Do you realize how convenient it is to always blame the people in our lives or others whenever things go south? Take being in a romantic relationship for instance. It’s just so much easier to play the victim and blame your partner whenever there’s some misunderstanding, without particularly noticing where you also went wrong. Then, when your partner tries to call you out on your contribution to the misunderstanding, you think he/she is trying to turn it on you or call you out unnecessarily, instead of actually giving their utterances a second thought. And no, this just doesn’t happen with romantic relationships but with all other relations, we may find ourselves in.
Whether we choose to accept it, we may all be carrying several negative behaviors around like baggage and never realize that we need to drop them in order to progress. Because we all undergo changes, we may add on negative or positive behaviors without noticing it. It could either come through the movies we watch, the friends we surround ourselves with, the community we live in, the books we read, etc. It’s, therefore, necessary to take some time off, to do some really honest self-assessments once in a while, in order to become better versions of ourselves.
Let’s Look at Some Self-improvement Tips.
- Recognize The Need for an Assessment. We ought to realize or see the need for an honest self-assessment, before journeying on the road to improvement. Food and Tech companies for instance are always conducting research, evaluations, assessments, etc… just to produce better results. Hence, we ought to do more as humans. We need to always do better than our old selves.
- Make a list of all the things you used to do in the past that you don’t do anymore and vice-versa. Once the need for self-assessment has been identified, you could get yourself a journal, and pen down all the habits/behaviors you had in the past that you no longer have and vice-versa. Follow up by crossing out all the negatives on both sides and do not forget to give yourself some flowers for the positives. Your negative habits could be several things like, money mismanagement, bad eating habits, poor communication skills, the absence of social life etc. Just try to be as honest with yourself as possible.
- You can try to put your identified negative habits/behaviors/traits in an order of importance. What I mean is that there are certain habits although negative, that may not have a pressing need for improvement. This does not mean they don’t need to be worked on, it just means they could wait for a while. For instance, improving your financial management may not be as pressing as your diet concerns.
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- Set some targets for yourself. Just don’t say “I will work on A, B, or C”. The when is as important as the how. Hence, it’s important to set for yourself targets. For instance, a month from now, I’ll want to lose 30 pounds of weight. But we all know it just won’t happen simply because you have set the targets. You need to determine the hows and stay focused. Disciplined even, because change is not the least bit comfortable. And don’t forget to pick up yourself where you may fall along the way. Nobody has it together 100% all the time.
Finally, do not forget to evaluate your progress. Evaluating your progress would help you be better informed about what you are doing wrong or (and) right. This way, you get to seal the loopholes or find better ways to achieve your targets.
Always remember, it all starts and ends with the Mind!
Keep moving.
