I find that learning about myself is an endeavor which I must approach with perseverance...Things don't always (read: usually never) sink in the first time around. It's also overwhelming to receive a vast amount of information all at once. Opening the book that Dr. Bob so kindly put together for me was like walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet -- I'm excited for the possibilities, nervous for how I'm going to feel afterwards, and generally clueless about where to dig in. [Aside: I'm skipping over the relationship between knowledge and being able to apply it; I believe that to be entirely too long of a conversation in which the cliche "easier said than done" will come up several times.]
I'm looking through the results of the seventeen different assessments I took, hoping that I'll be able to find polish a diamond of personal evolution out of all that igneous rock that is my personality data. The thing is, that takes time. Only after all the hunting, pick-axing, sifting, polishing, and cutting is it ready to unveil -- set in an engagement ring or as part of a gemstone mosaic of my face.
Self-development is difficult; it is time-consuming; it takes effort, and it takes focus. I thing that the BLF program has served as a good jumping-off point. Through experience and assessment it has provided me with a good deal of information about myself, and it is a model that I can look back on for an example for taking that information and transforming it into something actionable. The challenge that I find myself dealing with most often is focus. It is easy for my personal motivations to get pushed to the back of my memory banks, now with the conditionally-appropriate but ultimately-inaccurate label of "inconsequential", as its former location is occupied by the counter-intuitive-yet-crucial click-throughs needed for navigating ChemCAD.
As I move forward, I must continue to personally develop my ability to refocus on my personal development. Also, I think it would be valuable to have regular checkups with the assessments. People like progress. And it can serve as kind of a long-reminder to revisit the topic of growth, while I am responsible for looking at it day-to-day. If, on a daily basis, I look at all the things in my character that are...less than ideal, the thought of working on myself will have a more prevalent (and hopefully permanent) seat in my brain.
On the other hand, hunting for diamonds sounds like a lot of work...Why not just buy a diamond, and then go hunting?
