I’ve posted a couple of list-type entries these past few days, and I promise this will be the last one for a while. I’ve got a number of other entries planned, but I wanted to get this one out of the way. In many ways, this is one of the more integral entries that I’ll ever post on this blog, as it ties into the grand theme of the blog in so many ways. This being a self-help blog, most entries mention how you can improve yourself in specific areas. Today I want to look at ten things you can do to improve your overall state of mind, health and enjoyment.
Lists like these are always difficult to write. Sometimes you need to artificially inflate them to include exactly the number of items you were gunning for; sometimes you need to shorten the list down. This time around, it was definitely the second alternative. I could have made this list 20, 30, 40 or even 50 items long, but I decided to go for what I consider to be the ten most important ones.
1. Improve your existing skills! I cannot explain often enough how important this one is. We all have some skills; things that make us who we are. We may be good at writing, singing, playing an instrument, speaking foreign languages, speaking in front of audiences, dancing or mediating. However, there is almost always room for improvement in all of these areas. Take the time to analyze what skill set you are using on a daily basis and see where there is room for improvement.
You may, for example, enjoy playing music on your MIDI keyboard in the evenings. Why not start studying some more musical theory to improve this skill? Why not set yourself the task of writing a short story (say, for example, 5,000 to 10,000 words) every week? I’m sure your skills will improve dramatically – and faster than you expected!
2. Stretch the limits of comfort! Most of us live in a far smaller bubble than we’re capable of. We tend to gravitate towards the same meals during lunch at the office, we take the same route when we go out jogging or walking the dog, we buy similar clothing and we go to the same clubs and pubs during the week-ends. Why not challenge yourself? Try something new? Go to a restaurant where you’ve never eaten and order something that you’ve never had! Try going to a random night club with a friend – or even all by yourself! Some of the best experiences in your life will have come from times where you actively went out of your way to do something you’ve never done before; why not make a habit of this?
3. Challenge yourself! Sometimes, you need to grab hold of yourself and really force yourself to make changes in your life. Say you’ve decided that you’re going to quit smoking, go on a diet or start a healthy exercise routine. Set yourself the challenge of doing said thing for four weeks – 28 days – and have a clearly defined penalty for what you will have to do if you fail. It could be, for example, that you have to donate $100 to a specific charity, treat your closest friends to dinner at a fancy restaurant or something similar. Make sure that the penalty is big enough to motivate you. If you decide, after the 28 days, that this new habit isn’t for you, then you’re free to stop, but make sure that you definitely stick with it for these 28 days. After all, what’s 28 days in the grand scheme of things? You can avoid eating fast food for 28 days, can’t you? … right?
4. Study the people who inspire you! There are many people in life that we can look up to in one way or another. I could easilly list a number of authors, martial artists, personal development coaches, psychologists, philosophers and mucisians who have traits, skills or abilities that I admire. In some way, I want to have those particular skills, but maybe not the rest of what makes that person who he is. What better to do than to study that trait in that person? What is it he does that makes him such a great martial artist, for example? Is it the amount of hours a week that he trains? Is it the general philosophy that he has towards his art? Is it the art itself that is superior? By studying a person and his traits in this way, you may find out what has been holding you back from growing and developing in that area.
5. Design your future self! This one is often brought up in personal development circles. If you’re improving yourself, you must have some sort of notion about what goals you have, right? Why not clearly define them? Write down what sort of person you want to be, what type of life you want to be leading and everything that is related to it. Pick a point in the future, say five or ten years down the line, and write a short description of who you are at this point. Then step back for a moment and look at how you differ from the person you’ve described. Maybe this will help you recognize what actions you need to take to get where you want to be.
6. Read more books! One of the greatest pleasures in life comes from indulging yourself in a great story. Also, one of the best ways to learn a new subject is to read what other people have written about the subject. Avoid pulp literature and the cheap dime-a-dozen crime dramas that hardly bring anything more to your life than insomniac page-turner evenings – unless, of course, you feel like taking a break from more ‘difficult’ literature for a while. Read the classics in various fields, but always try to mix up your reading to avoid becoming bogged down in a specific area. Jump between Goete, Dante, Freud, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Tolkien, Hume, Chauser, Jung, Austen, Dumas, Nietzche, Wilde, Locke, Voltaire and Kafka.
7. Learn a new skill! I’m sure there’s something you’ve decided you’d like to learn, so why not actually go out and learn it? Whether it be a new language, juggling or knitting, a new skill adds to your identity and makes you understand the world better.
8. Find your flaws and acknowledge them! We’ve all got flaws, no matter how high and mighy we might think ourselves to be. See if you can’t figure out what flaws you have – ask your friends to be brutally honest to you if you can’t think of any for yourself. Don’t try to defend yourself with explanations or excuses, just accept that this is who you are and that only real hard work will change this part of you. It will be difficult and you will try to reject these things, but only through acceptance can we truly grow.
9. Keep a diary, blog or journal! It can be very interesting to go back and read the thoughts, interests, habits, hobbies and friends we kept a few years ago. Looking back at my own life, I sometimes feel like I cannot even recognize the person I was as little as five years ago. Seeing this sort of growth and development can be a huge motivation, but the journal has another very important function. When you re-read the story of your life, you may be able to see habits or behaviors that you were previously unaware of. In the heat of the moment, you reacted in a specific way without ever considering that this is a pattern that you’ve fallen into many times before. Maybe it’s time to change?
10. Most importantly – don’t stress things! Sometimes, the very best thing we can do to ourselves is to set all of this growth, development, personal enhancement and excellense nonsense aside and sit in the sun for a few hours with a good mindless book. We could throw a frisbee with friends down at the beach, throw a tennis ball for the dog to fetch a few hundred times or just invite friends over for an Indiana Jones movie marathon. While growth and constant development are important to us all – you wouldn’t be reading this post if it wasn’t! – it’s just as important to just take a break and relax every now and again.
Treat yourself to it. You deserve it.
