For me, that has manifested itself as the Getting Things Done (GTD) system popularized by David Allen in the book of the same name. While that is my specific example, I don't think my overall point is reliant on this specific system. Instead, the overall principles that installing a task management system require seem to be the same principles that predict a life full of learning.

A task management system, at it's simplest, is a way for us to keep track of the commitments, requirements, responsibilities, and various tasks that make up our lives. Our jobs, lives, hobbies, families, friends, and interests constantly serve as impetuses for things we have to do and remember. Usually, sometime during high school a teacher hands you some sort of agenda or day planner and for many people that's as close as they ever get to adopting a true task management system. I distinctly remember feverishly filling out my agenda with the previous day's to-dos before the teacher came around to check my diligence in tracking my tasks.  

In high school we can usually get by with just keeping track of everything in our heads with perhaps an occasional note written on our hands. It's not too difficult to keep everything straight when you visit the same set of classes everyday, have the same type of homework, and have people (e.g. teachers) constantly reminding you of everything you have to do. If the real world was like that, there'd be no need for anything more elaborate to keep track of everything. 

However, usually sometime in college, perhaps after the first nervous breakdown, we start to realize that our heads may not be the greatest place to keep everything. We sit down with a fresh piece of paper and crank out a massive list of everything on our mind. For a brief moment we feel better, relieved even, by seeing a clear list of all of our commitments and responsibilities. However, over time that list loses it's relevance and once again we have lapsed into a state of fogginess over what precisely we need to do.

This fogginess is where the connection to lifelong learning comes in. Operating in a fog means that we're always a little bit wary of taking on anything else. We realize that we've committed to a lot of tasks and many people are relying on us for various projects, but we're never quite sure what's on our plate. Instead of scanning the horizon for chances to take on new activities that align with our values, we scan the horizon in an effort to avoid additional requirements on our utterly taxed minds. This results in us staying in a narrow rut with our eyes down doing our best to get by. We're somewhat aware of the fact that we're missing out on excellent opportunities, but we're so caught in the fog that it doesn't seem important as merely staying the course and trying to stay afloat.

This is a problem of our own design and merely requires us snapping out of our teenage sensibilities and approach our work and our world with more than a seat-of-the-pants mindset. My experience is with GTD, so that's what I'll use to illustrate my points. In GTD, we create a system external of our own minds where we can place information about everything we've committed to on some level. Over time, we come to trust this system to hold everything so our minds are now free to do what they do best, think creatively and solve problems -- not remember things. 

The details of the system aren't important. If it allows us to place our commitments outside our own heads and to regularly see them in their entirety, then it will prove beneficial. It's only when we can see the boundaries around our work that we can make wise decisions about what else we undertake. Lifelong learning requires that we scan the horizon for opportunities to improve and grow. Knowing that we regularly analyze and assess our commitments allows us to know how much mental power and availability we have for new adventures, new ideas, and new projects.

Therein lies the greatest benefit I've received from seriously committing to a task management system. It has nothing to do with being able to get more done or being more efficient. While those are nice side effects of using GTD, what I'm most thankful for is the ability to always know, at a glance, what I need to do and whether I can commit to anything new. In the past I'd feel like I was drowning under the weight of everything I had to do. I eventually realized, however, that it wasn't because I really had that much to do -- it was because I hadn't clarified what I actually had to do. Once everything I'd committed to had been clarified and articulated, I actually had a lot more space in my life for new projects. Without GTD, or any other task management system, I'd still be slogging away on poorly defined projects, unclear tasks, and meaningless busywork.

I'm intrigued by the idea that task management systems or more than just a list of what you need to do. They seem to be the mature response to figuring out how to make the biggest impact in the world as possible. Gone are the days for most of us where tasks are laid out in front of us and someone else kept track of what you had to do. Knowledge work, creative work, whatever you want to call it, requires us to constantly determine what our jobs actually are. Our brains are pretty amazing organs, but asking them to simultaneously remember everything we need to do, decide if it's important, clarify what the actual task is, and search for new opportunities is a little ridiculous. Mindfully creating a system to alleviate some of that burden is the sign of someone who is serious about utilizing their abilities and opportunity.

My familiarity is with GTD, but it doesn't have to be the only way to keep track of your life. What is your task management system like? Have you noticed any changes in the way you interact with your environment since having implemented it? I'd love to hear your input in the comment section below.

You may notice that things look a little different around here. Websites change their look and branding all the time, so there's nothing new or particularly special about the current visuals. However, if you pop over to the Archive, you'll notice a lack of articles. I've been blogging since October 2009 and had stockpiled nearly 200 articles over that time. I decided they would not make the journey to the current rendition of SamSpurlin.com. I don't miss them and you shouldn't either.

My evolution as a writer and a coach has resulted in me wanting to clarify my message and refine the image that I put out into the world. When I first started blogging I was only interested in minimalism. My early articles were nearly all how-to posts about decluttering and simplifying my life. At the time, that's what I found interesting (and lots of other people did, too). I was proud of the contribution I was making to the relatively young minimalism "scene" but I wasn't writing anything particularly unique or earth-shattering.

That's not who I am, anymore. The last thing I want when somebody is looking at my website for the first time and clicks over to the Archive is page after page of list-posts and relatively weak attempts at talking about minimalism and personal development. Those posts have served their purpose of helping me find my voice and figure out what I care about. 

There's no reason that I should treat my digital clutter any differently than the way I treat the physical clutter in my life. I've gotten disturbingly good at refining my physical environment to the bare essentials of what I need to complete my work to the very best of my ability. There is almost nothing that represents any kind of physical or mental drain in my living space. For awhile, I haven't felt that way about my blog. I could feel myself having moved on from my original purpose and mission and yet almost everything from that period of my life was still hanging around in the depths of the archive. I had made fairly weak attempts at pruning the old articles in the last couple of months, but hadn't really stood up to the task of clearing it from my life like I needed to. With the re-launch of SamSpurlin.com and a greater focus on my personal development coaching, speaking, and more in-depth writing style, now is the best time to cut the cord and start fresh.

I hope you enjoy the new look and feel around here. I feel reinvigorated to build an archive of articles that truly represents my most up-to-date thinking and best writing.  Thanks, as always, for sticking around and please feel free to contact me with any questions.

The Case Against Values

Another major stumbling block when it comes to articulating values is the fact that there are powerful societal forces that say you should value certain things. I believe it was in Tim Brownson's book, How to Be Rich and Happy, that he described a situation where a husband and wife did a values articulation exercise at the same time. When Family didn't appear in the husband's top 3 values and it did in the Mrs' there was obviously a major point of contention. That may be a little bit of an unusual situation, but think for a moment about the things that society says you're supposed to value. Family is definitely one of those values that's supposed to be on everyone's short list. Other people feel significant pressure to include Faith/Religion, Freedom, Friends -- the list could go on. The point I'm trying to make is not that it's bad to value these things, but to merely ask how likely it is we are truly describing our values when we feel societal pressure to value certain things.

I think there is an underlying metaphor that we can examine between values and passion. I'm not sure I can go a day without hearing or reading the advice about "finding a passion." I used to be a purveyor of this piece of advice as well. Until I figured out it's basically pointless. The belief that everybody has a particular passion waiting for them somewhere in the world and it just needs to be uncovered like a treasure under a rock is not helpful. Therefore, the dominant activity when trying to uncover or find this passion seems to be flitting from activity to activity, from rock to rock, looking for that elusive passion that will fix all your ills. There's a driving force that if you don't like your situation then you just haven't found your passion yet. I've since decided that this line of thinking is mostly fallacious and that "finding" is the wrong verb to use when describing passion. Instead, we should talk about "developing" passion. The focus is on action and practice. I feel the same way about values. The traditional way of thinking about value places little emphasis on actual action, just like the quest for finding a specific passion. Values shouldn't be discovered but developed over time, like passion. Both of these constructs need a radical overhaul.

Values --> Action, or, Values <--Action?

The underlying assumption that I think most people make (and I have, too, for a long time) is that our actions follow our values. That we act the way we do because of the things we value. This seems logically straightforward. However, what if the relationship between values and action is more bidirectional than believed? In fact, let's think about the directly opposite view. Instead of our values driving our actions, what if the way we act drives what we value? That we think we value Family not because we've decided that Family is very important to us but because doing nice things for your family makes you feel good (both in the short and long-term) and therefore you associate doing nice things for your family as the "value" Family. The driving force in this relationship is the action, not the value.

I think personal development should be a very tangible activity and the ephemeral nature of values has bothered me for some time. There has to be a better way to think about living a life that makes you happy. Today, I'd like to propose a new line of attack in personal development: Instead of trying to articulate your values, articulate the activities that make you feel both "good" and "bad" in the short and long-term; systematically cultivate and seek the activities that make you feel good while cutting out the activities that make you feel bad. With this new approach we can now focus on action, on practice, and on progress instead of sitting idly and searching our memories, feelings and "values" that describe the way we feel. In the end, you can have the most perfectly articulated values but what actually matters is what you do. Action is the greatest manifestation of value, so let's shift our attention to how we can create more of it in our lives.

Identifying the Good

As human beings we are hard wired to seek pleasurable experiences and sensations. Delicious food, clothes fresh from the dryer, sex -- all of these produce pleasurable sensations. Are these the types of things you should be seeking out under my new value-less paradigm? Not quite. While there's nothing wrong with pleasurable sensations themselves (provided they aren't harming you or anyone else in the long-term), we are searching for a more nuanced definition of "good." A helpful starting point when trying to articulate the types of activities and behavior that we're after is to think about a day where everything seemed to go "right" and you went to bed feeling satisfied and happy. For me, it probably means I worked hard and made progress on work that mattered to me, had some kind of physical activity, interacted with the people to whom I'm closest, meditated and challenged myself in some way. That is the type of day that makes me smile as my head hits my pillow, exhausted, at the end. While I was working hard on a difficult project or working out I probably didn't feel euphoric like I might be when eating a thick slab of chocolate cake. The immediate gratification wasn't there, but the long-term benefits I knew I was cultivating by not procrastinating and by keeping myself healthy far outweighed the momentary discomfort.

You may have an idea of similar activities that make you feel fulfilled and aligned when you do them. Some sort of physical activity and eating healthy are common activities that seem to find their way on to people's "good" lists frequently. What other activities make you feel this way? If you're having trouble coming up with ideas, there's something you can do to make this process easier. For the next few days you need to become more mindful of how different aspects of your daily activity make you feel. There are numerous times throughout most days where I find myself saying, "Man, why don't I do this more often?" That's a good sign that I've just found an activity that I should try to systematically build into my life in a more robust way. On the flip side, there's usually numerous points throughout most days where I find myself saying, "This sucks. I never want to do this again." Again, this is the sign of an activity that I should actively try to remove from my future experience. It's not easy to remember to be mindful but the more you practice it, the better you'll get at it. If it's easier for you, you could spend a few minutes at the end of the day identifying the times and activities where you felt really good and bad in the past 24 hours. Write those down and after a week or two you should have a good list to work from.

Another route you can take for identifying the activities and actions that you'd like to build into your life is to look at people you admire and identify what seems to be making them feel good. The problem with the approach I described in the previous paragraph is that you're limited to the scope of activities in which you already partake. That's no good. Obviously there are a myriad of possibilities that exist beyond your current realm of experience. Looking to people you admire can give you ideas of activities for inclusion on your own list. Obviously, you can't just adopt other people's approaches without testing them for yourself. It's possible that something your friend finds fulfilling and "good" is quite the opposite for you. It's up for you to give it a try and make that decision for yourself, though.

Beyond Hedonism

The obvious trap that must be avoided is lapsing into a hedonistic focus when it comes to identifying the activities that make you feel good. Hedonism is a school of thought that argues pleasure is the only intrinsic good. A hedonist does everything they can to maximize pleasure while minimizing pain. There are lots of possibilities of things you can do that will make you feel good in the moment such as eating four chocolate chip cookies or not working on a difficult project. In the short run, both of these choices may maximize pleasure while minimizing pain. How does my new approach to personal development sans values differ from pure hedonism?

The key term that I fail to use in my definition of good while hedonists latch onto with authority is "pleasure." A hedonist's primary focus is purely on pleasure. Pleasure is characterized by good emotions and sensations without too much concern about long term ramifications. In my approach to personal development, you're searching for activities that go beyond pure pleasure and tap into more long lasting sensations of "good." That's not to say that some of the activities you identify as positive components of your life aren't also hedonistically oriented. However, it's unlikely that the full roster of your good activities will all be hedonistically relevant. For example, lifting weights or running is something I've identified as an activity that makes me feel good. In the short term, when I'm actually sweating and breathing hard, I rarely feel like that final rep or final half mile is adding a lot of pleasure to my life. If I were a hedonist, it's unlikely that I'd partake in activities like that, even though I know they are good for me in the long run. While it may be difficult in the moment, I know the importance of staying physically fit and I know how good I feel after a strong workout. When seeking out the activities that you want to cultivate more mindfully in your own life, try to identify whether you're looking for immediate gratification or long term happiness. The more you can build your life around doing things that will benefit you in the long term and not just the short, the better off you'll be.

Arranging Your Life

The whole point of this entire shift in ideology is to place the focus squarely on concrete actions that have improved your life in the past or you have a strong suspicion may improve your life in the future. At the same time, you're systematically removing actual events and actions that have been detrimental in the past. The net result of this addition and subtraction should be a noticeably happier life that coincides more directly with what you actually care about. One caveat before moving forward is that this approach requires a decent amount of mindfulness to pull off successfully. Essentially, you need to be able to step back from your immediate experience often enough to notice what your emotions are when you partake in different activities. This serves as the backbone of this system and without it your lists are going to be flimsy and meaningless.

To begin, take a week where all you do is go on living your normal life while carrying a small notebook and a pen with you throughout the day. Your only job is to pay attention to what is making you feel good or bad as you go about your business and to write it in your notebook. This is going to feel weird at first, I know. There's no reason you need to stop doing whatever your'e doing to whip out your notebook and make a note, but try to just pay attention to how you're feeling when you do different things and make a note of it as often as possible. At this stage of the game, you're just trying to get a rough idea of the activities you want to cultivate and those you want to rip out by the roots.

After you've done this for awhile you should have two lists; one full of activities and events that make you feel good about yourself and one full of activities and events that make you feel bad about yourself. Now, take a few moments to look at your lists and add any other activities that you may not have experienced in the past week but you know they are something that's super positive or very negative for you. Helpful questions at this point include, "What makes me feel good whenever I do it?", "What should I do more of?", "If I had the time/money/energy, what would I do more of?", and "Lots of people seem to enjoy running/working out/eating a paleo diet/eating a vegetarian diet/volunteering/whatever -- should I try that?" As you can imagine, do the same thing with the negative components as well. You want to flesh out these lists as much as possible so they are salient and exciting.

The obvious next step is to begin making space in your life to incorporate some of the activities from your good list as much as possible. Depending on the content of your list, that will obviously look differently for different people and activities. The key is to make yourself commit to a handful of these activities as explicitly as possible. Put them on a to-do list, break them into smaller tasks, leave yourself notes around the house reminding yourself to do them -- whatever it takes to build more of these events into your life. In order to make this a sustainable change, however, you should try focusing on only a small subset of these activities at first. You're only going to set yourself up for failure and disappointment if you try to cram the entirety of your list into every day, or even every week. Some of the activities on your list are probably habits that wouldn't hurt to instill into your daily life, but some of the other ones are probably done no more frequently than weekly or monthly. I like to actually set some time aside at the beginning of the week to actually look at my lists and decide which positive activities I'm going to try to do over the next several days and which activities I'm going to actively try to remove.

Looking at and working with your good list is obviously a little bit more fun than thinking about all the things you do that you hate. However, I've found that removing bad habits and activities from my life is almost more rewarding than filling my days with activities that make me feel good. Take a look at your schedule or routine and identify where you can remove items that are on your negative list. For many people, possibilities include waking up too late to feel calm and collected in the morning, eating tons of fast food, spending money on stuff you don't need (or really want) and other hobbies or activities that bring little or negative value to your life. Again, just like with the positive list, you can't do everything at once, especially if you're dealing with habits. Pick one that you'd like to eradicate and focus on it exclusively until you've changed or removed it to your satisfaction. This isn't a race -- take your time and do it right.

Conclusion

I've covered a lot of ground in this article to essentially make a simple point; the more you do things that make you feel good and the less you do that makes you feel bad the better you'll feel about yourself. For a long time I advocated that the best way to figure out how to live a more meaningful and positive life was to take a long and hard look at your values. I've always had trouble with that approach because it's hard to wrap your mind around values separate from the influence of society at large. Instead, rooting your decisions in what you'll do to improve your life should be based on experience. Nobody except you knows what makes you feel good. Nobody except you knows what makes you feel bad. If you can mindfully identify which activities produce which emotions within you, you can systematically build your life around those activities (or around removing those activities).

What do your lists of positive and negative activities look like? I've posted the details of my lists on my Tumblr, process>product. Head over there to get some ideas for your own lists or click over to the Google+ discussion about this topic. You can always drop me a quick note on Twitter, as well, if you have any questions or comments. Thanks for reading and remember that subscribing to the RSS feed of SamSpurlin.com means you'll never miss an article.

Assumptions are often created subtly and without our active knowledge. The slow accumulation of life experience through observations of the world around us, conversations with our parents and peers, and the way we’re taught new information coagulates into the basic assumptions we use to help bring order to our world. For that very reason, assumptions are a valuable tool. They save us time and mental power when thinking about a situation and/or deciding what to do. We are able to use the assumptions we hold to bring sense to completely different situations that still have an underlying similarity. Having to make sense of every single situation or stimulus from scratch, without the help of assumptions, every single time we are presented with them would be a massive drain on our psyche.

However, the benefit of assumptions only hold true when our assumptions are truly valid. Otherwise, we are saving ourselves mental effort but coming to seriously suboptimal conclusions. In my case everything I do, from the writing on this blog to the focus of my schooling, is focused on one very important assumption. If it’s not valid, there’s a good chance I’m wasting my time. Is it true that we all have the ability to improve our lives in measurable and significant ways if we want to?

What I do

This assumption is the driving force behind the majority of things I do as a student and a writer. To start, everything I write on SamSpurlin.com only holds true if you also agree with this assumption. Personal development in general is predicated on the idea that focused energy in a specific direction will allow you to make positive changes to your life. If that’s not true, then I’m certainly wasting my time and effort writing about personal development. The same goes for my coaching. The people that I work with obviously all believe that there is action they can take to improve their lives. It’s my job to show them that action and give them advice for how to best use their energy when it comes to personal development. Lastly, the underlying basis of the entire branch of psychology that I’m currently studying is also predicated on the assumption that people can do things to improve their lives. Positive psychology looks at the human being and the human experience from an angle of growth. Developing happiness, mindfulness, creating positive relationships, and establishing new habits are all possible only if we actually have some control over our experiences as human beings.

The counter argument

I don’t want to spend the rest of this article beating on a straw man that doesn’t actually exist. Does anybody actually believe the opposite of my underlying assumption? Does anybody believe that we don’t have any control over our direct experience? There are actually plenty of arguments that espouse this position and they all boil down to one of two sub-assumptions; that we can’t control our genes and therefore can’t control the way we are and that we can’t control our living circumstances/environment. Let’s unpack each of these believes a little bit.

Genetics

Our genes ostensibly control the vast array of our physical and psychological characteristics. Therefore, how can we make the assumption that we have any control over our lives? We obviously have no control over who our parents are so therefore there’s not much we can do on the genetic side of things. If I’m genetically predisposed to be fat (or stupid, or smart, or shy, or anything) than what’s the point of expending energy to change that? All this talk about personal development is just an exercise in self-denial about how little we can actually control anything. Besides, if somebody does seem to improve their life with focused effort, then they obviously had the genes that allowed them to do it!

Environment

Personal development is a rich person’s endeavor. To be reading this article you obviously have access to some kind of computing device and an internet connection. That alone precludes the vast majority of the world from ever even reading this. Worrying about your happiness and trying to understand motivation are only salient concerns when you aren’t desperately poor and don’t know where your next meal is going to come from. Just as we can’t control our genes, we can’t control the environment into which we are born. If I happen to be born to a single mother of three in the inner city my opportunities are going to be much more limited than the only child of millionaire parents. It’s the sad truth but our position in life is essentially random and assigned to us at birth.

Others

Between genetics and environment, it’s obvious that we have no control over our personal development. Just think about somebody who grew up in an environment of abuse and extreme deprivation. They are unlikely to be thinking about personal development because they have much more pressing issues at hand — like surviving! Or, for example, take somebody who is extremely depressed. Or, somebody who is an extreme introvert. These are all things that aren’t under our control as human beings and prevent us from being more than we are. Personal development is the discipline of people who don’t have anything better or useful to do.

The case for assuming we can change our lives

I must admit, writing the previous couple of paragraphs from the perspective of somebody who believes we don’t have any control over our ability to grow and improve was surprisingly difficult. Every time I started typing a sentence my brain would scream, “No! That’s not true!” This just goes to show how powerfully this assumption is interwoven into the way I view the world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a logical or accurate assumption to have.

The keystone of my argument requires an explanation of the way I view personal development and how it may differ from how many people look at it. Personal development has always been about the process of growth, not the product of it. This may seem somewhat counterintuitive as I think most people get involved with personal development because they want to change something about themselves. It’s only logical, then, to be focused on some end state that is somehow better than you currently are. I don’t deny that personal development relies on some kind of change, but I do argue that an unwavering focus on some ideal state is not a good use of our time or energy. Instead, merely the process of growing, of improving, with no focus on some ultimate end, is the true benefit of personal development. Without this approach personal development becomes a Sisyphean quest of never-ending self loathing.

If we change our perspective on personal development from a quixotic quest for perfection to a uniquely personal journey of self-awareness and self-improvement we can eliminate a key threat to the assumption that people have control over their immediate experience. Whether you’re a multimillionaire living in the most ideal and perfect of environments or a victim of abuse in the most squalid of home situations, personal development is possible and equally necessary. Neither of these two fictional characters are shooting for the same level of personal development in any aspect of their lives. Starting points aren’t important or relevant in any way when making personal development an important part of your life. There is no ultimate end point that we’re all searching for.

Looked at another way, holding the assumption that you can improve your life in important ways allows you to be in a position of power when living your life. Each moment is a situation that can either add to or detract from your personal development. Even if you don’t have direct control over the circumstances of an event, you can always control your reaction. Taking this stance puts you in a position to have control instead of being buffeted about by the random winds of fate. In a world where my two options are believing myself to be a victim of my circumstances and thereby completely powerless to change them or having control (however tenuous that grasp may be) on my immediate experience I will always take the latter.

I will happily concede that some people are born into more advantageous situation than others, that some people are born with a higher genetic set point for happiness or intelligence, that growing up in an environment of abuse is something out of your control and likely incredibly detrimental to your personal development. Perhaps it is merely a function of my definition of personal development, but I cannot think of a single life situation where personal development is not possible or important. Personal development is not a product of our environment or life situation but a product of our minds and how we view the world. We can be imprisoned by circumstances, physical limitations, or injustice but if we retain the control over our ability to think then we retain control over our ability to personally develop.

It’s important to note that this assumption says nothing about whether or not you want to make changes. I don’t make the assumption that everyone in the world finds personal development important. That would be an incredibly fallacious belief that has no actual bearing in reality. My assumption merely says that anyone who decides to take action will find it possible to improve their lives in measurable ways. Part of my job as a teacher and coach is to show people the path that exists. I can describe the path’s location, clear it of obstacles, and give somebody a map but I can never throw them across my shoulders and take them down the path of personal development myself. The initiative and motivation has to be internally generated (how to go about generating that is a story for another time).

The Buddhism Caveat

Being interested in Buddhism made me start thinking about whether personal development is reconcilable with a Buddhist approach toward life. Is it possible to reconcile a commitment to perpetual personal development with the ideals and values of Buddhism? Isn’t it anti-Buddhist to never be content with where you are and always on the lookout for something better? I don’t know enough about Buddhism to fully answer this question, but I immediately am drawn to the practice of meditation as a metaphor for personal development. Meditating is something that is incredibly frustrating and difficult at first but gradually becomes easier over time. I think many Buddhists would say that they’re always trying to improve the quality of their ability to meditate. Indeed, unless an individual has experienced enlightenment, I’m under the impression that a lot of effort is placed into making meditation a better experience. This movement toward better meditation while simultaneously dropping expectations is analogous with any journey of personal development. The value is in the practice itself, the process, and not in the end-state it produces.

You can either believe you have control over your life or you don’t. For me, believing I can change the circumstances of my situation gives me power. It puts me in a position of strength and impels me to be engaged with the world, to not let it float by. The flip side of this approach is to give up all control or attachment and just “go with the flow.” I think it’s possible to be interested in personal development and not overly attached to it at the same time. That’s why I always focus on the process — on habits– and not the final outcomes of personal development. I try to let personal development, like eating, sleeping, or breathing, be a constant in my life that doesn’t require constant attention or rethinking. It’s just the way I’ve decided to look at myself and the world.

What assumptions do you hold about the way the world works? What assumptions do you hold about other people? Have you taken the time to think through these logically and possibly even change them? Our assumptions orient the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works. I think it’s vitally important that we get them right.

Share your thoughts by joining the conversation on Google+ or dropping me a note on Twitter (@samspurlin). I’d love to hear about your own experience with making and holding important assumptions. If you enjoyed this article, you might want to consider subscribing to the blog via RSS. Lastly, I’ve started a sub-blog called process>product that is serving as a depository for my semi-formed thoughts and musings about personal development and life in general.