Measuring Our Strides

Measuring Our Strides 

Everyone of us do set goals, that's for sure.  Where most of us need to admit our shortfall is that innate fear for us to measure our strides, how far have we gone, how much progress have we achieved and how far are we in our journey to achieve that goal we have set. Unless we stop momentarily and take a pulse check of where we are, continuing to trudge on becomes a win-loss proposition because unless and until you know the 'real score' as to where you stand, you are losing by default in taking a checkpoint assessment of yourself.

Taking a 'true read' of your strides is just 'what the doctor always orders'.  For those cognizant of their strides, they tend to gloss much on it, sometimes misguiding one's self to believe that he has achieved so much and success is just around the corner, he just needs to go on 'auto pilot'.  Problem is, we tend to 'count the chicks even before they are hatched'.  Sometimes, we need to stomp and ask ourselves if do we deserve a bowl of bean soup at the cafeteria.  Swing over to the other side of the fences, sometimes we go through a spate of failures, and that's fine, that's a fact of life.  The pitfall is that it can hit hard our morale when our motivation skids down south.  By taking a pulse check, who knows, there's some meat left in the bone.  

In those times we stumble, what we need is that 'TRY AGAIN' prompt, that's all we need to egg us to take that shot, even if it's another longshot. Michael Mauboussin spelt it clearly in his Harvard Business Review piece @

https://hbr.org/2012/10/the-true-measures-of-success which he capsulizes by highlighting that "people's deep confidence in their judgments and abilities is often at odds with reality". 

Question is what metrics can we adopt to measure our lives ?  Clayton Christensen shares with us @ https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life wherein Intel Chairman Andrew Grove asked him to fly over to Silicon Valley and share his model to his direct reports.  Lo and behold, he asked for 30 mins, he was given 10 mins to showcase his model.  Getting Grove's buy-in to his model was all it takes as long Christensen is able to map it to Intel.

The stumbling block has always been our failures and how to handle it.  Susan Tardanico says  it all @ https://www.forbes.com/sites/susantardanico/2012/09/27/five-ways-to-make-peace-with-failure/?sh=6efd27b03640 where she offered a 5-point 'Failure Strategy', i.e. 'Don't take it personal, take stock of things, stop dwelling on it, dump off that 

mindset where you always need other's approval and figure out a new point of view.  Do you want to hear how a big time winner blurted it all ?  Take it from Michael Jordan who said: 'I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.  I have lost almost 300 games.  On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the winning shot and I missed.  I failed over and over and over again in my life.  AND THAT IS WHY I SUCCEED".📌📌📌