Regardless of “race“, gender, religion, culture, etc, being a ‘good’ human being is hard. When you try to be better, the struggle is made worse by all the complicated, confusing rhetoric on Self-Improvement/Personal Development.
Getting started is difficult because we drift like many knowledge seekers from one fad to the next, doing whatever is popular now but never reaching our full potential. The alternative to drifting is Stagnation, each day like the one before, with only the idiocy of the internet to amuse us.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Self-improvement can be simplified.
How to be happier, wiser, and of greater use to your family and community requires a unique set of skills and a small touch of courage. Here are the tools you DEFINITELY need on your journey of personal development.
Self-Examination
Personal Philosophy
Obstacles
Routine
Embrace your imperfection.
Self-Examination
Lasting happiness and inner peace actually require a substantial amount of work. The work isn’t done all at once; it takes a lifetime. Honest self-examination is the place to begin, and it is difficult.
Various religions and philosophies warn against self-deception for good reasons. Lying to yourself whitewashes or trivializes deeper and sometimes foundational problems.
Another barrier to well-being is taking cues from pop culture on how to fix ourselves. It’s fascinating to watch how neuroses/mindsets move through a population. Various buzzwords come into usage, then fade from the collective consciousness as we all move on to the next ‘new’ thing. Chakras, ‘The Inner Child’ and ‘Passion’ as guiding forces have had their 15 minutes of fame with some sage touting their books to sell and videos to watch.
Authentic and ongoing self-examination eliminates some of the tendency toward self-deception. A pen, some paper, and 20 minutes of quiet reflection form the foundation of self-improvement.
Personal Philosophy
“Enough talk of what a good man is. Be one.” Emperor Marcus Aurelius
A defined personal philosophy creates boundaries for how you think.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” is the Golden Rule of Christianity. As a personal philosophy, it governs how we interact with other humans.
Stoicism has as one of its guiding principles, “Memento mori” translated as Remember Death. As the Stoic philosopher Seneca so rightly said, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste so much of our lives.” Being mindful of our mortality gives us reason to use the time we have wisely.
Most philosophies and religions give practical mental models for living. You could spend a dozen lifetimes reading philosophy and religion, then another dozen debating the merits of each, and still be confused.
Pick one that has stood the test of time. There is a caveat, do not become a zealot, neither a religious nor a philosophical one. If yit guides you to hate another human for external factors such as the color of their skin, gender, religion, or nationality, then you are undeniably on the wrong path.
Obstacles
Often we point to other people and circumstances beyond our control as the reason we are not our best selves. Most of the time, that’s not true. It is not what happens to us but how we react that affects our mental health the most. Obstacles whether internal or external are to self-improvement what free weights are to bodybuilders. In both cases, strength is only gained through pushing or pulling something that resists.
If you are thinking that you have no internal obstacles, that thought is itself an obstacle born from Pride and Self – deception.
Routine
A series of small daily routines like reading for 20 minutes, walking for 30 minutes, and five minutes of meditation will do more for your well-being than a year of “I’ll put it off until I have time.”
Just as physical improvement requires constant practice so does mental and spiritual improvement. Call it ritual, or habit, or routine, but consciously work to create a calm, focused state of what you seek to improve. This state is easier to achieve if you keep doing the same thing daily. Just as the first week of jogging is difficult but actually feels pleasant after a year of regular exercise, the same occurs mentally when you start meditation, prayer or expressing gratitude. The routine itself is mentally comforting.
The opposite is true of setting some lofty goal and launching ourselves toward it. The usual outcome is a spectacular failure. Most people can’t accept this as the normal outcome because our media saturates our lives with a ‘success’ bias. They besiege us with images of the few people who can set impossible goals and achieve them in short order because of their ‘Passion’.
That’s not how it is for most of us. “It takes ten years of work to become an overnight success” is a general rule.
While Self – improvement can be simplified, it is never easy. Routines keep us tightly focused.
Accept The Three ‘I’s
The best time of your life will not last, nor will the worst. The things you love and the things you hate will change over time. This is Impermanence which states that all things, including ourselves, are ever-changing.
We understand that our development is always lacking something, even when we have no clue what that ‘something’ is. The concept of Imperfection is painful, the temptation is always to try harder to reach perfection.
The final hard truth is that we never live to see the completion of our self-improvement efforts. We will always be Incomplete.
Like ‘Memento Mori’ of Stoicism, Impermanence, Incompletion and Imperfection of Buddhism seem burdensome if not depressing. Both are exactly the opposite of burdensome and depressing. The acceptance of the three ‘I’s is liberating as they eliminate the competitive tendencies of our development.
Knowing we are changing, imperfect and incomplete, but embracing the struggle of personal development is the path to long-term contentment with yourself.
Conclusion
Becoming a better you is an arena where consistency of effort is more important than the creativity of the mind. By sticking to the basic ideas of:
- Questioning yourself through self-examination.
- Adopting a personal philosophy to create boundaries
- Find your own obstacles
- Create a routine
- Accept your imperfections
The journey to become a better human is never over. There are no medals, nor trophies to show others. There is no ‘finish’ line. Along the route, you will run into your biggest fears, fail at some of your challenges, and earn your greatest rewards.
The fact is that without a journal, you might never know if you are improving. Every personal development milestone reached becomes the foundation of another goal. In five years, with steady progress, you might bemoan where you are but have forgotten where you started.
Don’t let thoughts of a never-ending journey be a deterrent to getting started on Self-Improvement. The places you will go in the real world and in your own mind make it worthwhile.
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Originally published on Writings of a Mid-Life Man and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
