Getting and Becoming

In digging through my desk drawer at work yesterday rifling through articles that one always saves from industry magazines in the vain hope that one day it will be useful, I suddenly came across one that was useful - but not in the way that I thought.

It was called "Short Term Benefits or Long Term Growth? Are short term rewards keeping you on a career plateau?" The author , one D. G. Jensen, starts by looking at his own career growth, and suddenly coming to the point that he realizes he is valuing the comfort of the known versus increasing his value "because it was the easiest thing to do". He then reflects on those individuals (he's a recruiter) who have been the best candidates, and notes that they are always focusing on long term goals and measuring their opportunities within and without of a company.

He then quotes Jim Rohn from Seven Keys to Wealth and Happiness, who says to ask a question of yourself regularly - not "What am I getting? " (i.e. salary, benefits, "perks"), but "What am I becoming?"

From the article: "He (Rohn) believes that what you become in your career direct influences what you get on the job, and that by keeping you eye on this aspect of your personal development you will be far more richly rewarded. Jim advises that you check back regularly to make certain that you are becoming a person who provides increasing value to whomever employs you."

This article struck a chord in me - not just in my career, for which I needed the reminder, but personally. Getting versus becoming. Too often in my own life, I am more concerned with the immediate gratification - the getting - than the things that take time and effort, but make a difference farther down the road - the becoming.

It also raises the importance and levels of goals - after all, how can you aim for the target that you don't know, don't see, or don't have?

But it comes back to those darn choices again: to do A, I cannot do be. To have some goals, I cannot have others. There are, of course, always things in life that we cannot do - but I am allowing my indecision and the "getting" of the feeling of choice to defeat the "becoming" of achieving something - indeed anything.

Another good question to ask myself during the day: What am I becoming?