This isn't a weight loss blog but I can guarantee that the same principles for weight loss, apply to breaking out of our introvert limitations. I promise you, the above quote is pertinent to the purpose of this blog post.

During the holiday period, I spent a lot of time reflecting on 2017, my achievements, my failures, as well as catching up podcasts, TED Talks, and books that I've wanted to read for a while. For those of you who have been following MyCorporateDiary for a while, you will know that 2017 has been somewhat traumatic, with heavy workloads, multiple and significant restructures, punctuated by low events in my personal life. Throughout all this, I tried to stay positive and continued in my efforts to improve myself and break out from my introvert limitations. Self improvement is difficult because it requires willpower. 

You need willpower to sustain the energy and effort required to make change. You need willpower to recover when things go wrong, and you need willpower to control the confidence destroying self talk that happens when you've had a failure or a bad interaction. Without willpower, you are just like a boat on the ocean without a sail. You're battered, and taken to wherever the currents and waves take you. In such a state, it's so easy to feel depressed (although oppressed sounds more appropriate in an office environment), blame your failures on everybody else, and eventually just give up. We all know people like this, whether it be colleagues, friends, or family. Whenever they complain to us, it's always about what someone else did, or how the world conspired against them. It's never their own actions that were at fault.

I've done it myself. Whenever I don't get the parking space I want (e.g. when I go out to dinner with my brother in law, he always seem to get a spot right in front of the restaurant, while I have to park blocks away), I blame luck or GOD or whatever reason that comes to mind. But I never blame myself. The reality is (and I know this for a fact), my brother in law gets the perfect parking space because he is willing to spend time and effort circling the surrounding streets, tackle the difficult parking spaces, and more importantly, sit and wait near the perfect parking space in the off chance that a space opens up. Whereas for me, I expect the outcome of the perfect parking space but I don't put in the effort. I'm impatient so I don't wait (also because for some strange reason, I feel bad stalking someone in the off chance they are parked where I want to park). I'm lazy so I don't circle the surrounding streets, and if a parking space just feels a little more complicated to get into (e.g. I can't nose dive into the space), I'm not interested. 

As I reflected on the above and refreshed in my mind all the content of my previous blogs, books I've read, and TED talks I've watched, I came to an amazing conclusion:

Willpower is important but willpower alone is useless.

Willpower is key but willpower without action is useless. It's like me desiring the perfect parking space but not taking the actions necessary to get it. Our willpower paints us a picture of the person we want to be or the person we can be. But without action, all we have is a picture of the outcome but no way to get there.  And taking a one-off action is not enough. You need a process. You need to identify a series of actions you want to adopt, and then a process that repeatedly puts those actions into practice (hopefully one at a time) until they become a habit. Once an action becomes a habit then it becomes a trait of yours and over time, you are the person you want to be. Therefore...

Willpower is important but process is the key.

Take any person you look up to and I can guarantee you, they have become successful because of a process. Either that process was deliberately created by them or that process was forced upon them by circumstance. You can wish to be successful, you can want to be successful, but if you don't put in a process to repeated try actions that help you become successful, then you won't change. Having the willpower to want to break out of your introvert limitations is great but if you don't have a process to set out the actions you want to take and a process to make those actions habitual then nothing will change. Willpower without process actually makes you sad. You know who you want to be (or who you can be) but it seems like you can never get there. You end up feeling unfulfilled, feeling like you have all this potential that the world just doesn't recognize. Without a process, your willpower can actually become a blocker. You no longer want to think about who you can be, because each time you do, you just feel depressed. 

You don't need to look very far to see what I mean. Look at sport. The highest paid and highest performing sports starts almost always state their success to practice. The world's best tennis players practice in all conditions. Take Roger Federer, one of the world's best tennis players. He practices 11 hours a day, 6 days a week. Take Michael Jordan (who was initially told he'd never be successful in basketball), who practiced an extra 2 hours a day after team practice of 6 hours. Nobody is born to be the best tennis player or basketball player. But those who are the best, got there because they had a process to keep practicing until their weak spots became their strengths.

Think back through your own life and I'm certain a lot of the achievements you are proud of, are due to you taking repeated actions to make those achievements happen. If you're particularly good at something, it's because you practiced and practiced. You don't need to have a training regime for 11 hours a day but have a simple process in place. Take an action, try it out, then reflect on it and see what you can change to improve it for you. Once you've done that, keep doing that action until it becomes a habit and then you can move on. Hey, how about keeping a journal to jot done what you think went well for the action or what didn't go so well. Try it with a simple action. I recommend my previous blog post on smiling. Adopt the action of just smiling more frequently and at strangers. Then reflect on how it went that day and what you can do different the next day to improve your smile. Maybe even look in the mirror and smile and see whether the smile you see physically is the smile that's reflected. If not, then practice smiling slightly differently until what you see in the mirror is what you see in your head.

At work we're always told to focus on the outcome and not the process. That's fine when it comes to financial or organisational results but improving your weaknesses is not a switch you can just flick on or off. For self-improvement, process is key and through the process, your desired outcome will emerge. So as we kick off into 2018, let's make the next 12 months, the year of process. Just do the following: (1) identify a series of small actions that you want to adopt (e.g. smile), (2) start doing the action, and (3) reflect on how it went then repeat. 

Blog Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash.