SELF IMPROVEMENT

I once had a favourite phrase. It was “that’s how I am” or was it “that’s who I am”, I can’t remember which it was, I probably was interchanging them to fit whatever scenario I was in. Either way, both are terrible statements to make. It’s just making an excuse for acting in an unpalatable manner or being on a particular wavelength.  It’s a defence mechanism when you have failed to meet up with an expected standard or act in a certain prescribed manner.

The truth is, if we knew who we truly were, we wouldn’t spend 10 hours in front of the TV every day. We wouldn’t eat junk food and make things worse by going straight to bed. We wouldn’t live our entire lives on gossip blogs because we’d be too focused on becoming the best version of ourselves. We’d realize that there is so much we can do mentally, physically and emotionally and we’d be so determined to reach our full potential.

I’d like to hammer on one basic thing and that’s character. It embodies your mental and moral qualities. Your character is your major driving force and if you can improve on your character, you can pretty much improve on everything else. If you are determined to stop being “lazy”, what happens is that you cut back on TV and social media time; You wake up early, which automatically gives you time to do more constructive things. If you begin to wake up at 6.am every day instead of 7, you can now throw in a 30 minutes workout into your schedule and you’ve successfully improved on your health and fitness habit, just because you stopped having a slothful character. (I am in no implying that waking up at 7 means that you’re lazy, I’m just creating a scenario)

Personality wise, your character is your core. If you can apply decorum and deportment to what goes on within, everything associated with you would gradually be fine-tuned into something more coordinated and sophisticated. Your time is now well spent, your finances are in order, your posture is more refined and your scope of knowledge is widened.  There is such a thing as mental poise and it eventually reflects outwards.

Stop saying it’s okay to sit and leave all your goods for public review because “that’s how you’ve always been doing things”. Don’t pick your nose in public just because you can’t “come and go and inconvenience yourself because you’re trying to form, after all, you’re sure everyone here picks their nose, just that nobody sees them”.

Why is self-improvement so important you ask?  It is important because there is so much more to us that what we are currently (cliché right?- I know, but It’s the truth).

Honestly, no one, absolutely no one would claim to have it all put together. However, when we come to accept that we need to be better in some certain areas, we have won half of the battle.

There isn’t one specific parameter upon which self-improvement can be assessed, however, on an individual level, we can always assess how much progress we’ve made and keep working on ourselves. 

You can choose to pass through life with just the basics, or you can decide to give your life a little more meaning. You can choose to behave nonchalantly or you can decide to take charge over how you express your emotions, how you respond to things and how you present yourself to the public eye.

Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s okay to be uncouth. I remember the slogan from the movie: KINGSMAN - The Secret Service, which was  “manners maketh man”. It’s the basic truth which majority of us, unfortunately, do not pay attention to.

At whatever age or stage you are right now, you can still refine your character, learn something new or learn to do what you’ve been doing for years differently or better and be more deliberate about how you live your life. 

The human mind is extremely dynamic and so is the human body. There are probably a thousand more things that I can do but haven’t even discovered and it’s probably the same with you.  There are so many things that we do which can be done better.  Over the course of the next month, I’d be discussing how we can improve ourselves in different aspects of our lives.

Dear reader, please never stop trying to be a better version of yourself. It takes a conscious effort and sometimes could be annoying and inconveniencing but in the end, guess who wins- YOU!