Imperfections - Self-Reflection

It occurs to me that I might spend WAY too much time in self-reflection. Most of the time I think I'm fairly interesting - at least to myself. But, I guess I can see why I might be alone in that thought. I hope that each of us finds ourselves fairly interesting. In fact I hope that we find ourselves to be darned interesting!

Part of my self-reflection always ends up making me consider why or how I do things and whether or not I should continue down the path I'm walking. For the big stuff in my life, I'm satisfied that God and I have this figured out and I'm totally cool with the fact that He is my guide.

For the little stuff ... there is a lot to be fixed in my life. Let me tell you that is a bit of a crisis for me. Why? Because for heaven's sake, I'm fifty years old! I certainly thought that by now I would have figured out my life and might have rid myself of at least some of my foibles and tendencies to err. But, whenever I spend any time at all in self-reflection, I discover many splotches and imperfections that could be corrected.

Please don't think for a moment that I'm asking you to reassure me as to how terrific I am or try to make me feel better about myself. This is all a very good thing. It's good to re-evaluate ourselves regularly, to ask questions about how we interact with the world around us and to measure our actions within our relationships. Like most of you, I have no problem with the sound belief that I'm always right ... but just in case I might not be correct 100% of the time, I probably need to keep an eye out so that I can readjust.

I share a lot of the changes in my life on this blog. Maybe it's all about accountability. Probably it's all about the fact that I can't keep my mouth shut. Hopefully it's all about real change.

Peter Shallard talks about beating procrastination in his "7 Jedi Mind Tricks for Overcoming Procrastination" and the fourth point is about advertising your deadline: accountability.

I kind of like the idea that I share so much of my self-reflection and hope for change in this blog, so that I will always feel responsible to everyone who might read it, to actually do the things that I write about and to act the way that I encourage others to act. I certainly don't want to be the person with a Jesus bumper sticker on my vehicle flipping off other drivers or the guy who works for Coca-Cola caught drinking a Pepsi in their break room.

As I look back over my day and reflect on my conversations and behaviors, I either come away disgusted or encouraged. If I need to, I will apologize. If I find that I didn't encourage someone that was searching for something in a conversation, I'll make another attempt at communication. If I had an amazing interaction, I will either tell you about it, or ensure that I write about it so that I don't forget. Then, I will wake up tomorrow morning and hope that I'm one step closer to ridding myself of another imperfection.