We all want to be happier, less stressed, or just feel like we’ve become a better version of ourselves. Being a better person than you were yesterday, and leading a more fulfilling life is the goal of many, but where exactly do you begin? Before you start an online search, or hire a professional, consider the following: what are your passions? Do you have goals you want to achieve? Are there certain character traits or qualities you want to develop? The most important thing to remember about self-improvement or reflection is that it’s an ongoing process. Meaning, it’s not just one grand thing that leads to a brand new lease on life. Instead, it’s making small changes and improvements regularly. True self-improvement impacts the key areas in your life – your habits, behaviors, and reactions. Which involves things you do on a daily basis. Whether it’s your physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual actions, improving yourself will positively impact all areas of your life. This is why self-improvement is a big part of your complete wellness journey.
When trying to grow, improve and transform yourself, it’s easy to feel lost in the woods. The first step towards self-improvement is to accept who you are now. It seems simple enough, but once you embrace the reality that nothing major is going to change overnight, you’re ready to improve on yourself. Reflect on who you are now, who you were in the past, and the changes, both positive and negative, that you’ve identified about yourself. Doing this will help you gain insight and clarity into what actions or traits you want to focus on improving this most.
We know that it’s hard to know just where to begin taking steps towards change, so we’ve outlined four strategies that are aimed to help you live as the best version of yourself you can be. A good way to start your journey is to choose just a few new changes to work on at a time, and once you feel you’ve successfully integrated those into your life you start on new ones. It’s not a race, and the changes won’t happen overnight. Use these tips to help find that part of yourself where you’re proud and feel happy about who you are for a long time rather than temporary happiness that fades away.
Starting your day with a positive affirmation can help give you the confidence and hope you need to not lose sight of your goals and progress, and to keep moving forward with each new day. Here’s some ideas:
– Today, I will be the best version of ‘me’.
– My strengths are greater than my struggles.
– I am happy. I am hopeful. I am well.
– I have the courage to be seen and the confidence to be heard.
– I am worthy inside and out.
– My success is inevitable and I am always on the right path.
– Amazing things happen for me every single day.
– There are no limits to what I can achieve.
– Everything I need is already within me.
– I always show up in life as my best self.
Set Small Goals For Yourself
The first step to self improvement is setting small goals for yourself, and then following through on them. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the big picture. You might have a fantastic vision for your life, but it’s hard to know where to start. Setting small goals is a great way to make progress towards your larger goals and live a happier life. The reason this is the first step is because it’s the easiest one. Setting goals is something that anyone can do, and there are many ways to set them. In fact, if you’re not doing it already, you should start right now! When you’re setting small goals, you can think of them as stepping stones that help you get closer to your larger ones.
If you want to get better at something, then set small goals for yourself. These are called “small” goals, because they are everyday actions that may not seem that big of a deal at the time, but gradually they become habits that impact our lives in a big way. So setting your small goals are really important for both the long and short-term. These can be anything from “I will drink one less cup of coffee every day”, or “I will go to the gym three times a week” to “I will learn how to play piano.” Whatever you choose, make sure that it’s something that has a clear beginning and end point. For example: if your goal is to lose weight, then set a target date when you want to reach your goal weight. If it’s something like learning how to play piano or learning how to cook better meals, then set yourself targets like practicing every day or cooking one new recipe every week until you reach your goal of being able to play/cook anything by heart.
This step might seem incredibly obvious but oftentimes people overlook this because they don’t know where else to begin with their self improvement journey. Don’t wait until tomorrow; start today!
Spend Time With Yourself
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life and forget about our own needs. It’s so easy to let everything else take precedence over our health and well-being. When you spend time alone with your thoughts you gain clarity and peace that helps you tremendously throughout the day. For one, you can make better decisions. When you’re constantly surrounded by people, you don’t have time to think about what you want or need — your thoughts are too busy processing other people’s demands. As a result, you can end up making decisions that aren’t in your best interest. Spending time alone gives you the opportunity to reflect on what’s important to you and where your goals lie. This can lead to better decisions when it comes down to making choices about money and career direction.
With the clarity and inner peace you find by spending time alone, you’ll find your mood improves and you feel less stressed out and happier overall. That’s because when you’re alone, your needs, wants, and desires are all that you have to focus on. Your energy, time, and attention is not being constantly pulled away by the demands and requests of others. Without having to worry about anyone else’s needs but your own, it’s easier for stressors in life like work deadlines or relationship problems to not mentally and physically drain you. When you do re-enter social situations with others afterwards, they’ll seem less stressful or demanding even though the factors or environment may have not necessarily changed. What did change was your mindset and how you respond and react to these situations.
Alone time also leads to better focus, and creativity, in addition to clarity of thought — all of which are essential for success in any area of your life.
Here are a few ways you can start spending more time alone:
- Take some time off work
- Set aside some quiet moments during the day (e.g., meditate or practice mindfulness)
- Go on a solo adventure – whether it’s going for a hike or just driving around with no destination in mind (just make sure you’re safe)
- Unplug – silence those constant email social media notifications, and step away from your phone and computer, even if it’s only for an hour each day.
- Spend time writing in your journal or reading a book.
- Sit quietly, while enjoying a bottle of Purpose tea or your favorite snack.
These are just a few of the ways you can steal daily moments to be alone. Spending time with yourself not only helps you learn more about who you are, but it helps you gain insight into who you want to become. Being also also helps inspire you to become more independent, improve your self-esteem and boost creativity.
Get Rid of Negativity
Negativity is the enemy of personal growth. As cliche as it sounds, a positive mindset really does change your outlook on life. How you think and feel about a task or situation dictates how you will respond and react. Negative people are usually pessimistic and never change their attitude or way of thinking. When you surround yourself with negativity, it’s hard to stay motivated and focused on your goals. Negative people can bring you down and make you feel like a failure before you even begin. Their negative thoughts become your negative thoughts. Their negative actions and habits find a way to creep into your life and take over. If you are full of negative thoughts, or surrounded by negative environments, before you know it, you’ve lost all the progress you’ve worked so hard to achieve. If you’re trying to improve yourself, it’s important to surround yourself with positive people and environments. Negative surroundings will only impact your mental, emotional, and physical well-being and bring you down, and they’re not worth your time.
If there are people in your life or situations around you that bring negativity with them, then it’s time to trim the fat. The best way to do this is by setting boundaries and limiting your exposure to them as much as possible. Unfollow those social media accounts. Unsubscribe from those news articles. If they’re family members or close friends, make an effort to spend less time around them so that their negative energy doesn’t affect your progress or good moods. You don’t have to cut them off completely — just limit how often you see them so that it won’t be difficult for you later on down the road when you want to focus on improving yourself.
When it comes to work colleagues or acquaintances: just distance yourself from these types of people as much as possible. If they constantly complain about their jobs or about the company they work for, then don’t listen to their negativity! Find ways to get rid of the negativity around you:
1) Block toxic people from your life – this includes friends, co-workers, or even some family.
2) Stop listening to negative news on TV, radio, or online
3) Create boundaries for yourself and others
4) Avoid situations or circumstances that trigger your stressors
5) Practice mindfulness with daily affirmations
6) Make a conscious decision to respond to situations with a positive mindset.
The most important thing, identify negative self-talk and stop it. You might be surprised at how often you say negative things about yourself without even realizing it. For example, if you find yourself saying things like “I can’t do this”, “I’m an idiot”, or “I don’t deserve success” then it might be time for a change! The more you tell yourself something, the more likely it is that you will become convinced of its truthfulness. So start catching yourself when these thoughts pop up, then challenge them with evidence to the contrary. “I can’t do this” then ask yourself why not? Is there anything stopping me from doing what I want? If not, then go ahead and do it!
Be Patient With Yourself
As with anything in life, when you begin working on something new, don’t expect perfection right away. Perfection takes time, practice and patience. The more you do something, the better you get at it. The journey of self-improvement is no different. Achieving those small goals you set, learning to set boundaries, spending time alone, all of these things take practice and time, and resolve. Don’t expect new habits to form instantly. That only leads to disappointment and unnecessary stress. It takes time for anything worthwhile to become part of your everyday life. There’s a lot you’re going to learn as you work on your self-improvement. Some things will come easily and some things won’t. In the process of self improvement, a lot of mistakes are going to be made, but that’s okay. You will make mistakes and you will learn from them. In fact, when you first start on the road to self improvement, it’s likely that you will make a lot of mistakes. But don’t let that discourage you from continuing on your journey.
The key is to learn from these setbacks or roadblocks and move forward with a positive attitude toward your future self. So, if you fall off the wagon once in a while or fail at something in particular, don’t get down on yourself! Instead, look at it as an opportunity to improve upon your mistakes and try again.
Being impatient with ourselves and trying to rush results are the biggest obstacles when it comes to self-improvement. When we’re impatient, we don’t give ourselves enough time or space to make a change. We rush through it and end up giving up too soon because things aren’t going as quickly as we’d like them to go.
This is especially true when it comes to weight loss, diet or exercise — we want results now! We get frustrated when we don’t see results right away, so we give up before we’ve even given ourselves a chance. But that’s just not possible unless you’re willing to put in the time and effort required for success. Be patient with yourself during your journey because there will be times when things don’t go as planned. If you give up on yourself, then who is going to help you? The only person who can help you is yourself, so keep this in mind as you go through your journey. As long as you are willing to learn from your mistakes then there is no reason why you cannot succeed in improving yourself over time. Just take it one step at a time and keep moving forward!
In some ways, it can be hard to make self-improvement a priority when you’re busy trying to juggle work, family, and other things going on in life. That’s precisely why it’s so important to start before you feel like you need to. If you’re not where you want to be, consider what small changes you can start making today that could lead to big results. Making yourself a priority just like anything else you want to accomplish won’t happen if you shuffle it behind other things or leave it until the end of a long list of things that need done. Don’t wait until it’s time to make new year resolutions to prioritize self-improvement. Have you ever thought about how amazing it could be to finally live your authentic life? Start today, right now, and everything else on the list will seemingly take care of itself. Kickstart your journey towards self-improvement by creating a calendar and filling it with personal development goals and activities to make significant and positive changes in your life to improve who you are as a person.
As always, Purpose Tea will be here with you every step of the way. Improve yourself starting with your health! Purpose Tea has tons of delicious and nutritious benefits that help you get more from your self-improvement journey. Make your first positive change by filling your fridge with the goodness of purple tea. Try one or all of our flavors in a varieTEA pack, today.