Think about all the amazing people you admire. They succeeded not through one giant leap, but through small and continuous improvements. The challenge of becoming a better version of yourself often feels like a bit of a roller coaster ride. It's difficult, happens at variable speeds, and can generally end in failure. But life is more than just a marathon, so you can always start over and improve.
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Stop striving for radical changes in your personality!
There is no panacea. You must fully devote yourself to the process and enjoy it. You cannot avoid hard work, without which it is impossible to become better. Every incredibly successful person you know has gone through this tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming process that ultimately produces results. Therefore, stop looking for easy and quick ways to get what you want.
Instead of reading all the self-improvement articles looking for that one golden idea that will make you incredibly effective, focus on the work you need to do. You can inspire yourself to achieve, but the only way to achieve anything is to work long and hard. It is impossible to achieve stunning success in life with the help of one useful life hack. It's not that simple.
Politeness
A successful person always knows how to keep himself under control. He will not allow himself to lash out at others over trifles and ruin the mood of everyone around him. If you decide to engage in personal growth, then you should start forming such a useful habit. In fact, it never hurts to be polite. Developed politeness helps you concentrate on the task at hand and not be distracted by extraneous stimuli. In addition, it is much more comfortable to communicate with friends in a friendly atmosphere. If you are also thinking about how to start developing yourself as a person, you must first learn how to treat others correctly. This is not always easy to do, but you have to try. People are usually drawn to those who have a positive attitude, know how to make the right impression, and do not forget to give a pleasant speech. Growing above yourself means reconsidering your attitude towards life in time, finding something pleasant for yourself.
Your big, ambitious goals don't inspire you!
Your attempts to become a better person usually end in failure because your ambitious goals prevent you from taking action instead of inspiring you to take action. It is very difficult to move towards achieving unrealistic goals. You will be slowed down by what should normally give you energy.
Human productivity and the ability to achieve results are inextricably linked to brain function. Big, audacious goals scare our brains. And when something scares our brain, it goes into “freeze” mode. It's unlikely that you want this. If you constantly expect too much from yourself, you will lose the energy you need to take decisive action.
Setting a goal for yourself - no matter how simple it is - is always easy. Everyone has goals. The real problem is the unwillingness at times to admit that sacrifices will have to be made to achieve these goals.
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If you want to achieve results, you need to create a system that will work. Instead of a goal, come up with a successful system or process. Once you solve one short-term problem, the next one will no longer seem like a problem. It is important to create a system and fully devote yourself to executing the plan.
Here's what writer and entrepreneur James Clear says about this:
We put unnecessary stress on ourselves when we strive to lose weight, succeed in business, or write a best-selling novel. But instead of such big, radical goals, you can simplify everything and focus on your daily work and your schedule. When you think about the work and not the result, you enjoy what is happening and improve at the same time.
How to become a strong personality?
Self-analysis helps a person identify his own preferences and desires. There are various personality tests that allow individuals to understand themselves. With their help, a person can get a lot of new information about himself, discover hidden creative potential, and learn about his real abilities and inclinations. After passing the tests, you need to use existing techniques to move from a weak nature to a strong personality. First of all, you need to strengthen your inner strength. It represents the emotional, cognitive and physical resources of the individual. First you need to listen to your body and imagination. Internal uncertainty arises from the fear of not being able to cope with some situation, of failing. Identifying your own fears, eradicating them, solving various problems, life prospects give additional strength to a person, as well as confidence in the future.
To get rid of fears, you need to write down your experiences in the opposite sense in a notebook. The technique of this method is as follows: first you need to recognize and experience your own negative emotions, then transform them into positive statements and only then record them in a notebook. Read biographies of famous people who reached the top thanks to their strong character. It was their charisma and character strengths that allowed them to gain fame. Carefully study their life path, pay attention to all the small details of ascent to a high level. The following exercise leads to a good result: establish eye contact with any passerby, look into his eyes for as long as possible. You can try to talk to a stranger on the street. If you accidentally find yourself in a queue, start a conversation with the people standing next to you.
Watch your gestures. You can use a mirror for this purpose. Smile at your reflection. Your face and body were given to you by nature, and therefore are of particular value. Only very strong people are able to realize this fact. They will not create artificial beauty by exhausting themselves with diets and torturing themselves with plastic surgery. The “Symbol of Victory” method helps to increase self-confidence. First you need to choose some kind of pattern or geometric figure. Turn it into your symbol of victory over personal weak character traits. Keep this talisman with you always. Even a quick glance at it will remind you of victory. A talisman of self-confidence can be a certain scent of perfume or cologne, a specific accessory, item of clothing, dress or suit.
Self-improvement is not a final process!
Learning should not end after formal education. Continuous and independent pursuit of new knowledge can enrich your life and make you a better person.
Self-improvement is not a final process. You won't be able to reach the finish line. Even if you have made some progress and want to stay at your current level, you will have to continue doing what helped you improve.
The first step to improving your life and becoming a better version of yourself will not come easy. No one will promise you that things will get easier, but things can get better. You just need to start acting and don’t stop there. Remember: it is better to try, fail and try again than not even try.
Setting a goal
Before you make any attempts to understand your own essence, you need to understand where you want to go. Setting a goal is important. You must clearly understand what is important and meaningful to you. If you have a specific task in front of you, it becomes easier to achieve the desired result. Anyone who knows how to set a goal, as a rule, does not suffer from unfulfilled intentions. Remember that the Universe always strives to give you exactly what you truly want.
It is only important to believe in your dream, to achieve with all your might what your heart desires. And when we have no idea what will make us happy, we can stagnate in one place for years, but never get off the ground. Personal growth always involves a thorny path, which in any case becomes not so easy.
What is Kaizen philosophy and how does it work?
"Kaizen" - translated from Japanese as "continuous improvement"
This concept was created by American business theorists in the post-World War II period. The Japanese adopted this idea of smooth, gradual improvement and gave it a name - kaizen - from Japanese "continuous improvement".
Although kaizen was originally created for business development, it is equally applicable to personal growth.
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The essence of the idea is to concentrate on gradually improving your life and every day becoming even a little better than the previous one.
As Brett & Kate McKay write in The Art of Manliness:
Instead of trying to make drastic changes in a short time, improve yourself a little every day - this will make it easier for you to make the changes you need. Every day, do everything you can to become 1% better at something that interests you. No more needed - just 1%.
This may seem like too little, but these small improvements will add up to one another. At first, the result will seem quite insignificant, but gradually you will begin to notice changes. It may take months or even years, but change will definitely come if you focus on continuous 1% improvement.
Ways of self-development
- Choose priorities . To go to the top without stopping or wandering, a person needs to have a clear idea of the direction of movement. Stephen Covey, a famous coach and business consultant, focused on the fact that most today choose a watch as the main metaphor for their lives, when they should be guided primarily by a compass. The main task of the individual is to find his true path. The focus should not be on speed, plans and schedules, but on priorities.
- Awareness of the fullness of life . Often in the flow of life, a person perceives the world either as a gray viscous substance or in the form of a motley chaotic kaleidoscope. To perceive the fullness of the moment, the harmony of the world and its diversity, it is worth applying the principle of “being here and now.” At any moment you can give yourself the command: “Stop. Be aware. Feel it."
- Concentration of attention. The Indians have a story that the human brain is a small monkey. She constantly climbs somewhere, itches, examines something, chews, but she can be tamed. The same must be done with consciousness. When the mind jumps from thought to thought, from idea to idea, tell it: “Come back! Look here!" By the way, I want to assure you that this technique works flawlessly. I tested it on myself and came to the conclusion that with the help of self-control you can completely focus on a task, discarding everything else. This way I accumulate consciousness and the efficiency in the process becomes many times higher.
- Write down your thoughts. To form and strengthen any intention, I advise you to record all the brilliant and not so brilliant thoughts that pop up in your mind about a particular problem. Use a notepad, organizer or voice recorder for this. By instructing your subconscious to generate ideas in a given direction, you will soon receive a lot of hints and understand what and how to do next. Also, when debriefing, pay attention to repetitive tasks. It has been noticed that a task postponed three times is not worth the effort spent on solving it.
- Time. Be careful with such a valuable resource as time. Use time management techniques. It is worth learning about voluntary forgetfulness, since some problems are solved by themselves, and working on the ability to track and block “time wasters”: empty conversations, networking, absorption and reaction to unnecessary information.
- Environment . Communication with people who can teach you something, inspire you, lead you. At the same time, I advise you to limit your interaction with those who drag you down, burden you with whining and complaints.
- Movement towards the goal . Once you master the art of small steps, you will steadily move towards your goal. The slightest movement in the outlined direction is already a result.
- Multi-vector . The ability to achieve several results in one unit of time. For example, when you get on a treadmill, you can plug headphones with acidic music into your ears, or you can listen to an audiobook or repeat words in a foreign language. Which option is more effective? Undoubtedly - the second! But you can’t get carried away here; if the task is serious, it’s better to fully concentrate on it.
- Stress. The author of the book “How to Work 4 Hours a Week,” Tim Ferriss, advises learning how to use stress. Sounds paradoxical. Is not it? But it is a certain level of stress that creates sufficient motivation in you. It turns out that there is so-called “good” stress - emotional outbursts (not always with a plus sign) that force you to leave your comfort zone.
Of course, the ways of self-development are not exhausted by this list. Every spiritual practice, every psychology guru will most likely offer you many other methods. The ones described in this article seem to me the most universal.
Why Kaizen Works
Kaizen philosophy once again reminds us that to maintain success, results must be maintained. Think of a small step you could take every day to gradually move towards your goal.
Improving by 1% every day is a simple and effective way to achieve big goals. 1% seems like a small result. This is true. But it's easy and doable. This approach applies to most things people want to get better at.
This seems like a much less daunting and much more achievable goal. Perhaps pursuing grandiose goals is in some sense more interesting, but kaizen is better at helping you get results and maintain them.
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