FIND VITAL RESOURCES to Help You Improve Yourself

The definition of self-improvement is pretty self-explanatory: Self-improvement is the improvement of one's knowledge, status, or character by one's own efforts. It's the quest to make ourselves better in any and every facet of life.

The Best Way to Start Your Self Improvement Journey

Self-improvement almost always starts with your own self-awareness and the ability to transform your bad habits. If you’re serious about transforming your life and improving yourself, you should start with these two thoughts:

• How to Stop Lying to Ourselves: A Call for Self-Awareness: If you’re serious about getting better at something, then one of the first steps is to know—in black-and-white terms—where you stand. You need self-awareness before you can achieve self-improvement.

We often lie to ourselves about the progress we are making on important goals.

For example:

If we want to lose weight, we might claim that we’re eating healthy, but in reality our eating habits haven’t changed very much.

If we want to be more creative, we might say that we’re trying to write more, but in reality we aren’t holding ourselves to a rigid publishing schedule.

If we want to learn a new language, we might say that we have been consistent with our practice even though we skipped last night to watch television.

STOP USING lukewarm phrases like, “I’m doing well when you know you're not.” Or, “I’ve been trying really hard recently.” Rarely do these statements include any type of hard measurement. These are just soft excuses that make us feel better about having a goal that we haven’t made real progress towards. (I know because I’ve been guilty of saying many of these things myself.)

Why do you make little lies matter?

Because you don't mind preventing your own self-awareness. Emotions and feelings are more important than moving forward with the truth. You love to use feel-good statements to track our progress in life. And by living up to your own lies we end up lying to ourselves about what we’re actually doing. It is like when you post on social media and keep more tracks of who hit your like button. But your stupid post still don't bring a good income.

When the stethoscope came along it provided a tool for physicians to get an independent diagnosis of what was going on inside the patient. We can also use tools to get an independent diagnosis of what is going on inside our own lives.

• Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead: For most of us, the path to self-improvement starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. What I’m learning, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things. It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems that works.

If you’re serious about getting better at something, then one of the first steps is to know—in black-and-white terms—where you stand. You need self-awareness before you can achieve self-improvement. Self-awareness is a valuable skill that involves being mindful of your presence, weaknesses, strengths and actions, and how a person displays these qualities. If you're self-aware, you have a clear understanding of your emotional and mental state.