Self-improvement for lifelong success
By: Akash Patankar
Tags: Planning, Self Improvement, Commitment, Success, Self-awareness

We always hear “There is always room for improvement”, why? Because self-improvement is a lifelong journey that can have long-lasting positive impacts on our personal and professional life. There’s so much to talk about self-improvement that you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just another fad or buzzword. It’s not though; it’s not even a new idea. In fact, it’s been around forever. Since ancient times, mankind has been obsessed with growing and getting better. In simple terms, self-improvement is an investment in yourself, to improve yourself. It’s a process of interchange developing a positive mindset, casting out negative habits, and replacing them with new positive ones. It’s about making positive changes in all aspects of your life, everything from eating better to improve your professional skills to having healthier relationships with friends and family. It doesn’t happen overnight. Of course, it takes time, effort, and commitment; sounds daunting? well if it does, don’t worry. Start by simply making a commitment to self-improvement.

But, self-improvement isn’t easy committing to it, and following through on this commitment requires disciplined effort, sacrifice. Is it worth it? You might ask, it is investing the time and effort required for genuine self-improvement that can have significant positive effects on both your professional and personal life. So in what ways can you benefit from making the effort to improve yourself first, committing to self-improvement, often presents new opportunities. When you improve and grow as a person, new opportunities may come up that wouldn’t have been available to you before. This is because committing to self-improvement makes you open to new opportunities. And the more you learn, develop, and grow the greater your capacity for continuous self-improvement, which further expands your potential and gives rise to even more opportunities. It may mean you’re able to take on roles or positions that you wouldn’t otherwise have been qualified for or capable of performing. Committing to self-improvement also increases self-confidence levels, self confidence is the foundation or the springboard to a genuine pursuit of your dreams. You have to believe in yourself and believe in your dreams to make them happen. As you undergo a process of self-improvement. You’re strengthening that mindset and building on your self-confidence. For instance, when you learn a new skill or enhance an existing one. Doesn’t that boost your confidence and doesn’t it make you feel that you’re capable of even more. Another major benefit of self-improvement is that it helps create a better version of yourself, which is ultimately what self-improvement is all about. The focus is on growth, not goals. There’s a big difference. When you’re goal-oriented, the journey is over once you achieve your goal. But when you’re growth-oriented. The journey never ends. You’re on a trajectory, that’s always leading to that better version of yourself, self-improvement can also increase your credibility with others. It’s human nature to have the most respect for people with competence and experience. Think about it, if you need advice on something, would you ask someone who’d spent many years studying and working in the area or someone who had a passing interest. Competence is central to credibility and credibility is central to influencing others because self-improvement enhances your competence. It ultimately increases your credibility. Self-improvement is growth, and when there’s growth, there’s inevitably some pain. Don’t let that discourage you. The benefits of committing to self-improvement are huge, so significant in fact, that they’ll change your life forever, and ways you can only imagine.

So, what is Committing to self-improvement?

There are eight principles to help you do this successfully. First, if you want to grow as a person, you must choose to grow. That means making conscious decisions to improve. It’s the only way growth can happen. The second principle is starting now. Don’t postpone or procrastinate. If there are things you could do to improve yourself; do them now. Start today. Not tomorrow or the next day. Next, seeking self-development over self-fulfillment; self-fulfillment is essentially about feeling good, whereas self-development is about so much more. It’s about developing your potential, perhaps by identifying an area of personal or professional development, you’d like to work on and set some goals that achieve them. And don’t relax and congratulate yourself for past achievements. Stay hungry. That’s the fourth principle, it’s okay to celebrate your successes, but never stop working toward a higher level and greater growth. As soon as you achieve one goal, start working toward the next one. Fifth, be a continual learner. Ensure you learn something new every day. This is fundamental to improving yourself. You need to keep learning to replace forgotten or obsolete knowledge and to build on what you already know. The next principle is to create a growth plan. If you want a life of continual learning and development, you need to create a specific plan for how and where you need to grow and be sure to follow it. The seventh principle is to pay the price. Self-improvement involves discipline, effort, sacrifice, time, and often money. It involves uncertainty and can be uncomfortable and lonely. It’s a high price, but it’s worth it. The final principle is to apply what you have learned. Learning alone has very limited value so you need to apply your learning, put it into action. Try to apply new information as soon as you learn it. Self-improvement means never settling for good enough, it means never allowing yourself to get too comfortable. As soon as you start to feel comfortable. It’s time to push yourself forward again, it’s time to climb higher. But an effective, long-lasting, and genuine commitment to self-improvement requires more; It requires a plan; a full proof plan.

Now, how to create a self-improvement plan?

It’s very important to formalize a plan, five steps can help you to do this. The first step is to recognize the limits. It takes time and practice to develop a new skill, attitude, or mindset, big changes don’t happen overnight. So be realistic about what’s possible. It can take months to affect real change and the more things you want to change or improve the more time it will take. The second step is to prioritize growth areas. There are limits to what you can change or develop in a given time. So prioritize the skills and attitudes that you need to develop and focus first on the most important ones. Once you’ve achieved your main priority. You can move on to your second, third, and so on, but always keep focused on one thing at a time. Next, identifying inspiring goals. Your goals must be framed in a way that inspires you, so that you feel motivated, even compelled to act; goals should be exciting. Don’t say, my goal is to create better advertising campaigns, instead say, my goal is to create advertising campaigns that form an unbreakable bond between the brand and the customer, no matter what your goal is, shape it and present it in an inspiring way. The next step is to set a daily self-improvement agenda. This entails breaking your goals down into smaller, more manageable nuggets and identifying daily activities that bring you closer to reaching your overall goals. These are precise specific activities that serve almost as stepping stones toward your goals and agenda will help you make real progress towards your goals. The final step is to reward yourself when things are going well. Motivation takes care of itself. It’s easy to keep going. Occasionally, however, you’ll hit bumps in the road when progress stalls and challenges seem steeper. These are the times when your drive and motivation can wane. That’s why it’s important to incentivize yourself with a reward. It can be anything from ice cream to a walk through the park. As soon as you reach a milestone or achieve a goal, reward yourself, creating a self-improvement plan is a repetitive process. Your goals will likely change as you develop in certain areas, and refocus on other areas that still need improvement. Your plan is a work in progress, update and revisit it regularly during your self-improvement journey because self-improvement is learning. Self-improvement and learning go hand in hand. It requires you to be open and teachable so you can accept new ideas, change, and improve yourself. Fortunately, there are several activities you can practice to help you develop an openness to learning.

Thus, how to maintain a Teachable attitude?

The first activity is to reflect on daily activities. Take time at the end of each day to reflect on your day’s activities. Write down what went well. And what did it, as well as what you did differently. Reflection provides valuable insight by enhancing your awareness and understanding of your life. You’ll discover ways to improve based on your reflections. Another activity is to listen instead of talk. After all, if you don’t listen, you won’t learn anything. And when you genuinely listen to others, they’ll feel a stronger connection to you, stronger connections mean more contacts, which in turn, mean more opportunities. Remember though, listening doesn’t just mean not talking. When the other person is talking, focus, be there in the present moment, and genuinely listen. It’s also important to look for learning opportunities, seek out people you can learn from. Try to avoid people who are immersed in negativity and cynicism and instead. Surround yourself with people who are open-minded, energetic, enthusiastic, and striving for more from life. In this way, you’ll develop relationships with growth potential, think about who is most likely to help you grow. It could be industry experts, people who challenge your thinking, high achievers who inspire you, or creative people who illuminate new perspectives for you. Developing relationships with these people can help you achieve personal growth. Another key activity is to ask questions, observing things, and asking why is perhaps the best way to open your mind and learn. The people who learn most are those who ask the right questions, ask a question, and truly listen to the answer at least once every day. For example, perhaps you have a high performing colleague who always uniquely approaches a particular task. Now’s the time to ask why. You’ll surely learn from the answer. You should also embrace failure, we view it as an opportunity to learn, rather than as something shameful to be avoided at all costs. Fear of failure can paralyze you or stop you from growing. So try to view failure as a formative and educational experience. For example, maybe you’ve had an unsuccessful job interview in the past. Did you view it as an embarrassing or shameful experience, or did you play it back in your mind to pinpoint where you went wrong? Everyone likes to think of themselves as being open to new ideas and new learning. It’s not always the case though, and it’s not something that necessarily happens automatically. That’s why it’s a good idea to take steps to develop and maintain an openness to learning to be teachable because self-improvement can’t be achieved alone it necessarily involves others. It sounds like a contradiction but self-improvement requires an openness to new ideas and learning. And the way to learn is often through other people and identifying and learning from a mentor is one of the most effective ways to achieve self-growth.

Duly, how to build an effective Mentoring Relationship?

The mentor relationship can be as formal or informal as you like. It just involves a more experienced professional who offers guidance, advice, and assistance from a real-world perspective. There are however key characteristics that define a positive and useful mentoring relationship. The first characteristic is personal commitment, both you and your mentor must be personally committed to working together, and sticking with it for a sufficient period of time. And you need to be committed to putting in the time and effort before meetings, during meetings, and after meetings. Otherwise, it just won’t work. So for example, if you agree to touch base once a week then schedule this hour every week without fail. The second characteristic is flexibility. If a mentoring relationship is to work, you as the mentee have to be open to new suggestions and willing to listen to your mentor, a good mentor will take the initiative, and ask for advice when required. And a good mentor stays focused on the ultimate objective displaying flexibility by adapting to the bumps and distractions that inevitably emerge along the way. Another characteristic is the ability to accept alternative points of view. In some respects, the whole point of mentoring is to provide you with a more experienced person’s perspective and opinion to benefit from this; however, you must accept feedback, and be willing to view things from the mentor’s perspective. Sometimes this calls for humility and patience. The final characteristic of developing a positive and effective mentoring relationship is openness. It’s essential to talk openly and honestly with your mentor because discussing your needs and objectives with your mentor will help in structuring the mentorship. Even though there are no hard and fast rules on how a mentoring relationship needs to be structured, incorporating these four characteristics will direct you both towards an effective relationship. But to maintain an effective relationship, incorporating these characteristics is not sufficient, for that, you have to remove the self-imposed barriers; because the barriers to self-improvement are always self-imposed.

But what are the self-imposed barriers, and how can you avoid them?

There are five self-imposed barriers that can affect your self-improvement journey. The biggest barrier is doubt; that inner voice that makes you feel inadequate and overwhelmed. If you don’t think you can do something, then you won’t because doubt kills motivation. Think about a manager who instead of making decisions, asks others for directions, he doubts himself so much that he’s afraid to make a move. So he doesn’t develop as a leader. The flip side is if you think you can achieve something, you’re more motivated to do the work and more likely to achieve your goal. Muting the voice of doubt isn’t easy, but consider all the last opportunities out there, it may help you challenge that doubtful inner voice. One of the most imposing barriers to self-improvement is fear. Fear manifests itself in many ways. Some people fear change. Others fear being mocked or ridiculed for what they do, or what they want, and others fear standing out from the crowd, being different. The most prevalent fear is the fear of failure, how afraid of failing are you because it stops you from trying. If you don’t try, you won’t fail. Right. Of course, if you don’t try, you won’t succeed, either. What if you were someone with a head full of great ideas, but fear of trying something and failing. Wouldn’t that be a terrible waste? Another barrier to self-improvement is past failures and events. It’s human nature to dwell on these, but that can obstruct personal growth and development because you’re immersed in past failure, not future possibilities. You have to move on, taking lessons learned with you. Forget about yesterday’s failures and focus instead on today’s goals, a lack of support is another barrier. It’s unfortunate when it happens, but we’ve all experienced it, negative messages, whether, from coworkers, acquaintances, friends, family bring us down sapping our energy, enthusiasm, and confidence. That’s why it’s important to surround yourself with positive, driven, and like-minded people who will support you, encourage you and motivate you. Another barrier to self-improvement is a lack of planning. If you’re a passive participant in your life, accepting whatever is handed to you. Never setting goals of your own, you may never achieve your potential self-improvement requires planning. It requires you to set goals, determine how you will achieve those goals, and work out a timeline for success. throughout your life, you’ll encounter challenges that you can’t control, but you do have control over most obstacles you’ll face when trying to improve yourself. That’s because most are internal obstacles, things you can change, believing in what you’re doing, facing your fears, letting go of past negative experiences, building a positive support network, and planning your efforts will help you overcome these obstacles.