Just Keep Improving
Is there an ideal time to improve yourself? No. There are logical days to start like Mondays or the first of the month, the beginning of a quarter or the most popular one, New Year’s Day. The best thing to do is just start. We might want to eat healthier and then we find ourselves tempted by sweets and highly caloric foods everywhere we go. Or we might want to start walking outside and the weather doesn’t cooperate. We need to make conscious choices to change. It’s worth it in the end but it takes work.
Here are 10 suggestions to level up who you are:
1. Find people who share your values and support you
We need to surround ourselves with people who are on the same wavelength and provide support in good times and bad. Find positive, loving people who will lift you up even when they are not at their best. Be clear about what matters to you so you attract like minded people. If it means severing ties with people who bring you down or drain you, it’s time to make the break or spend less time together. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel confident and believe in yourself so surrounding yourself with cheerleaders will help. When we feel supported, we become bolder and more confident. Who wants more of that?
2. Get out of your comfort zone
Get out of your comfort zone and do something that scares you. That is how you grow. And it is how you learn that it wasn’t as bad as you thought so it will be easier for you to challenge yourself the next time. Last year I did a 30 day challenge. My goal was to do something that scared me or was out of my comfort zone for 30 days. It was one of the best things I have ever done! I was surprised many times because the things weren’t as scary as I thought. I was holding myself back. If you do scary things, you grow and you become stronger because you truly believe you can do more than you previously thought.
3. Develop a growth mindset
We have a NASA station nearby and I took a tour of the facility a few months ago. One of the coolest things that I learned was that scientists go into each experiment with an open mind. If for some reason they do not yield the results they were seeking, they just chalk it up to experience and try again. They don’t look at it as a failure. And that’s what we should do. We can learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t by going out there and doing our best and being open to the outcome. Things usually turn out better when we don’t attach any meaning to the outcome and we value the experience for what it is. So next time, tweak it a little, and try again. It’s not the big deal that we think it is. When you have a growth mindset you learn from your experiences in order to improve the next time.
4. Just take the first step
Just get started. That’s the best way to get anything done. Just work on it a little bit at a time. Before you know it, you will begin to see how far you have come. If you are working on a project, take your goal and break it down into manageable mini goals. Then break those down into individual tasks. How do you eat a big juicy steak or a big juicy watermelon? One bite at a time, of course.
5. Give yourself a break
Let’s say you’re working on that project and you miss a day because of a family emergency. Cut yourself some slack and deal with what you need to do to be a good daughter/ wife/ or mother, and remember why you are working on your project. When you have some order back in your life, pick up where you left off, and don’t let one obstacle get in your way. Be kind to yourself and give yourself the same compassion you would give to someone else and keep going.
I’m going to let you digest the first five. There’s a lot there and I want you to think about how you can find your people, stretch yourself, learn from every thing you do, get out of your way and get started, and give yourself some compassion. That’s a lot right there. If you were to do one thing, which area of your life would you work on?
