How do you track your progress when you renew your commitment to live a certain gospel principle?
There are many good ways, however we often don’t use any of them,probably fearing that we might actually see that over time we actually aren’t doing much better. Who do we tell about our commitments and ask to hold us accountable? Where do we make actionable goals and write them down? When do we go back and review our progress and make course corrections? With so many facets of the Gospel, which ones are most needful and how many can I focus on regularly? These questions must be asked before we start making commitments, otherwise we can really get off on the wrong foot.
I recently read a book The Power of Less, by Leo Babauta, which is very relevant to this discussion, and which I endorse for anyone serious about changing the way they live, in this case becoming more like Christ. We need measurement. When asked how tall we are we answer in a measurement, when asked how old we are we answer in a measurement, yet when we speak of how we are doing at being a member missionary our answers become very vague. We need to get specific.
Next time we make some personal commitment to change lets also plan to measure it somehow, (even if measuring is quantifying how we feel about it honestly on a 1-10 scale) and then get someone to follow up with us after a specific amount of time. It really works! We are driven to home and visit teach by the last day of the month. Although we have a sincere desire, we’d not go nearly as often if the requirement were just to visit them regularly, much more time would go by before we got the pressure to get over there soon.
Follow up is the key to progression, lets set up a return and report system and really make some strides toward perfection.
