Operation Melt: Never Start Fresh

Thank you for reading this week’s Operation Melt update.

Operation Melt started as a blog to share my personal transformation and weight loss story. After achieving success with that goal, Operation Melt has evolved into a platform to help inspire, motivate and equip people to achieve their own personal and professional goals so they can live their best lives.

I am trying to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.

Amuse Bouche

My amuse bouche for you today is a light “dad joke” to entertain your mind before we get down to business.

Two over-achievers walked into a bar… clearly it wasn’t set high enough.

Like any other amuse bouche, you may have hated it, but it was worth every penny that you paid for it, right?

Goal Success by Choice

We can choose to be successful with our goals if we make the right daily choices, build the right habits and behaviors and adopt the right mindsets. Goal Success by Choice shares lessons about the choices we can make that can either move us closer to our goals or hold us back. I hope this post helps you get a little closer to crushing your goals.

Most Important Homework

What subjects, concepts and ideas are you studying today?

In a couple of recent posts, I have talked about the importance of doing your homework. In Never Start Fresh, I talked about how we start pursuing our goals by leveraging our transferrable skills but then we fill in the gaps by leveraging the plethora of freely available resources to build our knowledge. Then, in my Do Your Homework PM Believer post, I talked about the need for project managers to build subject matter expertise to be most effective.

The best thing any of us can do to help us make our own dreams come true is to expand our knowledge. Thankfully, most of us, particularly those who are reading a self-improvement blog, spend time each day studying topics that are of interest to us. Even if our approach to studying is more passive in nature (like listening to podcasts), we are still studying.

Out of all of the topics we can spend time studying, one topic stands out as the most valuable use of our study time. That topic: you!

Many of us go through life never really knowing who we are and what motivates us. Even worse, we often don’t even know what we want from our lives. We don’t dream, we don’t explore and that means we don’t set goals. This leads to our goals dying of loneliness because we never give them the attention that we deserve. By investing time in getting to know the real you, your goals have a fighting chance.

Self-Study Exercises

There is no one right way to study yourself or to learn more about who you really are. This is usually done through a series of self-study exercises that you do throughout your journey. It is definitely not a one-and-done experience and is an ongoing study process.

As an example, I will share a brief story about a recent self-study exercise of my own.

Over the past few weeks, I have been working through a self-discovery exercise. I started by exploring my personal brand, how do people view me. I did this by reaching out to a group of people who know me well and interact with me often to ask them to describe me in just two words.

After I identified the themes in my personal brand, I peeled the onion a bit to identify what behaviors I am engaging in that are creating that brand. Ultimately digging very deep into what are my core values that driving those crucial brand-defining behaviors. This included reflecting on what I consider failure and success for my own life.

I have spent hours in self-reflection working on this exercise. The entire goal of this time was to get more deeply in touch with who I am and why I do what I do. It has been an amazing experience. It has essentially been a mirror allowing me to evaluate if I am satisfied with who is looking back at me.

While my example was a very DIY exercise and very time-consuming, you don’t have to do it this way. You don’t have to create your own self-study exercises or approach. You don’t have to be this raw and introspective when starting your quest. You don’t even have to spend hours to get to know yourself better. There are countless free or inexpensive resources available to help you get to know you in just a few minutes.

Here are some of the tools that I use and would recommend.

Most of these tools work in a very similar manner. You complete an online assessment ranging from a few to many questions about your behaviors, preferences, beliefs and such. Then the assessment presents your results based on whatever framework or metaphor the makers have created. The more people who participate in the assessments, the more accurate they can become.

Proceed with Caution

As you get started, just remember that self-study resources are not an exact science. Most of these assessments are based on some scientific principles, but they aren’t scientific. If you complete enough exercises, you will start to see consistent themes and you will see places where they disagree. You can’t drive yourself crazy looking for precision.

Another challenge with these self-assessment tools is the horoscope effect. Horoscopes are usually written quite broadly and can be interpreted in many ways. So people work hard to convince themselves that the message is meaningful to them. You wouldn’t live your life based on your horoscope, so don’t live your life based solely on somebody’s online quiz.

Your goal for every one of these exercises should be data collection. Use them to provide you with the input and data to help you with your own exploration of yourself. These tools are valuable, but you still have to do the work for yourself.

Self-assessment tools and personality tests provide you with ideas, not identity. You are not defined by the results of an online assessment.

Getting to know yourself better is the best investment you can make in your goals. One step you can take right now to help with your most important homework is to try an online assessment such as the Enneagram or 16 Personalities to get started. Just remember that you are more than the results of a quiz.

Good luck and let’s crush some goals together!

Suggested Resources

Here are some other resources related to today’s post that you might want to read:

Did You Like What You Read?

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