What gets measured gets done!

Whenever I hear this expression, I have that sinking feeling- I'd love it not to be true!   It reminds me of charts in toilets and meaningless questionnaires but, in personal development terms, measures are actually very useful.

When we measure something, we face its reality.  We are masters at convincing ourselves that all’s okay and we can continue with the status quo but when we face a situation’s facts and figures it’s harder to deny.  Our intuition might tell us ‘you’ve been spending a bit too much’, your clothes are a bit tight or you haven’t called your friend for a while but it’s when we seek out the evidence that we get a fuller picture.  Maybe our spending is on track but we’re fearful and need to keep an eye on our budget, maybe we’ve strayed from our diet or perhaps even though we called our friend recently, our intuition is telling us to call her again.

When we set a goal or have the idea that we'd like to improve something in our lives, our first step is to find out what our current situation is and how we'll know when we get to where we want to be.  We have to find a way of measuring the situation even if it is rating the intensity of a feeling or getting feedback from a friend.  The closer we can get to measuring the important and critical result, the bettter.

When we measure something regularly, it gets our attention.  Awareness is the first step towards change and the chances are, just by giving our attention to a measure, it’ll improve.  The exception to this is when we build up a story to judge the measurement.  So, on its own, our weight is a neutral number but, with our interpretation, it can become ‘so overweight’, ‘my best weight yet’ or ‘something totally out of my control’.  When measurements prompt these stories and the feelings they bring up, many blame the measurements, yet it’s the stories rather than the measurements that are the problem.  Feel the feelings, change the story and then you can befriend the measurement and work with it.

With the range of aps now, there are hosts of ways to measure the things that are important to us and, when the results start to improve, we’ve added motivation for sticking with our good habits and plans.