Self-improvement
is a journey. And you don’t begin with a perfect path. Instead, you perfect the
path on the journey. These are the five steps to improve yourself.
1.
Start
with Reflection
2.
Identify
an Area to Improve
3.
Create
Time for Yourself
4.
Mind
the Company You keep
5.
See
Your Challenges in a Positive Way
Reflection
You cannot
improve yourself effectively if you don’t know who you are. You need to know
yourself to carry out a successful self-improvement. Reflection is a perfect
practice that will help you to understand yourself. When you reflect, you look
at your whole life. You look at yourself and how you live your life. Further,
reflection helps you to assess things that you have embraced in your life. Through
reflection, you can evaluate whether the things you have embraced are good for
you or not. For example, the values you have been practicing the last few
years. How have these values helped you? How do they make you feel? Are you
happy? Are you on the right path? As you think through issues and give them a
bull’s eye, the more you will find perspective. Self-reflection is a wonderful
practice you can embrace to improve yourself.
The best
thing about reflection is the 360 degree view it gives you. It creates an
opportunity for you to seat down with your thoughts. The focus is just on you. And
that is where you will find a clear picture to improve yourself. When you focus
on just you. You learn about so many things about you. Self-reflection brings
up discoveries, trends, and insights about your life. It brings up things that
you could not have learned had you carried out reflection. Given the many
benefits that come with reflection. Reflection comes across as an incredible
step to improve yourself because it helps you know yourself. It will help you
to learn about bad practices you have picked. Or good practices you have
embraced in a few years.
The best
element about reflection you don’t want to forget, is getting to know yourself up
close and candid. That is a great step towards self-improvement. You must know
yourself to know exactly what you need to improve. Reflection will help you
narrow down areas that need improvement. The 3600 view is good
enough because it allows you to examine different areas of your life. You can
begin with personal, professional, social, or spiritual aspects of your life. And
after spending time reflecting, you can come up with a clear conclusion. A conclusion
that points you to a fitting improvement path. You can learn through reflection
where you spend most of your time. And whether the places and things you spend
most of your time are beneficial to you at all. If looking for an area in your life to improve, start with reflection.
A Focused woman creating steps to improve herself. Photo/Andrea Piacquadio
Identify an Area to Improve
There
are a lot of things that happen in a typical day. And you might not have time
to cover everything. So you need to be practical and realistic. You are
definitely looking at a self-improvement activity that will benefit you. You are
looking for a step that will make you better. To achieve this goal. Narrow down
your options. Move from one step to the next. For example, if your reflection
pointed that more work is needed on your character. You focus on improving your
character. Perhaps you have lived your whole life picking traits from all
directions. And you don’t have your own values. To improve yourself. You focus
on practicing and embracing behaviors, which are mostly you. You start finding
you and what you think defines you. When you find values that define just you.
You learn to incorporate those values in your everyday life.
When you
focus on one area. Instead, of several areas at the same time. You make
progress. You will improve yourself. And that will not be all. You will also
enjoy the process of improving yourself. You want something like that. Doing something
that you enjoy. Self-improvement on its own is not a smooth path. Self-improvement
is a journey. And you don’t begin with a perfect path. Instead, you perfect the
path on the journey. That perfection begins with you focusing your energy and
time on one area. If it is your character that needs improvement. You focus on
your character. You start by embracing values that define you. And you start
living the values. The improvement you desire will not be automatic. Change will
take time before it begins to manifest itself. You need to learn to be patient.
And focus on the work ahead of you.
Improving
yourself will not materialize unless you dedicate yourself to improving
yourself. Therefore, to improve yourself. You need to be committed. You need to
be hardworking. You need to be disciplined. The new practices that you will
embrace will not just stick because they define you. You will have to work hard
to make them part of your life. For example, if one of your values is
excellence in everything that you do. Excellence will not just happen. You will
have to choose and prioritize it. You will need to force yourself to act
excellence. And that means changing a lot of things. Such as the way you do
your work. The way you approach things at both personal and professional level. You
must decide that excellence is needed everywhere. And purposefully cultivate it
in your life. Focus will go a long way here. Focus will keep you from
undisciplined pursuits and bad decisions.
A woman learning how to improve herself. Credit/Yan Krukau
Create Time for Yourself
This is
important. You need to create time for yourself. Time to just focus on you and
how you do things. You need to learn how to listen to your own footsteps and
breathe. And you need to be comfortable with it. Creating time for yourself
will help you to debunk a lot of things. You will identify your priorities. And
do away with things that no longer serve you. You will sift through things. And
only keep what works. You need a simplified life like that. Instead of
carrying a baggage in your life. Creating time for yourself will help you to reduce burdens. You will learn, which burdens to carry and which ones to let
go. Having a me time will lead you here. It will help you identify burdens that
are either too heavy for you or unnecessary. And you will have to make the call when
that time comes. You cannot continue embracing or doing things you did five
years ago.
Somethings
will have to go. Creating time for yourself will result in you becoming better. You
will find a renewal that will take you forward. You will lessen things. You
will go through your phone book and do away with contacts you no longer need. You will
let go of people who no longer serve you. You will gain new perspective. And that
perspective will make you a new person. You will think better and focus on things
that make you happy. You will no longer please other people. You will
prioritize you over others. You will protect your environment. And ensure that
only things that you like and benefit from are in the environment. You deserve
this kind of path. A path that brings you peace not sorrows. Spending
more time with yourself will culminate in a self-improvement. The habits will create a new you that you will fall in love with. It will no longer be about fitting into societal stereotypes. You will become several times happier than the previous you because you found you.
Mind the Company You Keep
People
are good. Friends are good. However, not every person or friend is good all the
time. People could have been good two or three years ago. But now, things have
changed. You have also changed. You no longer think the way you used to think
two or three years ago. Perhaps, three years ago. You were highly interested in
meeting new people. And you enjoyed mingling and talking to people. But that
phase has passed. Your goals are quite different from your three years’ goals.
You need to recognize that difference. And start minding the people you keep
very close to you. You need to evaluate every company you keep. If your
overall goal is to improve yourself. The energy should be on you. Not relationships
that are not working. Move past people who don’t fit in your new self-improvement goals.
And invest that time in your new goals. Commit to improve yourself.
Keep
only a sizable number of people that bring meaning to your life. Don’t carry along people who drain you. Keep
stressful people at bay. To effectively improve yourself. You need positive
minds around you. You need people that will challenge you to do better. People that
will remind you when you forget. Keep the right company only. People that
support your goals and desires. Don’t
invest in back and forth relationships. Focus on what matters. And what matters
now is to improve yourself. Invest your energy here. Forget about other things.
Comb through your friendships and relationships. Identify people that fit in
your new goals. If you establish that no one in your current group fits into your new goals. Don’t be afraid to make a difficult decision. Choose your needs over
relationships that are not working.
See Your Challenges in a Positive Way
We all
face life. And life is quite unpredictable. It is not always smooth. You don’t get
everything you need all the time. And normal human beings run into challenges. Bad
challenges for that matter. And I assume you are a normal human being. So when
you find yourself struggling with a challenge. Don’t let that challenge
overwhelm you. Don’t allow it to take energy out of you. Instead change the
way you look at your obstacles. Instead of seeing your challenges as threats. See
an opportunity in your challenges. Think of how your life will become better.
If you find solutions to these problems. Think of how you will be more prepared
to face the future. How the new survival skills in your precarious moments will impact your overall life. Shift
your mind from negative to positive. It will not be easy. However, practice will become progress.
Adapting
a positive outlook will keep you in a positive mood. You will find motivation
to seek solutions. You will not see the risks and threats in the challenges.
Instead, you will see opportunities in working for solutions. You will convert your most stressful moments
into learning opportunities. Changing your outlook will benefit your health. You
will not walk around with a defeated mindset. You will instead be more energized
and focused. Especially after learning about the new strengths in your worst times. So, practice reappraisal
when going through a difficult time. Doing so will make you feel good. You will
be less stressed. Adopting a new way to
see your challenges will make you better. You will learn how to make progress
in your worst phase. You need this kind of mindset because challenges shake and
disorient people.
And you
don’t want to end up disoriented. You want to remain focused. And you want to
keep making meaningful progress towards improving yourself. Learning how to
convert a bad situation into a positive energy is good for your health. You
become calmer. You stop panicking. You learn to face crises with an objective mind. You
will want to be more strategic. You will focus on addressing the problem.
Instead of feeling the threat that comes with the problem. This is the mindset we
all need. A mindset of an overcomer. When your mind learns to win. Your
reaction changes. You don’t take to desperate measures. Instead, you choose to
understand the problem. And match it with appropriate solutions, which aim to fix the problem completely. You can only make this kind of decisions when you
are calm. And when you have confidence in your abilities. Find that confidence. And face that which you have been postponing for a long time.
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