Win battle with yourself to begin growing

  • Published
  • By Col. Rachel Hight
  • 60th Surgical Operations Squadron commander

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - How many of us feel like we have untapped potential inside us? That we could be better?

Maybe we want to be better Airmen. Maybe we want to be more physically fit. Maybe we want to improve on the personal level, striving to be kinder to family and friends, or less prone to angry outbursts, or maybe just more forgiving or more generous.

The list goes on for each of us and our desires to truly manifest as our authentic selves change as we grow and mature. Regardless, many of us want “more” from our lives and we don’t know where to find that missing link to greatness.

Sometimes, we stumble onto the key that can unlock the door for us. If we’re lucky, one day, we find ourselves caught in a situation where we truly see no way out. We look externally and find no answers. We are forced to look deep inside. There, we are confronted with our own vulnerability and we see that we actually harbor the potential within us to create the life of our dreams.

That point of discovery or self-revelation is when you first have a choice to begin to fight the battle with yourself. That first moment when something inside you snaps and makes you realize 的 could be better.”

Then you have a choice to make. “What am I going to do about it?”

Many times, in this hectic world, we reach those self-discovery moments in our darkest hours our biggest failures, our largest disappointments, our deepest regrets. Even on a smaller level, every time we don’t bring our best game to the table or we don’t take the high road, we are presented with opportunities for a self-check.

But the challenge in a frenzied world is to slow down long enough to ask ourselves, “Why didn’t I do my best? Why am I not succeeding? Why did I fail?” In essence, we need to pause long enough to discover, “what’s holding me back?”

In searching for that answer, we need to employ our utmost integrity. It takes real moral courage to examine yourself and take true measure of your shortcomings and to own your responsibility in the outcome of any situation. But it痴 only through genuine self-examination, and after full acknowledgement of your motives, your desires and fears and your strengths and weaknesses, that you can reach that decision point to grow.

You recognize, “Here is where I am.” Assess this place or state of being. Did you succeed or fail? No one likes to admit failure. But seeing failure and admitting your part in it is crucial to learning and growing.

A lot of people are uncomfortable admitting failure these days, maybe because the connotation is that being a failure means you are a loser. How far from the truth is that? People who fail are people who are growing and living and learning. Quite simply, if you didn’t succeed or you didn’t do what needed to be done, then technically you failed. That’s all. It’s not game over. In fact, it is just the beginning of the real journey.

After answering that first vital question - “Did I succeed or fail? - you ask yourself, “Do I like it here? Where do I want to be instead? How do I get there? Am I willing to do what it takes to change?

The answers have to be real. If you ask yourself these questions and then lie to yourself in the answers, not only will you not grow, the internal lack of integrity will keep you off-balance. In other words, it will be harder for you to not keep failing. You will be in your own way.

To get started fighting the battle against ourselves then, we need to acknowledge that there is at least one battle to fight each time any of the millions of daily and hourly “skirmishes” come up. There is no blitzkrieg single victory for us. We first must decide to be honest with ourselves and own our failure. Name it. Admit it. Own it. Hiding from failure only makes it harder to beat it. Only from a place of truth can we begin to seek our path for growth.

After establishing that solid foothold, we can program ourselves for learning, growth and, ultimately, success. There are so many resources and mentors available to help us really take off once we win that first battle within. We identify internal goals. We set a vision for ourselves. We imagine our contribution to the world. We rigorously examine each day and moment where we sense we weren’t “the best” we could have been. We acknowledge and forgive that failure, then look for tools to help us grow.

And we thank our lucky stars that we are alive and able to map out our own destiny.