No one is perfect and no one needs to be. Imagine how boring your life would be if you had no personal goals. In order to become better and achieve your highest potential, you need to continuously work toward self-improvement. Here are 11 easy steps to help you become a better person today:-
1. Evaluate Your Strengths and Weaknesses
To become better, you should first know yourself. Make a list of top 3 areas of your life that you’re good at (strengths) and top 3 areas that you’d like to be better in (weaknesses). You can even ask your friends and family to help you in creating this list. Once that is done, focus on leveraging your strengths more often. You’ll notice that you’re able to become more confident in yourself.
Your weaknesses are your areas of improvement and require maximum focus and effort. Take small steps everyday to work on your weaknesses. This will guarantee that you maintain a learning mindset and keep growing.
When you’re listing your strengths and weaknesses, do not compare yourself with others. Everyone is unique, with different skills and abilities. What might look difficult for you might be easy for someone else, and the reverse is also true.
2. Respect Yourself
Respecting yourself simply means setting standards and boundaries for yourself and never accepting anything lesser in your life. When you respect yourself, you set standards for the type of behavior that you always expect from yourself, no matter the situation. Unlike what is shown in the movies, a lot of it requires you to work on developing your mental strength in addition to your physical attributes.
For starters, here are some quick tips –
i) Work on your anger issues.
ii) Curb your impulsive behavior.
iii) Think before you speak or act.
iv) Don’t let others’ opinions affect how you think about yourself.
This list is not exhaustive, and you can definitely add more to it. However, it can provide you the necessary push to start on the path to building self-respect.
3. Respect Others
If you do not respect others, then you should not expect others to respect you either. Everyone is fighting a battle, so if you treat others with respect, you’ll definitely be respected in return. Showing respect is a sign that you acknowledge and value other people, even if their thoughts and opinions might not be along the same line as yours.
You should to be kind to others, but if someone doesn’t reciprocate it, do not take it personally. Try to support other people when you can, because that is how you build a support network of people. These people will then help you in your time of need.
However, do not let anyone take undue advantage of you. This is why it is important to work on building self respect before you start respecting others.
4. Practise Empathy
This is one of the core tenets of becoming a better version of yourself. By being empathetic, we try to put ourselves in others’ shoes, and see things from their perspective. It requires you to put your guard down for a while, be compassionate and try to reduce their distress. This results in improving the quality of your life too.
Try to be a good listener, and most importantly, listen to understand, not to just reply. Be kind and patient with others because most people (due to their life situations or otherwise) would not exhibit the level of self awareness that you do. So it is important to allow them to be the best version of themselves in your presence.
The difference between Empathy and Sympathy however, lies in fully indulging in what the other person is experiencing. Sympathy only requires you to feel sorry for someone’s misfortune, while Empathy requires you to not only feel their pain, but also take steps to reduce it.
5. Practise Gratitude
We often forget how powerful the simple act of being grateful is for our well being. When we’re grateful for everything positive that we have in our lives, we attract more of it. Gratitude can strengthen relationships, making people feel closer and more committed to their partners and friends.
Gratitude can also help counter the brain’s negativity bias, which is the tendency to focus on negative thoughts and things in the environment. It makes us feel fulfilled and makes room for more blessings in our lives. A grateful person is also less greedy and is genuinely happy for others instead of envying them.
Take some time out of your day to be thankful about everything in your life, both positive and negative. Better still, maintain a gratitude journal so that you can write your thoughts and revisit them when you need motivation.
6. Decision Making
A lot of us feel greater regret for things that we didn’t do, than for the things that we do. Within reasonable limits, take a decision. Even if it’s a bad decision, it is an important part of the learning process. This simple act puts us in control of our lives, instead of us feeling powerless due to what happens to us.
When you take a decision, and follow up with appropriate action, you get a result, which is a measurable parameter. When you do not take a decision (which in itself, is a decision), you rob yourself of the opportunity to learn and grow, because our biggest lessons come from our failures.
Just like any other skill, you get better at taking good decisions with time. However, it is important that you start doing it as soon as possible.
7. Take Care Of Your Physical And Mental Health
A healthy mind lives in a healthy body, and the reverse is true. In today’s digital era, however, neither physical, nor mental health is a priority for most people.
We’re all addicted to our mobile devices 24X7, scrolling endlessly. By doing so, we end up trading our mental and social capital for endless dopamine hits. Our physical health takes a toll as well, because of our sedentary lifestyle.
It is therefore, important for you to not only get some physical exercise everyday (even better if you go to the gym regularly), but also focus on your mental health by practicing mindfulness. Being physically and mentally sound is a great strategy when you’re aiming for overall improvement.
8. Maintain A Winning Mindset
You can never defeat a person who never gives up. But, most of us throw our hands in the air when we’re faced with the first minor setback, never learning from temporary failures, and only realizing the value of those lessons when it’s too late, or never, in some cases.
You should not be afraid to fail, because failure can teach us some valuable lessons that you cannot find in a book or on the internet. Check out this article on how to learn from failure to find out how you can use failure as a stepping stone to success.
Keep growth in perspective, and always think long term when you’re on your journey to become a better person. Try to look at every setback as an opportunity to learn from your mistakes, take mental notes, and do not repeat them again.
A very valuable skill to learn here is Accountability, and once you are able to master it, you’ll become more independent, which will automatically make you a better person.
9. Stop Seeking Validation
Social acceptance is a basic psychological need, but the trouble begins when we try to seek approval for every choice and action from others. This is a huge problem, especially in today’s era of social media, where we allow likes from strangers on the internet decide our self worth.
The constant need to seek approval from others leads to low self-esteem which leads to a vicious cycle of self-doubt and low self worth. However, with a little self awareness and challenging our own negative thoughts, we can break out of this habit.
When you stop seeking validation from others, you are able to develop trust in yourself, and it also builds confidence that you need to become a better version of yourself.
10. Be Yourself
By being your most authentic self, you avoid being sucked into fake relationships that do not add any value to your life. When you are your truest self, you are able to make room in your life for things that really matter to you. You also avoid being pressured into accepting something that you don’t want.
You can only have deep, meaningful relationships with others when you’re honest with yourself and others. Do not be afraid to speak the truth, and stop thinking too much about how others perceive you. Develop self-awareness and stop trying to do what everyone else is doing to become more acceptable.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
– Oscar Wilde
11. Accept Change
One of the biggest reasons why we resist change is because our brains are hard wired for survival, and when we try to make massive changes in our lives, our brains interpret it as a threat and we fear losing whatever little control we have over our circumstances.
When we behave in this manner, we’re essentially scared of being successful, especially when we look at the hard work required. However, this pattern of thinking keeps us fixated in our present situation, and sometimes, it’s too late to do anything.
Once you realize that it is impossible to stay at the same level if you keep improving (making changes) everyday, you’ll be able to see how change can be a powerful tool in your journey to become a better person. No growth can happen in your comfort zone, so the sooner you embrace change, the better.
“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor”
– Alexis Carrel
Final Thoughts
Change and self-improvement can be challenging but are vital for personal growth. By working on your strengths and weaknesses, respecting yourself and others, practising gratitude and by being yourself, you can get started on your path to self-mastery. Embrace the journey with an open heart and mind, and remember that every small step counts!