The business is a reflection of you. Your life is the sum of your choices. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Change and personal growth begins within. Be the change you want to see in the world. When you point a finger, there are three others pointing back at you.

Yadda yadda yadda.

You’ve heard this all before. If you’ve read more than fifty pages about leadership or management written in the last thirty years, you’ve come across the idea that if you want your outsides to change, then your insides must change first to some degree.

Many people know they need to change–they say they want personal growth. At the same time, most put more energy into defending what they think they already know rather than courageously face what they don’t. Unfortunately for many most, the excitement of change and growth is not bigger than the desire to avoid the pain that is so often the price associated with it.

It’s hard, I know.

It can be downright humiliating. But it’s real. It is a simple fact that the most significant limitations in your life are always in you.

The only question is: What do you want to do about it? How much complaining about your outer life will you indulge in yourself, before you look at the other three fingers and ask yourself some hard questions about what needs to change in you?

This is not a call for beating yourself up. It’s the opposite.

Do you love yourself enough to face the painful issues inside you that cause you to needlessly suffer?

Whatever is not working in your life or business is a direct reflection of what is not working in you. This means that while you look outside of you more than inside, you are not only distracting yourself, but you are in victimhood, denial, and actively choosing for nothing to change. (Which is the exact opposite of personal growth.) Intentionally or not, consciously or not. This is what’s happening.

The heartbreaking reality in our world is that 99% of our population is blaming everyone except for themselves for significant problems in their life as if they’re powerless to do something about it. The vast majority of people have already made up their mind that things cannot be different. If you are reading this you are probably not in that group.

Congratulations and thank you!

A small portion will attempt to change what’s on the outside. An even smaller portion will be willing to superficially look at their own issues as they attempt to create outer change. One in ten thousand will deeply look into their own psyche to see how and why they have created the frustrations in their life and business in the first place. This is the ultimate in self-responsibility.

This is why success is so rare, because in many cases, it’s this kind of introspection and transformation that is required for true personal growth. This is not to say that change cannot be affected via finger pointing. It can, and this is part of the problem. That change happens on the outside without having to change yourself is seductive for the defensive aspects of us committed to staying the same. However, too many have used up their outer-change capacity and are now trying to extract more change-liquid from a dry sponge.

Next week, we will take a look at where to go from here once you’ve decided to make that personal growth change. Stay tuned!