Personal growth is an increase in your ability to respond effectively to what real life dishes out. This shows up in three areas.

What it feels like to be you.

Confident, calm, happy, and clear -vs.- anxious, scattered, depressed, confused.

The quality of your relationships.

Open, honest, clearly-defined, confronting, fulfilling -vs.- stressful, out of balance, inauthentic.

The level of your performance.

Achievement of your goals for projects, business results, personal finances -vs.- stuckness and disappointing results.

That’s the top-level checklist for assessing how you are responding to what real life dishes out. When you grow your self, these areas get better. When you look at one or more of those categories and say “needs improvement”, that’s a good time to engage in a personal growth process.

For those who launch and lead, your growth and/or struggle in all three of these areas show up all over your organization.

When I’m coaching people who launch and lead organizations, we work in three broad areas: Grow Your Self. Grow Your Leadership. Grow Your Business.

So what is that first one, grow your self? That phrase might sound vague or cliché. Here’s what I think personal growth really is.

Real life continuosly confronts us with circumstances and people that we must respond to. Loss. Opportunity. Risk. Intimacy. Hostility. Freedom. Authority. Failure. Success. Change. Personal growth is an increase in our ability to respond effectively to what real life dishes out.

This means increases in both intellectual and emotional ability. It’s change in our brains that affects how we feel, how we think, how we relate to others, and how we make decisions.

It’s increase in our awareness of fear, and a change from automatically reacting to situations the way we always have, to choosing our responses based on our values and goals.

None of us are exempt from real life’s demands. I think life gives all of us a daily dose of good reasons to be interested in personal growth.

A couple of months ago I decided to look for opportunities to invest in startups other entrepreneurs are leading. I didn’t expect to so quickly find an opportunity I liked.

While exhibiting for my acoustic panels company at the NWLC conference for worship leaders in Dallas, TX, I met some of the folks who run BoxCast. They provide an exquisitely simple hardware + cloud solution that’s used as a live sports streaming service and for church video streaming to Internet viewers. On the box there are no switches or settings of any kind, nothing to configure, no tech person needed. Churches and schools are key markets for them so far.

I was really impressed with their technology and the savvy, lean, agile team behind it. As we talked further over dinner I was impressed with the character of the people on the team – no outsized egos, diligent work ethic, transparency.

I sought counsel from three advisors with relevant experience. I clarified the “why” of this type of investment for me, and ran numbers on the financial aspects of the deal. A few weeks later I took a trip to the BoxCast headquarters in Cleveland to get more familiar with the team and ask more questions. I was pleased to see that the folks running BoxCast are not an isolated group of geniuses, they are geniuses with a great network of smart, connected, wise, and resourceful people around them.

One week later I decided to go forward with an investment, and I’m excited to be on board. Early-stage investments are always risky. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m 35 today. Odds are that 1/3 to 1/2 of my years on earth are done. I haven’t wasted the time.

Maybe the most valuable thing I’ve learned so far is this: There is absolutely no substitute for hearing, telling, and facing the truth.

The truth about ourselves, what we want and what we fear, is a priceless thing to possess. Discovering, facing, and embracing that truth is a most worthy lifelong pursuit.

The most valuable things in life are face to face moments of relationship. These are moments of looking our fellow humans in the eye, of truth without shame, of curiosity, energy, and being alive together.

Work, inquiry, invention, creativity, building, competition – these are wonderful endeavors to which we apply our remarkable selves and from which much goodness springs.

We human beings are exquisitely attuned to fear. It’s in us every second. In fear of pain we avoid the truth. In fear of exclusion we keep ourselves alone. In fear of rejection we avoid the eyes of another. In fear of failure we stifle our ambitious dreams.

When we get acquainted with our fears, we receive the precious gift of choice. With awareness of our fears and of what we want we can choose how we act, respond, and live, with intentionality, with our values, with courage.

Fear courses through my body and lights up my neurology all the time. As I turn 35 I’m much better acquainted with my fears. (We spend a lot of time together and we understand each other pretty well.) And I have choice. I will not live a small life. I will not waste my time. I will wrestle. I will risk. I will be afraid and I will face the truth. It’s my intention to speak, relate, work, and live with great truthfulness and courageous choice in the face of fear.

I hope to read this in another 35 years, on my 70th birthday, and see how I did. To my treasured companions on this journey I look forward to seeing you there. In addition to warm hugs and the aforementioned checkin, we’ll have cake or somethin’.

Today I concluded a week of intense and deeply personal training at the One Week Intensive (OWI) for counselors presented by Dr. John Townsend and Dr. Henry Cloud.

During the week we spent part of our time in interactive seminars. The majority of the time we spent with our small group talking truthfully, guided by world-class group facilitators. The intimacy, emotion, and clarity that emerged from this experience were remarkable.

I arrived for the week with a desire to improve my skills as a leadership coach and facilitator. That happened. I leave knowing myself more deeply and telling truth more clearly. Those are, after all, essential foundations for the work of coaching others.