Why is it important to improve yourself?

Sometimes, when all our doubts, fears and insecurities wrap ourselves up, we always come up with the idea of “I wish I was somebody else.”  More often than not, we think and believe that someone or rather, most people are better than us.- when in reality, the fact is, most people are more scared than us.

You spot a totally eye-catching girl sitting by herself at a party, casually sipping on a glass of Asti Spumanti. You think to yourself, “she looks so perfectly calm and confident.” But if you could read through her transparent mind, you would see a bunch of clouds of thoughts and you might just be amazed that she’s thinking “are people talking about why I am seated here alone?... Why don’t guys find me attractive? …I don’t like my ankles, they look too skinny… I wish I was as intelligent as my best friend.”

We look at a young business entrepreneur and say “Wooh… what else could he ask for?” He stares at himself at the mirror and murmur to himself, “I hate my big eyes… I wonder why my friends won’t talk to me… I hope mom and dad would still work things out.”

Isn’t it funny? We look at other people, envy them for looking so outrageously perfect and wish we could trade places with them, while they look at us and thinks of the same thing. We are insecure of other people who themselves are insecure of us. We suffer from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and lose hope in self improvement because we are enveloped in quiet desperation.

Sometimes, you notice that you have an irritating habit like biting off your finger nails, having a foul mouth, and you – of all people, is the last to know.

I have a friend who never gets tired of talking. And in most conversations, she is the only one who seems to be interested in the things she has to say. So all of our other friends tend to avoid the circles whenever she’s  around, and she doesn’t notices how badly she became socially handicapped – gradually affecting the people in her environment.

One key to self improvement is to LISTEN and TALK to a trusted friend. Find someone who you find comfort in opening up with even the most gentle topics you want to discuss. Ask questions like “do you think I am ill-mannered?”,  “Do I always sound so argumentative?”,  “Do I talk too loud?”,  “Does my breath smell?”,  “Do I ever bore you when were together?”.  In this way, the other person will obviously know that you are interested in the process of self improvement. Lend her your ears for comments and criticisms and don’t give her answers like “Don’t exaggerate! That’s just the way I am!”  Open up your mind and heart as well. And in return, you may want to help your friend with constructive criticism that will also help her improve her self.

One of Whitney Houston’s songs says “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” True enough. In order to love others, you must love yourself too. Remember, you cannot give what you do not have.

Before telling other people some ways on how to improve themselves, let them see that you yourself is a representation and a product of self improvement. Self improvement makes us better people, we then inspire other people, and then the rest of the world will follow.

Stop thinking of yourselves as second-rate beings. Forget the repetitive thought of “If only I was richer… if only I was thinner” and so on.  Accepting your true self is the first step to self improvement. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others only to find out at the end that we’ve got  10 more reasons to envy them.

We all have our insecurities. Nobody is perfect. We always wish we had better things, better features, better body parts, etc. But life need not to be perfect for people to be happy about themselves.Self improvement and loving yourself is not a matter of shouting to the whole world that you are perfect and you are the best. It’s the virtue of acceptance and contentment. When we begin to improve ourselves, we then begin to feel contented and happy.

Build your self esteem, a starter guide to self improvement

So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Darts, at one point or another. These darts will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you.  So which darts should you avoid?

Dart #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned.  Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for a while, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you – “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”  

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change’. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change  changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline.  Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

Motivation, The Heart of Self Improvement

Pain may sometimes be the reason why people change. Getting flunked grades make us realize that we need to study. Debts remind us of our inability to look for a source of income. Being humiliated gives us the ‘push’ to speak up and fight for ourselves to save our face from the next embarrassments. It may be a bitter experience, a friend’s tragic story, a great movie, or an inspiring book that will help us get up and get just the right amount of motivation we need in order to improve ourselves.

With the countless negativities the world brings about, how do we keep motivated? Try on the tips I prepared from A to Z…

A - Achieve your dreams. Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

B - Believe in your self, and in what you can do.

C – Consider things on every angle and aspect. Motivation comes from determination. To be able to understand life, you should feel the sun from both sides.

D – Don’t give up and don’t give in. Thomas Edison failed once, twice, more than thrice before he came up with his invention and perfected the incandescent light bulb. Make motivation as your steering wheel.

E – Enjoy. Work as if you don’t need money. Dance as if nobody’s watching. Love as if you never cried. Learn as if you’ll live forever. Motivation takes place when people are happy.

F – Family and Friends – are life’s greatest ‘F’ treasures. Don’t loose sight of them.

G – Give more than what is enough. Where does motivation and self improvement take place at work? At home? At school? When you exert extra effort in doing things.

H – Hang on to your dreams. They may dangle in there for a moment, but these little stars will be your driving force.

I – Ignore those who try to destroy you. Don’t let other people to get the best of you. Stay out of toxic people – the kind of friends who hates to hear about your success.

J – Just be yourself. The key to success is to be yourself. And the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

K – keep trying no matter how hard life may seem. When a person is motivated, eventually he sees a harsh life finally clearing out, paving the way to self improvement.

L – Learn to love your self. Now isn't that easy?

M – Make things happen. Motivation is when your dreams are put into work clothes.

N – Never lie, cheat or steal. Always play a fair game.

O – Open your eyes. People should learn the horse attitude and horse sense. They see things in 2 ways – how they want things to be, and how they should be.

P – Practice makes perfect. Practice is about motivation. It lets us learn repertoire and ways on how can we recover from our mistakes.

Q – Quitters never win. And winners never quit. So, choose your fate – are you going to be a quitter? Or a winner?

R – Ready yourself. Motivation is also about preparation. We must hear the little voice within us telling us to get started before others will get on their feet and try to push us around. Remember, it wasn't raining when Noah build the ark.

S – Stop procrastinating.

T – Take control of your life. Discipline or self control jives synonymously with motivation. Both are key factors in self improvement.

U – Understand others. If you know very well how to talk, you should also learn how to listen. Yearn to understand first, and to be understood the second.

V – Visualize it. Motivation without vision is like a boat on a dry land.

W – Want it more than anything. Dreaming means believing. And to believe is something that is rooted out from the roots of motivation and self improvement.

X – X Factor is what will make you different from the others. When you are motivated, you tend to put on “extras” on your life like extra time for family, extra help at work, extra care for friends, and so on.

Y – You are unique. No one in this world looks, acts, or talks like you. Value your life and existence, because you’re just going to spend it once.

Z – Zero in on your dreams and go for it!!!

"A Better You", 7 ways to self-improvement

I seem to have lost count on how many times I've read and heard of celebrity marriages failing. Not that I care (and personally I don't), it seems strange that we often see movie and TV stars as flawless people, living the fairytale life of riches and glamour. I suppose we all have to stop sticking our heads in the clouds and face reality.

There are many ways to lose your sense of self-esteem despite of how trivial it could get. But whatever happens, we should all try not to lose our own sense of self.

So what does it take to be a cut above the rest? Here are some of the things you can think and improve on that should be enough for a week.

1. Know your purpose
Are you wandering through life with little direction - hoping that you'll find happiness, health and prosperity? Identify your life purpose or mission statement and you will have your own unique compass that will lead you to your truth north every time.

This may seem tricky at first when you see yourself to be in a tight spot or even a dead end. But there's always that little loophole to turn things around and you can make a big difference to yourself.

2. Know your values
What do you value most? Make a list of your top 5 values. Some examples are security, freedom, family, spiritual development, learning. As you set your goals for 2005 - check your goals against your values. If the goal doesn't align with any of your top five values - you may want to reconsider it or revise it.

The number shouldn't discourage you, instead it should motivate you to do more than you can ever dreamed of.

3. Know your needs
Unmet needs can keep you from living authentically. Take care of yourself. Do you have a need to be acknowledged, to be right, to be in control, to be loved? There are so many people who lived their lives without realizing their dreams and most of them end up being stressed or even depressed for that matter. List your top four needs and get them met before it's too late!

4. Know your passions
You know who you are and what you truly enjoy in life. Obstacles like doubt and lack of enthusiasm will only hinder you, but will not derail your chance to become the person you ought to be. Express yourself and honor the people who has inspired you to become the very person you wanted to be.

5. Live from the inside out
Increase your awareness of your inner wisdom by regularly reflecting in silence. Commune with nature. Breathe deeply to quiet your distracted mind. For most of us city slickers it's hard to even find the peace and quiet we want even in our own home. In my case I often just sit in a dimly lit room and play some classical music. There's sound, yes, but music does soothe the savage beast.

6. Honor your strengths
What are your positive traits? What special talents do you have? List three - if you get stuck, ask those closest to you to help identify these. Are you imaginative, witty, good with your hands? Find ways to express your authentic self through your strengths. You can increase your self-confidence when you can share what you know to others.

7. Serve others
When you live authentically, you may find that you develop an interconnected sense of being. When you are true to who you are, living your purpose and giving of your talents to the world around you, you give back in service what you came to share with others -your spirit - your essence. The rewards for sharing your gift with those close to you is indeed rewarding, much more if it were to be the eyes of a stranger who can appreciate what you have done to them.

Self-improvement is indeed one type of work that is worth it. It shouldn't always be within the confines of an office building, or maybe in the four corners of your own room. The difference lies within ourselves and how much we want to change for the better.

Set Up Your Own Personal Development Goals For You To Become Blissful

by Andrew Milton

Everyone of us has our own personal goals. Some of these goals are not even factors we think about: we get up at 6 a.m. each day to arrive at work by 9, or perhaps we go to a restaurant to order food in order to satisfy our food cravings.

These are basic goals to accomplish our fundamental needs. However, as individuals, with our simple vision to be significantly better individuals, we must also have personal development goals. These goals we have to think about, because this signifies a specific aim which is distinct to each individual.

Wanting to enhance on yourself appears like an overwhelming task. However this isn't so if or when you do a little something needed for a specific goal each day. Your initial steps are always the most difficult to get done, but the moment you are on a roll, and you keep at it every single day, then everything will become much easier.

If or when you really want a certain goal that you think could be for your betterment, then the actions you will do to achieve it will not be a problem at all.

Creating a goal is the first step. Precisely what do you like to gain? Precisely what would you want to end up being?

The next step is to set up micro goals, just like train station stops before you can get to your desired destination. It is to keep track of gains in your route towards that goal. These micro goals will help make everything look simple and achievable, which will be ideal if your biggest goal appears to be such a high goal to reach. Each time you complete a mini goal, it’ll seem like you’ve accomplished something, and there is a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

As soon as these micro goals are in place, begin to consider what you can do to accomplish these. This is where the methods come in. Sometimes it is ideal to be very specific, however you don't necessarily have to limit yourself to one or even two ways.

Always bear in mind that there are many different methods to reach your ultimate goal, so continue to be open to brand new opportunities as well as different mechanisms. So at least if one method does not work, you're able to always accomplish it another way.

Here are a few secrets on how to be on your way to reaching those personal development goals:

1. Be optimistic.
You can definitely make it! Bear that in mind. Going after all your goals is achievable. Being optimistic will drive you to persevere no matter what the odds. There is a reason for everything, so difficulties ought to be seen as ways for maturity instead of mere hit blocks which prevent you from your goal.

2. Focus.
Don't be sidetracked. Setting your sights on your goal will make you stay on track. Exploring other stuff or turning back means you're not anticipating, and the most effective way to keep focus as well as concentration is actually to look forward.

Here are some secrets to how you can achieve your personal development goals.

Article Source: Set Up Your Own Personal Development Goals For You To Become Blissful

The basic principles of your success

Author: Peter

Everyone wants to be efficient, yet only a few manage. Why do you think that is? Are they more amazing, do they have more money or are they just generally lucky?

Perhaps they are, but let me tell you the key. Success has nothing to do with them. Sure it is nice if you got them, but what really is important is your mind-set.

Simply put efficient people think in a different way than the rest. They have fantastic workouts and the self-discipline to keep with them. It will take
effort to get there but the best aspect of it is, anyone can get there. I have seen people who had organizations that offered them with a fantastic
income, and they were not exceptional persons.

Often I pay attention to what people say: 'I could do better than that, they are doing this wrong.'. So why don't you? Who is there to stop you? That's
what differentiates them from the others. They did not just talk about it, they acted on it. Believe me, most principles can be turned effective, if
only you had the self-discipline to make them more than just wishes.

So it all comes down to you. If you want your way of life to be different, you need to alter your habits first. Once you have customized yourself, the rest will follow.

How many people do you know that have bad habits? Perhaps you don't even have to go far to see it, they may be your friends, nearby family members, or
even yourself. I know I am responsible of a few, but I am consistently managing them. Trying to determine techniques to get better.
Small aspects, but if you do enough of these little problems they will factor a lot to your complete well being. Get just a bit better, just a bit more
well read, comprehend just a simple new skill.

In time you will have customized yourself. And the best aspect about it? Once you start improving yourself, you will want to see how far you can go.

Next thing you know, you are one of the efficient and people are asking you what you did to get there.

It is so simple, yet most of us are too gradual to do anything about it. It is not our error, we are taught to be this way. In this day and age
everything is just a flip of a switch. We came to believe that we are eligible to everything, it is our right. The quicker you wake up from this dream,
the better off you will be.

It is important to know if you are developing any achievements. Not only will you see how far you've gone but it's also a impressive motivational
source. You need to stay motivated. It is unimportant how, so long as it functions. We are all different and what goes for some, might not be good for
others.
This is where goals come into the picture. Set cost-effective goals to accomplish that way you provide yourself with a moral boost to go further.

The conclusion on things:

• Realise the aspects you do to set yourself back
• Come up with little ideas that move you the right direction
• Keep doing them until they become a habit
• Set authentic goals to achieve
• Find techniques to stay motivated

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/goal-setting-articles/the-basic-principles-of-your-success-6143349.html

About the Author

My name is Peter and I am a student of life.

I hail from Hungary but moved to the UK about two years ago. I am currently living in London and trying to make it in the big city. I am interested in personal development, goal setting, travelling, IT and design.