The are a lot of people out there that think that self improvement is of no importance, use or value. They believe that the self improvement industry itself is bogus; That all self improvement coaches are taking your money and results are never achieved. Everyone is entitled to their opinion for sure. However, the fact remains that if we want to make a positive change in our lives, self improvement is necessary. We can wish or just hope. This will not help us change for the better. Action is needed.

What am I Improving?

In order to create something in our lives, we need to go from point A to point B. Where I am now to where I want to be. For example, if we want to improve our relationships, how do we do this? There obviously is a way, right? We can think about it, but to obtain certainty of a method that would work to achieve our goal of improved relationships, we could simply go to the library (for free) and read books about the subject. So, what has occurred? We had a need to fulfill. We decided that we wanted to fulfill the need and, we sought a method for improving ourselves to obtain that result. The rest is all about applying the method and noticing if we are getting the desired results.

What if I Fail?

I have great news! We can only totally fail if we stop trying to get the result. We must keep trying until we get the result. Why do most people give up? From my experience and learning, we stop trying because we start to associate a lot of pain to not getting the result we wanted. Most people do this after the first or second attempt. I have a question for you: What if we associated more pain to the consequences of not getting the result we wanted? That would motivate us to keep trying, right? So failure comes only when we give up. Remember, just because you did not produce the result you wanted, does not mean you are not improving yourself and it does not mean that you are a failure. What it means is that you now know what does not work and you can move on to produce another result that can get you what you want. See - you are improving!

Constant Self Improvement is the Key

So what does self improvement do? From my experience, self improvement is about learning to conduct ourselves in a manner that helps us achieve our personal goals. These goals are in our health, relationships, spirituality, finances, career, communication, beliefs, contribution and leisure time. For example, if all I want to do is wake up in the morning, peek in on my kids and kiss my wife before I embark on an hour commute to work and then return back home after 10-11 hours - I am fully entitled to live this way, if I want to. I know this is a generalization, but if I wanted to improve this situation, I would need to change something. I would have to look at the beliefs I have that are driving my behavior. Is it fear of failure or loss that is driving me to live this way? Am I afraid that my boss will not give me a good raise if I leave work too early (based on his beliefs)? The question that I would ask is, what can I do to improve this situation? From my experience, improvement starts from within. Self improvement begins with changing our thinking. Our thoughts are causes that are put into effect by our actions, which yield the results in our lives and literally create our destiny! To improve our lives then, we must improve our way of thinking.

Final Thoughts

Self improvement is useful as you can see from the examples in this article. If you want something bad enough, you can only achieve it if you believe you can. Remember, if you believe that you cannot do something, you are absolutely right! Believing that you cannot do something will stop you dead in your tracks. You will not even attempt. Imagine if Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein or anyone for that matter believed that what they wanted was not possible. These people were not considered geniuses because they were born that way. They made distinctions through and through in their lives from facts! The facts are that everything that has come into existence on this earth has come from human thought and action. The pyramids, skyscrapers, space travel, cell phones, you name it. If there is a will, there is usually a way. Facts can never be refuted. The law of cause and effect is always working – we need to learn, evaluate and take action to improve our lives and it all starts within ourselves.

Anthony Robbins just talked about why we do what we do and how these 6 human needs impact our lives. To summarize, the 6 human  needs are:

1) Certainty – meaning that we need certainty in our lives for some level of security and pleasure. However, when we have too much certainty, no matter how much we need to have it, we will need to experience the opposite as well, or we will get bored out of our minds. That leads to the second human need.

2) Uncertainty – meaning that we need to have some variety in our lives at some point  or we would go insane if we lived in total certainty.

3) Significance – can also be called importance. We need to feel significant or needed. When we don’t feel significant, we feel like we have no purpose in life. So this is a significant human need.

4) Connection & Love – I think this need speaks for itself. Love is the at the heart of all positive human interactions.

5) To Grow – We need to grow as human beings. When we stop growing we will become comfortable.  Why is this bad? When we become comfortable, we stop growing! When we stop growing, or lives start to lessen in quality. Eventually, this leads to failures in life.

6) To contribute – When you contribute to something you believe in how does that make you feel? Not only do you feel important, but you know you are doing something beyond yourself. It is a very important step in living a fulfilled life.

I’m finding that by keeping these 6 human needs in mind and how they work, I am constantly making a lot of new distinctions about my life. The key is to find balance between them all.

So how do we use this information to create positive self improvement? Well take a look at your life today. How do you feel about each of these 6 human needs? Can you remember times in your life, when, if one of these needs was out of harmony with your values, that you might have been in a negative state of mind? Knowing this information, what can you do the improve yourself? I hope this information can help you make some better distinctions and thus better decisions in your life.

So what do we really want? How do we know that we really want it? Is it only a desire, or a need?   Is what we want congruent with our values and beliefs? How bad do we want it? What are the positive and negative effects we will experience if we decide to pursue this goal? Is this a long term goal, or are we seeking immediate gratification? What are the risks? Are there obstacles? I can go on and on with questions, but the reason I listed so many, is that this is what we do to ourselves – or most of us for that matter. We begin to evaluate. The unfortunate part is, that our brain does this evaluation so quickly, that we are often left standing there in a negative, dizzy spell. We automatically feel that it will be too hard, so why bother; don’t fall into this trap!

By now, you might be saying to yourself, no wonder I’m not getting what I want. But I have some ideas that can help you create more clarity and personal power. This is indeed a vital area of self improvement.

First, getting what we really want takes some thought. You have to be willing to have a heart-to-heart with yourself, and obviously – be honest! Look at each area of your life today, and ask yourself, “what would I change to make it the way I want?” 

For this example, I will use our physical health.  In answering the question above (what would I change to make it the way I want), “I will change the time I eat dinner from 8PM to 7PM. I will also change what I consume after dinner and limit that to water only.  I will also change my activities after dinner. Instead of sitting and watching television, I will take a 20 minute walk around the block before I rest.”

I have a question for you. If these changes were followed, how would this persons life change? I don’t think that anyone wants to have poor physical health, but most of us don’t exactly commit to having excellent physical health. In other words, we really want to be healthy, but we get caught up in our day-to-day activities that seem more important in that moment. When do some of us try to make a change in our physical health? Right, after our physical exam when the doctor tells us that we need to lose 25 pounds because we are at risk of heart disease. I think you get the picture.

So why don’t we get what we want, and how can we change this? Well, the answer to the first question, I believe, is that we don’t make what we want and absolute necessity. Think about it. Using the example above, if we made our physical health an absolute necessity, would we take it so lightly? If we committed to weighing a specific weight, having our waist a specific size, having outstanding stamina and outrageous levels of energy, would we settle for less? The answer is no. We would not settle for less. The problem I believe, is that we don’t make what we want an absolute, unequivocal necessity. We somehow believe that it’s too hard and that other things need to get done in the moment. Eventually, it’s like we got caught in quicksand. We begin to sink and it’s a hell of a struggle to get out.

How can we change this? We need to alter the miscues in our perceptions of actions we are taking. This is why self improvement is so important. We are not born perfect, thus our actions are not perfect. However, we can strive to be and do better. So, altering our miscues of perception is key to getting what we really want. If we want something – make it more important than watching TV, spending countless hours chatting online, staying later at your job, and even oversleeping. We have to make what we want paramount. Please note that this does not mean that we reject everything else. Making a commitment to yourself does sound selfish, but think for a moment, has not making a commitment to yourself worked up until now? Are you getting what you want? Again using the previous example, if you need to exercise for 20 minutes, wouldn’t that be easy to do? Then why don’t we do it? Could it be that there is a fear holding you back? Are you committing to do things of lesser importance? Take a look at what’s stopping you from taking action – whether it’s in your physical health, your finances, your relationships, your quality of life, your self-esteem, self improvement or in any area of your life. What do you think is stopping you? Could being organized and sticking to a schedule help you out? What is a schedule anyway? Isn’t it an organized listing of commitments? Think about ordering your commitments. This will make time for many of them. This will help take pressure off of you, give you the clarity you need to take action on getting what you want.

Getting what we want is possible. The problem, is that we focus on things that we really don’t want or on things that move us further away from our goals.  To create self improvement in this area, we can instead order, make time and commit to things we really want to have and do. If we want something – commit to it, make it a priority and go for it.

Finally, as a personal life coach, I can help you create the focus necessary to make these changes and help you achieve goals in many areas of your life. If you are interested in personal life coaching click here for more information.

What Areas of Self-Improvement Should I Focus On?

There are so many areas of self-improvement to focus on, but I believe that these 3 should be focused on first:

1) Values & Beliefs – What are your values in life? What beliefs do you have that are causing you to not be as effective as you would like? Identify them and ask yourself, do I need to change these values & beliefs to become successful in life?

2) Relationships & Communication – Are you involved in positive relationships? Are you contributing to those relationships or taking from them? When you communicate with others, do they trust you? Are you empowering them or not?

3) Decision Making – Are the decisions you are making each day helping you or hurting you? If you want to lose weight in a healthy way, are you eating correctly and working out? If you are in financial debt. What actions are you taking to put you in that position? Are you spending more that you earn? Making these distinctions is step one in getting in the right direction.

How Can I Get Help?

He have many options. We can go to the library, read up and educate ourselves on what we need to do to be successful in any area of our lives. We can go to a seminar, take a class or even hire a personal life coach to help us achieve our life’s goals. Our circumstances will never improve unless we take action. Self-improvement is not as difficult as you may think. It involves learning new things to change you life’s destiny for better. For more help, you can contact me at george@ithinketh.com

Final Thoughts

Life is a journey. Self-improvement is a very important subject. It involves discovering what it takes to create a more fulfilled life. If someone told you that they had the key to life long success and happiness, what would you do? Would you want to know how, or would you just keep going on in the same routine? The choice is always ours to make. We have to exercise this power and use self-improvement to our advantage!

A new year has begun today. Many of us think of the new year as a time to change our focus and get back on track on actions we did not take the year before. These actions probably include going on a diet, saving more money, taking a closer look at our finances, looking for a job and doing some stuff around the house that we have been putting off.

I was thinking about this and asked myself, do we really need to wait for a new year to begin to commit to taking actions we should have been taking all along? Why did we allow ourselves to get caught up doing things at times that might have been of lesser importance?

Look Inside Yourself

I would like you to ask yourself, what has not taking action on these things caused you? Are you happier or more stressed out and if this pattern is to continue, won’t it just cause you to not create the level of happiness in your life that you really want?

The Commitment That Will Change Your Life!

I’m asking you to commit to a key self improvement success principle this year.

Commit to taking action now, rather than later. What I have noticed is that later sometimes never comes. We often put things off and think that there’s going to be a better time to do them, but by putting things off, we take them out of our focus and sometimes forget about them, until New Years Day for example. Then we want to commit to them and often times repeat the same pattern again. This occurs because we’ve put things off so often, that putting things off has become a pattern that we run as well – A BAD HABIT!

How Can We Make This Change?

Breaking this pattern can be done by TAKING ACTION NOW and keep on taking action on the things we need to get doneconsistently. Keeping this pattern up for a month or two will help embed a new habit pattern that will ultimately make you unstoppable in achieving your goals.

So are you up to the challenge? It’s up to you to decide and I can give you a couple of tips that I use to take action on things I want to accomplish daily…

The night before,
(1) make a list of 5 things you want to get done the next day.
(2) Put these 5 things in order of importance.
(3) You now will have to decide a time when you want to do them.
(4) Commit to doing them. This means that you will not let anything get in your way (within reason).

The Choice is Yours

Remember, you always have a choice. If you’re not up to taking action on a given day, I want you to think about the consequences of not taking action. How will not taking action affect your circumstances? I want you to really feel the feelings of the consequences. Then, analyze how you would feel taking action and getting the results you want. Feel how good it feels to accomplish getting that task done. It’s literally a self-esteem booster.

Finally, I wish you all the best for 2010!