At some point in your life, did the thought of taking a journey to self-improvement ever cross your mind? Are you someone who would like to try to improve yourself? What made you decide to stop or to start? How did I know?
Well, you won’t be reading this if you had a successful journey or have tried it already, but I’m not here to discuss that. I want you to embark on that journey, and this time you will surely succeed. This guide can help you understand what self-improvement really is as well as the things you need to have and do to attain success in your endeavor.
Looking at the basic definition, self-improvement is the act of improving your character, status, or knowledge using your own efforts. It is the pursuit to make yourself better in any and every aspect of your life. However, there are more things and self-improvement tips you need to know and do to make your self-improvement permanent.
Self-improvement Tips that Can Help You Attain Success
Self-improvement usually starts with self-awareness and your ability to adopt useful, beneficial habits. Like many people, you must be spending more time getting to know the individuals that interact with you than getting to know yourself. If you would just spend time analyzing your thoughts, things you do, your habits, and other things that are uniquely yours, you might be surprised to find out that you don’t know yourself that much.
To become more self-aware, you need to stop lying to yourself and face the truth – bravely. I used to hide behind a lie that I fabricated to suit my current circumstance in an attempt to make myself better. But, it only resulted in more problems later. If only I had been truthful and tried to face the bitter reality at the time. It was an agonizing lesson that taught me to never lose my true self and to face reality no matter how harsh it may be.
Right now, you could be living a lie. You may have fabricated that lie some time ago, but it has already become your reality. Many people lie about their progress when trying to reach a certain goal.
Look at these examples and see if you find something familiar in any of them:
– You want to lose weight and claim that you are eating a healthy diet, but the truth is that you did not do a major change in your eating habits. While it’s true that you are eating a healthy diet, you chose to omit the fact that you are also eating a lot of unhealthy snacks in-between meals.
– If you are a writer with a goal to be more creative, you will try your best to write more words than usual. But in reality, your output is way below what your publisher or editor demands from you. The sad truth is that you are not even meeting the minimum productivity level that’s expected from you.
– If you are trying to learn the Korean language, you will convince yourself and those around you that you have always been consistent in your lesson. But in truth, you usually watch your favorite Korean dramas and say that you are actually learning the language.
The last example may have a hint of truth in it, but you still failed to do the lesson that can help you progress quickly. You should convert the time you spend creating absurd and sometimes illogical excuses into a more meaningful one, like actually doing what you are supposed to do.
Stop hiding behind your lies and come forward to face the truth. You need to seriously cultivate your self-awareness so you can embark on a journey to self-improvement.
Here are some of the things that you can do to improve yourself. These self-improvement tips are not the usual or devil-may-care points that you have seen somewhere. But, I can assure you that you will get the idea of what you need to do to cultivate self-improvement.
1. You must be decisive in developing your habits, behavior, and thoughts.
These things can help you deal with the different challenges in your life. You need to create your life strategy using your useful collection of thought patterns, behavior, and habits that can help you find the fitting solution to your problems, satisfy your needs, meet your goals, and keep you alive.
There may be times when you have terrible strategies and once you have spotted the problem, you need to apply the corrective process immediately. This can help lessen the damage and bring you back to the right track. You need to keep your vigilance to see immediately if something is amiss.
2. You need to employ careful, meticulous engineering when tackling some of the issues.
Sometimes, the best solution may require unorthodox planning. Tackling an obstacle head-on may not be the prudent choice, especially if you can go around it without inflicting harm to yourself or putting yourself in danger.
Tackling a problem head-on may be the quickest way to solve it, but it may also be the most foolish thing to do – you could lose your life in the process. What’s the use of finding the quickest solution when you won’t get to enjoy the fruits of your efforts.
3. Take time and create careful, measured steps in self-development.
Taking slow, sure steps are better than running to your goal. You tend to skip or ignore the detrimental things when you try to hasten your steps toward your self-improvement goal.
If you try to pay close attention to every step you take, you will immediately notice the small, injurious things that can prevent you from reaching your goal. You can address these things right away and prevent them from causing trouble.
4. You need to recognize the ones that create more problems among the solutions you employ.
Are you someone who overeats to help relieve your stress? You may feel relieved of your stress and satisfied with the outcome, but you may face another problem. What if you need to relieve your stress every day? Don’t be surprised when you notice that you begin putting on weight.
If you have noticed that a certain solution to your usual problem is bringing more harm than good, it is best to find an alternative way out. If the trend goes on, your road to self-improvement will take longer than it should.
5. Take good care of your body.
You may have heard this advice a hundred times already, but it is truly effective. You need to eat a balanced and healthy diet, exercise regularly, sleep on time and take a nap when needed, drink plenty of water, and meditate when you can. These things can help you maintain or lose weight to give you a body full of vigor.
If you are healthy and lively, you will be able to do more and remain focused on your goals. Remaining healthy or achieving optimum health is a crucial part of self-improvement. You may need to make some adjustments to meet the requirements of having a healthy, fit body.
6. Love yourself a bit more.
I believe this is one of the best self-improvement tips we should follow! Love yourself a bit more and listen to the things that your body needs. If your body is already begging you to take a rest, you must stop what you are doing and take a short nap. Pamper yourself even once in a while by going to a spa, visiting a beauty salon, and spending some alone time to relax. Loving yourself can do wonders for your self-improvement journey.
7. Learn something new.
You may take an online class on programming, marketing, or any short course that you want to try. Learning something new can help a lot in reaching your goal of self-improvement. You can gain more confidence and self-esteem.
The community colleges also have various low-cost, continuing-education courses that you may want to consider. Just check out the community college that you prefer and inquire about the requirements that you need to secure so you can enroll.
8. Set realistic goals for self-improvement.
When setting your goals, make sure that they are realistic and you can achieve them within your current ability. It is also important to set a realistic time frame to achieve your goal.
If you happen to fail on a certain endeavor, accept your failure, and proceed to your next plan. You may choose to try again, taking note of the things that went wrong the first time, and avoid doing it again.
9. Choose the company of people who can give a positive influence.
People full of negativity can bring you down with them. You need to be in the company of positive people who can lift you up and motivate you to be better. If you have friends that keep bringing you down or always criticizing you for every little thing you do, it’s time to turn your back and leave them behind.
10. Practice mindfulness and follow the minimalist way of living.
When you practice mindfulness, you can stay focused on what you do without room for any distraction. A cluttered home or workspace can create a distraction that may pose some difficulties for you as you try to keep your focus on self-improvement activities.
The minimalist way of living allows you to keep only the essential things around the home and eliminate the existence of clutter. You will also notice that you are more relaxed and calmer when you start adopting the minimalist way of living.
How to Track Your Progress Following these Self-Improvement Tips
It is quite difficult to track your self-improvement progress without exerting effort. Luckily, there are online tools that can help you track how well your self-improvement tips are working.
1. Strides
Strides is a simple app that can help you set and track the goals that you have. You need to sign up for a membership to start enjoying the benefits of this app. You can use the tool to track and see your day-to-day progress.
2. Pareto Analysis
The Pareto analysis method can help you focus on your priorities by recognizing the problems that can be solved almost immediately when you make specific modifications.
3. HabitBull
This online tool is good for tracking long-term personal goals as well as your unfavorable habits. You can set hourly schedules, daily plans, or weekly goals. It has an online community that can provide great support and inspiration from fellow members.
Other online tools that you can use are Penzu and Trello. If you prefer keeping a journal and writing everything down by hand, you can also do that. You can create different trackers, such as behavior tracker and chore/event tracker, as well as daily and weekly logs. You can add other entries that you think can help you track your progress.
Self-development or self-improvement is not difficult to do, but it does require a lot of dedication, determination, patience, and discipline. Follow these self-improvement tips and let us know how they helped you.
