Personal Mastery, mastering the art of milestones - Personal mastery is an important step in becoming a true learning organization practitioner. A learning organization practitioner cultivates personal mastery in others - helping them learn and grown and understand that they often already know the real answers. While sipping on the kool-aid over the weekend, I realised that what I actually needed was to develop my personal mastery.

I do not think of New Years as a time to make resolutions - I feel that if there is something in your life that you want to change, don't put it off - and yet I have put off making changes in my life for a long time. I have the same job, the same house and in general life has been the same for the last little while. And things have not been great. I have mulled and joked over the need for change, but I have sat here impotent, unable to unwilling to do anything. I was recently re-energized and am now ready to actually tackle the issues, and possibly start to see them as opportunities. Cornwall had taught me to ask real questions to get to the root of the problem.

So my deep dark secret is that I recently celebrated a birthday. It was not an important one, but for the first time in my life I felt unwilling or unable to "celebrate". The idea of this milestone was really about forgetting the previous year. In my opinion, the day could pass unnoticed and un-acknowledged by anyone. And as the sun shone brightly and my friends plotted dinner and cup-cakes, instead of wallowing in the mess that was my year - I decided to start taking actions to address the issues that have been brewing, to stop making excuses for myself.

Personal Mastery is about realizing that you already poses the answers and the skills to effect the change that you need. Milestones are opportunities to realize that it is time to do something.