Progress reports

Remember report card day when you were growing up?

Maybe you were one of those kids who made straight A's in school and knew you had nothing to worry about when it came time to show the folks how you were doing in class. Maybe you made a few A's and the rest B's and C's. Or perhaps you were one of those kids that dreaded report card day because you knew that's when the folks would get to find out just exactly how bad you were doing.

Regardless of which of the above mentioned three groups you were in, whether it was fear or anticipation, there was still always an air of nervous excitement when the grades were being handed out. Even if you knew exactly what grade you had in every category, somehow it was just never real until you saw the letters on that piece of paper spelling it all out in no uncertain terms.

The kids with the good grades would usually brag to their friends and be happy to show their parents. While the ones that did not do so well often avoided the subject when asked and did everything possible to keep their parents from finding out.

Children of course do not really understand the point of report cards. The idea is to give the teachers, parents and yes even the students an idea of how the student is doing in relation to the other students and to compare how they are doing now from how they were doing at previous set points. When things are going fine no alteration needs to occur. But when the student is failing, these progress reports allow all involved to become aware that the child is having problems in one or more areas and needs more focus in those areas in order to achieve success.

It seems that many parents do not really get the point either. The fear of failure or of doing bad that causes some children to want to hide their report cards from their parents often comes as a result of punishment that many parents mete out when their children do not do as well as they think they should. If parents did not act this way, if instead they asked questions, offered constructive criticism and worked with their children to help them get better grades, then the children would be more likely to share the news with their parents, whether it be good or bad.

But progress reports don't end when we leave school do they? They exist in most office places and other jobs. There may be weekly progress reports on specific projects. There are quarterly statements to let shareholders and company managers know the general status of how things are going within the company. And of course there are yearly reviews where it is decided how each individual employee is doing and whether or not to give them a raise or terminate their employment.

There are also many other progress reports in life that you may not be aware of. Whether you realize it or not many of your friends and loved ones evaluate where you are in your life as opposed to where you were say a year or maybe even five years ago. Other people make value judgements about you based on where you are as compared to where they think you should be. Sometimes they will modify their relationships with you as a result of these evaluations.

Just as you really couldn't get away from your report cards as a child you can not escape these progress reports either. Many of the business and relationship progress reports are filled with things that you are never made aware of. As a result you never know how you are doing in the eyes of others and can never use this information for personal growth.

However, if you are willing to be honest with yourself, you can and should at regular intervals compare how you are doing currently with the goals that you have set for yourself. In the last six months what steps have you taken for self empowerment and improvement? Out of the main categories of life, spiritual,mental, physical, emotional and material, what changes have occurred and how do they fit in with your long term goals? Have you reached any of your goals,short or long term? If so which ones and what new goals do you have now? If not, why not? And what do you intend to do about that?

Judgement and value judgement

A conversation about judgement happened, the other day, in our home. We were discussing whether or not we were still in agreement about the vision statement that we had formed for our home a few years back. One person said that they felt that a certain part of the statement should not be there because it seemed to be there for the express purpose of using it to judge people.

Our mission statement is as follows:

We the people of  "Grok the Planet " are committed to changing the world, one soul at a time. Our goals are to constantly continue to grow and improve ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially as well as physically and to encourage others to do the same. We will achieve these goals by each one of us being a leader, living in excellence, being impeccable with our word, not making assumptions, not taking things personally and striving to do our best in all things.

This fear of being judged brings to mind several other fear based issues that this person seems to have, self esteem and possibly acceptance as well, things we can discuss at another time. We quickly assured this person that judgement was not at all the reason for that part of the statement. And it really is not. The whole vision statement is a declaration of intent. It speaks about what we stand for and a little about how we intend to reach our goals.

But as I think about it now, this statement is also a yardstick through which we can measure how we are living our lives, individually and as a group. We can measure our vision against our recent actions and see if we are living up to it. It occurs to me that it IS a tool for judging how well we are doing. And I can see where someone that fears judgement could see it as a potential weapon that could be used against them.

The kind of judgement this person fears is that they will somehow be unworthy of acceptance or labeled a bad person or something along those lines due to not measuring up. The things is that just is not the way the others of us think. We believe that it is not any man's right to judge another person for you never know what is truly in their heart or mind. One can only fairly judge themselves.

Now having said that, it is really not possible to interact with other people on a regular basis and not place value judgements on the things that they say or do. Those value judgements do not say anything about that person as a whole. You are not making them out to be a villain, subhuman or in some way unworthy of being liked or loved. You are just more or less describing whether or not you agree with the choices that other people make.

The intentions of our statement are clear. And from time to time, we will be using our mission statement to determine whether or not we are doing what we say is important to us. If we are not, we will be talking about that and deciding whether or not what we want has changed. If it has, we will get to renegotiate our agreement one way or another. If it has not then we will discuss how our actions get to shift so that they are back in line with our vision.

Value judgement will occur and things that one might not like to hear may need to be said. If this does  happen it will be in a spirit of love, with an intent towards constructive criticism in the hopes of either keeping the harmony within our home and vision or restoring it as the case may be. Harsh destructive criticism and judgements intended to tear a person down and make them feel small have no place in our home.