I know others who may be on the cusp of it now. The cool thing is that personal growth is and means different things to different people and there is no single path that works for everyone.

Last week I read an article about values and it got me thinking. In the post, the authors argue that a man without values is a man without direction… a “drifter.” The article also states that when you live to your values, making decisions becomes easier. As I read through the article, I thought to myself, “what are my values? I’ve never stopped to consider them.” Well, I remedied that yesterday.

Armed with quiet space and a notepad, I wrote down what I think are the most important things to me… what I value most. I wrote until I ran out of ideas. I came up with 16 things and then had to narrow it down to five (the article recommends five, which become the ‘core values’).

The following will serve as the first in a series of five posts which will outline my five core values. First up, #5 - Financial Security.

Before you get all turned off because I’m about to talk about money, let me clarify… what I mean by financial security isn’t necessarily having gobs of money so I can fly around the world and spend weeks on a yacht (although I wouldn’t turn that down). What I mean is living comfortably knowing that if something dramatic were to happen tomorrow I could weather it with little trouble. To me, financial security = less stress = comfort and relaxation.

When I graduated college and got my first real job I was carrying a good amount of debt. It wasn’t massive (I didn’t live on credit cards, but it was close), but I still had debt to service each month. Earning a good, regular paycheck and making sacrifices allowed to me to steadily pay down the debt and now I am debt free. I remember the day I made the last payment and it was a tremendous feeling. I’ve felt the weight of debt lift off of my shoulders and I’m not going to go back beneath it (at least not consumer debt). Being debt free is financial freedom and it is one aspect of financial security.

With my money freed up to do with it as I please I am now sending it to work. Over time, and with continued sacrifice, the money will grow to eventually be a nice cushion for emergencies. Further saving will allow me the freedom to travel without using my monthly paycheck, and if I am really disciplined, I can save enough to where the interest income surpasses my working income. At that point, I will feel financially secure. I figure that with that kind of money I can handle nearly every one of life’s major expenses - health-related, family-related, home-related, school-related, etc. I don’t figure it to be a ton of money (certainly not yacht-owning, world-traveling, fly by the seat of my pants money), but it gives me a lofty goal and one that I value tremendously.

My daily life presents me with obstables to achieving that goal. If I remember what it is that I value, I’ll be certain to make the right choices. And making the right choices is why I want to explore my values in the first place.

(somewhat inspired by The Little Cat)

I’ve seen six Giants home games and I have tickets to see 3 more. The team started the season horribly, quickly sliding to a 3-8 record, but they’ve turned it around and are very much in the hunt for a wild card berth. I’ll admit I haven’t been a huge fan of baseball over the past few years. I am not exactly sure why that is, perhaps ‘ve been too busy or maybe it’s fair weather related, but I’m into it now. What was once my favorite sport to watch and play as a kid, has resumed its post near the top of my list (golf is still king).

I really like AT&T Park. It’s gorgeous, offers incredible views, and is super easy to get to. I love walking along the concourse and watching the people scoot around grabbing their draft beers and garlic fries. I like watching the sail boats in the Bay perform moves that seem to defy physics. And I especially love sitting in my seat, anxiously anticipating the next big Giants hit, blowing the game wide open.

I’ve seen more games started by Tim Lincecum this season than I have any other pitcher. Tim is a genious on the mound. And in an era where pitchers are encouraged to minimize their body movement within their windup, Tim’s windup and delivery are considered slightly unorthodox but entertaining. The dude is 26 (I think) and hails from Seattle so he is used to (and loves) pitching in the cold. His ERA is hovering in the low 2s, which is nearly unheard of these days. He is the defending Cy Young Award winner and it could be very close for him to win a second one this year (that is unless Matt Cain, another stellar Giants starter, beats him to it).

Another interesting aspect about the Giants is the changing starting lineup. The starting 8, excluding the pitcher, are rarely the same from night to night, which either shows Bruce Bochy (the manager) isn’t quite sure who he likes best, or he knows who will perform best in certain situations. For example, Travis Ishikawa didn’t play on Friday night against the Reds, but started last night against the Dodgers and hit a home run.

If the Giants don’t make the playoffs this year I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll certainly look forward to next year. I think they are building a solid team around some good and improving young players and it will be fun to watch them mature. I just want to say thanks to the Giants and the rest of the baseball world for getting me back into the game.

- One thing I would like to complain about though… where have the stirrups gone? What is this with the baseball pant legs dropped all the way to the shoes? I don’t like it and I want it to change. On any given team there are less than a handful of players who still wear the stirrups like the old baseballers used to. I think it looks slick and it’s what makes baseball players look like players and not the neighborhood riff-raff. Grr. (Man, I’m getting old.)

I’m still going to counseling… I enjoy it, I’m learning a lot, but most of all, it’s helping. Before I started counseling I thought I was the epidome of the well-adjusted human being. I was generous and selfless, I had a healthy perception of myself, and the relationships with my friends and family were stable. Sounds decent enough, right? All those things are true and while I felt I was balanced… I was not. It turns out well-adjusted doesn’t really mean what I thought it did. Allow me to expand…

Generous and selfless - great traits to have, in my opinion, unless they take over your personality. When this happens, as I experienced, you tend to give in to things, you tend to disconnect from what you really want because you are preoccupied with giving. This leads to being taken advantage of (either intentionally or unintentionally) if people recognize your pattern of behavior. Again, as far as “faults” go, this one isn’t as bad as some (i.e. being violent or abusive) because the only person you’re hurting directly is yourself. I’m recovering from the over-giving mode now. I’m learning to say no to things and I am rediscovering what I want and I am actually making strides to build a world around me that represents things that I enjoy.

Healthy perception of myself - Hmmm, tough one. I could easily write about this for pages and pages and I think it can be tough to explain, but I’ll give you the short version. The healthy perception I had of myself wasn’t actually healthy at all. It was contentedness and pride, and comfort for that matter, in knowing that I was presenting the best version of me based on what I thought other people wanted. This is so not cool. I believe it created unncessary stress because I worked so hard at being someone I am not (not a completely different person, but one that I felt needed to be perfect for everyone else). I am still struggling with this one because I am horribly hard on myself. I am starting to turn the corner though when it comes to things like being ok with failing and not being liked by everyone. This relates to the last thing…

Stable relationships with family and friends - Sure they might have been stable, but were they good, solid relationships? Not as strong as they are now, I can tell you that. See, what happens when you try to be someone that you’re not is you begin to lose what makes up the real you. Looking back I would guess that I had a handful of different versions of me depending on who I was with at any given moment. I would expect this to some degree (i.e. acting different around your boss versus how you act around your significant other), but I think my changes were more dramatic than the differences between those typical relationships. This also is something I am working on consciously. It has actually been kinda fun and completely comforting to know I don’t have to mold myself to how I think others want me to be. What has helped is thinking about how I am around my sister. She and I have grown pretty close since college and I don’t feel an ounce of fakery around her. If I can carry that feeling with me all the time, I think it will work out great for me.

So well-adjusted for me actually means I was fine tuned to how I thought I should be. As I work on these issues, I am seeking true balance in which there is less of a need for adjusting. I know that these are changes that don’t happen overnight, far from that for sure, but I am pleased with how things have progressed.

I am curious if any of you have similar experiences? You don’t have to share on here, you can pop me an email if you want, but I would hope that I am not the only one who has found value in something as simple as sitting and talking with someone for an hour a week.