The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential

The most important personal-growth phrase you will ever hear agood leader say to you is “follow me.”

want to encourage you to develop a stronger sense of urgency and a pro-strategic mind-set.

There is no warm-up for life, no dress rehearsal, yet that’s the way many people seem to be treating it. Each of us goes on stage cold, with no preparation, and we have to figure it out as we go along. That can be messy. We fail. We make mistakes. But we still need to give it our best from the very start

Most people allow their lives to simply happen to them. They float along. They
wait. They react. And by the time a large portion of their life is behind them, they realize they should have been more proactive and strategic

If you want your life to improve, you must improve yourself. You must make that a tangible target.

working hard doesn’t guarantee success. And hope isn’t a strategy

“Your vision will become clear only when

you look into your heart. Who looks

outside, dreams. Who looks inside,

awakens.”

—Carl Jung

The first four questions you should ask yourself relate to what you want to do. As I said at the beginning of the chapter, you must know yourself to grow yourself. That’s the Law of Awareness. But I want to help you to do more than just know what to do.

I want you to have a sense of how to start moving in that direction. That will help you to target and eventually fine-tune your growth. With that in mind, the remaining questions will help you to create a game plan

If you never figure out what you want to do, you will probably be frustrated all of your life. Author Stephen Covey observed, “How different our lives are when we

really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to know what matters most.” Knowing yourself and what you want to do is one of the most important things you’ll ever do in this life.

How do you know what you want to do? How do you tap into your passion? Listen to your heart. Pay attention to what you love doing. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author Thomas L. Friedman advises,

So whatever you plan to do, whether you plan to travel the world next year, go

to graduate school, join the workforce, or take some time off to think, don’t just listen to your head. Listen to your heart. It’s the best career counselor there is. Do what you really love to do and if you don’t know quite what that is yet, well, keep searching, because if you find it, you’ll bring that something extra to your work that will help ensure you will not be automated or outsourced. It will help make you an untouchable radiologist, an untouchable engineer, or an untouchable

teacher.