Assessing the Situation

“If you want to measure how far you’ve gone on a journey, you have to know where you began.”

Week 6

Before I get too involved in creating my small steps, I want to try and quantify where I currently am in my life (using my 8 major categories). Just saying I want to do better and try harder won’t allow me to measure my success at the end.  Let’s go back to our work from last week where we broke down each of our categories. Some of these will be easy to measure, other areas will be more difficult to quantify.  But since it’s my experiment (and yours too, if you have joined me) then we can make up our own pre-assessments.  Let’s begin with the easy stuff.

I’ll start with my general category; Health.  I’m going to try and measure where I currently am.  Now this doesn’t necessarily mean I’m setting any goals in this area.  Remember, our hypothesis is that our small steps will bring big results…so we may get some results that we didn't even plan to even happen.  Never-the-less we do want to be aware of the changes, and in order to do that we need to know where our journey began (in all of our categories). So, under the category of Health I will try and collect as much information as I can.  I will measure myself (waist, hips,bust).  I will also use any current medical info to help me quantify areas.We have a wellness program at my college that gives us the opportunity to get a yearly physical and that includes such things as blood, urine and heart tests,  as well as weight and blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.  I’ll use those stats. as my pre-assessment of my overall medical condition.  I also just had a bone-scan done last month, so I’ll use those numbers as well.  If you don’t have that kind of information on yourself, this could be the motivator to get into the Doctor's office and get a Physical done.  (I spose I could do a blog on that alone...maybe some other time)  This should give me a good start in pre-assessing my health.  I may decide to do some other assessments as I go along.  In fact I think I’ll go to the Sports store and buy myself a pedometer today.  I want to get an average of steps/miles I currently walk each day.

As I previously said, not all the areas will be easy to measure. So I think I am just going to do a ‘best guess’ analysis (or self-survey)  using a 1-5 likert scale (one being poor-I  need lots of improvement, and 5 meaning great- needing very little improvement if any at all)

       1_____ 2______3______4______5

Lousy                                                Fabulous

We’ll need to go back to last week’s list and without doing an in-depth study, just try and give a quick estimate of where you believe you are, according to where you’d like to be, with these relationships. Remember that you are assessing yourself for this study so you need to base your score on how you’re doing in the categories. This is a very personal activity, so no need sharing it with the world.  You can just have it for yourself.  Once we use this activity to come up with our small steps, we can put the results away (in a bullet proof/ fireproof/ can’t break in to it safe).  Then in a year, when our experiment is completed, we’ll compare this information with a ‘like’ post-assessment. 

Here’s an example of what an assessment on relationships might look like: (Likert Scale 1-5)

Relationships

A.      Husband (4)

B.      Children/Grandchildren (4)

C.      My mom (3)

D.      My sisters (4)

1. Their families (2)

E.       My extended family : aunts uncles, cousins (2)

F.       Husband’s Mom (2)

G.      Husband’s  siblings & extended families (2)

H.      My friends (3)

I.        My co-workers (2)

Overall average for relationships: 2.8

Notice that each of the categories will have an overall average. This example of relationships is a 2.8.  Then, when I’ve completed all the categories I’ll figure one total overall average.  Since this is your personal assessment, feel free to write a summary of how you feel about certain areas to remind yourself why you gave yourself that score.

For example; in the area of my extended family (aunts and uncles, cousins) my reason for giving myself the score of 2 might be that I just don’t stay in touch with them as much as I would like to.

FYI:  I found this assessment business to evoke a lot of reflection about where I am and where I want to be in my life. I hope you find the same to be true when you do your own.….

And yes, we will finally get around to setting goals for ourselves next week…Can’t wait to see you then..

Homework: Assess where you currently are in all of your categories.