At one fine moment in my life, I realized that something was missing in me: you seem to be living, but something is wrong and wrong. I looked at myself from the outside and in the mirror, went through one strong training on my own, read a couple of educational books. I made disappointing conclusions that I have a bunch of bad habits, I devote almost no time to my health, I am not popular with girls, my level of disorganization is off the charts, and in addition, I often avoid solving complex life problems.
After realizing this fact, something in me switched and pulled me forward: of course, not immediately, but movement began towards the goal - to become better than I am. I took this feeling and worked on myself for 12 months. Now I can say with confidence that the algorithm below works, and I would like to share it with Lifehacker readers.
It doesn't matter how many days are in your life, what matters is how much life is in your days!
Sport
It all starts with sports and its implementation in your life. We start with basic exercises, but you need to do them every day. These are simple exercises: squats, abdominal presses (lifting the body), push-ups. It all starts with repetition 5 times and increases by 1 time every day; you can do two repetitions a day. In a month, you will be doing 35 squats, 35 abdominal exercises, and 35 push-ups. Then you can increase the number of repetitions as needed, but be sure to do it every day.
Every person needs to find his own sport, and you shouldn’t follow fashion: everyone runs, that means running, everyone does yoga, that means yoga. Look for a sport that suits you completely: loads, interest, time, financial component, people. It should become an extension of your essence.
Over the course of a year, I tried yoga, the gym, boxing, running, swimming, jiu-jitsu, aikido, and cycling. At the same time, I practiced several types for several months. It was a great time, because it was definitely beneficial for my health, and I also understood more and more what exactly I wanted from sports.
My choice fell on jiu-jitsu and swimming - this is the basis of my sports development. Now this has been for the rest of my life, since the pleasure I get in my classes is difficult to express in words, and my success in this field only reinforces this conviction.
Pay attention to appearance and health
In continuation of the previous point, we note that changes should be both internal and external. Physical activity and sports are important for both well-being and a positive attitude. Choose an active hobby that will help relieve tension and stress and keep your body in good shape.
Take care of your appearance:
- Think about what you would like to improve.
- Consult with specialists regarding the condition of your skin, hair, and nails.
- Choose hairstyle and makeup that highlight your best features.
- Create a comfortable and practical wardrobe.
External changes: Freepick
External changes will help consolidate changes in your internal state.
Books
You will have to read and read a lot. An excellent result is 40–50 books per year. I read 42 books and understand that 50 books a year is realistic. The main thing is to read without stopping. And, of course, don’t watch TV and don’t spend too much time on social networks.
Read only to develop your mind: psychology, Russian and foreign classics, self-development, finance - no pulp or entertaining books.
Take notes on the gist of what you read, what impressed you or didn’t like in the book, memorize the quotes. This way you train your memory and can always surprise your interlocutors with clever sayings from books.
Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged” greatly influenced me with its fundamentality and strong dialogues, as well as situations similar to events from my life.
My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in one axiom: reality exists in one choice - to live. Everything else flows from here. To live, a person must consider three things to be the highest and decisive values: Reason, Purpose, Self-Respect. Reason as the only instrument of knowledge, Purpose as the choice of happiness, which this instrument must achieve, Self-respect as the indestructible confidence that he is able to think and his personality is worthy of happiness, which means worthy of life. These three values require all the virtues of man, and all his virtues are related to the relationship of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, purity, honesty, justice, efficiency, pride.
Ayn Rand
"Atlas Shrugged"
Live consciously.
How can you become a better person if you are not aware of your thoughts and actions? We are not robots who live on autopilot. This is impossible, because blindly following the schedule erases the boundaries of the world. Mindfulness is the ability to understand everything around you and give it meaning.
Family relationships are not without meaning, and traveling to observe the world is also not without meaning. Likewise, it is important to reinforce daily activities with connections to why we are doing it. There is such a clever expression - cause-and-effect relationships. This is the law of the Universe that works between man and the world around him.
Take a character test
Discipline
What distinguishes a strong personality from an ordinary person is discipline. Regardless of your mood, motivation, external circumstances, family relationships, do what is necessary at a given moment in time.
Learn to swim against the tide of life circumstances, educate yourself so that your internal state does not depend on what is happening around you. It was very difficult and everything did not work out right away, as there were breakdowns. But again and again I moved forward with the support of loved ones and the inner desire to go through this path at all costs.
Where can I start? From the morning ritual. Here is the simplest and most effective method for honing discipline: when the alarm clock rings, get up immediately, wash your face, turn on music, do exercises with strength exercises, then a contrast shower, a healthy breakfast (without fried or sweet foods) and reading a book (you can do it on the way to the office) .
You need to do this until you can do it automatically and without forcing yourself. It took me 3 months, sometimes, of course, there were failures, especially after overloaded days. I recommend that anyone who wants to change their lifestyle develop their own morning ritual.
We must learn to control ourselves: our speech, gait, gaze and gestures. Wherever you are, at home, at work, at the gym, you should exude confidence and act without unnecessary fuss. Remember the principle of feedback: even if you don’t feel that way, this feeling of confidence and discipline will come.
A very useful exercise for developing inner strength - despite all your natural fears, do not take your eyes off your interlocutor, from passing people who look into your eyes. I won’t lie, martial arts classes helped me with this. But it’s also good to look with a warm gaze, showing that you are friendly.
To educate myself, I learned to deny myself pleasures: bars, alcohol, sweets, cigarettes, impulse purchases, idleness, empty conversations at work. This may not happen right away, but you need to think about it all the time, work in this direction. And one day I said to myself: “Yes, I haven’t drunk alcohol for three months and haven’t eaten sweets for two months.”
I attended sports classes or courses despite my mood, circumstances, weather and my motivation. I made a schedule and followed it, throwing away all my favorite excuses. I liked coming to the gym when others were stopped by something and when there were like-minded people who were ready to support me in these endeavors.
And most importantly, you need to learn to control yourself when little is happening and there is chaos all around. Be an island of calm and cool endurance.
Changing character for the better
Every day a person encounters other people. At work, at school, in transport, on the Internet - there are people around. You need to be able to get along with each other, no matter how complex a person’s character may be. In today's world, much is built on the relationships between people.
Read more: How to change your character for the better
Do good
Everyone knows that goodness tends to return. If one person helped another, then someone can help him. You need to help people even in such little things as walking your grandmother across the road or bringing heavy bags to a girl. Surround yourself with good, positive people and positive energy will attract itself.
Don't forget about animals
Never offend these defenseless creatures. Better help them. This could be helping a homeless animal shelter with food, helping a kitten found with a broken leg, or building a birdhouse. Goodness is in the little things.
Surround your family and friends with love
Pamper them, pay attention, pay attention to all problems, even those that seem insignificant.
If a person is in a toxic relationship, then such a connection must be severed. It can be painful, unpleasant, and attachment to a person will play its part. But this cannot be continued, but must be stopped immediately. Every person has the right to happiness.
Finance
Keep a financial journal. Keep it going for a month, two, three and don’t stop. And don’t just manage it, but analyze every month what goes where, why and how to fix it.
I had a lot of expenses on coffee - 1,300 rubles a month. I realized that it was time to reduce the amount, and now the level of spending on coffee is 600 rubles per month. Coffee is my weakness that I don’t want to get rid of.
Many people say that a magazine is a useless thing: “I already know how much I spend and earn.” And you try to keep it for 1 year with accurate analysis and charts and you will see the whole picture of your financial literacy or illiteracy.
Keep yourself in financial asceticism, stop buying what you don’t need or what is imposed by advertising and friends. Most of our purchases are useless and will not be useful in life, and we can quite easily do without them.
Find additional income, even if it is small, but it will motivate you to even greater achievements. Let it be an increased workload, additional work (of any format), freelancing, selling unnecessary things, training other people. The mistake of the majority is that everyone wants a lot of money in the initial stages, but that doesn’t happen. You don’t earn a lot at work right away, so everything in life is gradual.
How to be a friend to your husband, man, boyfriend?
You can be a friend to a man, your husband, your beloved, your boyfriend in the same way - based on the basic principles outlined above. They are suitable to be a good friend to anyone. Plus, there are small nuances. We will look at them now.
What is a good, ideal friend for a man? This is a friend who is ready to share your hobbies, your activities and entertainment with you. This is, first of all, since a man is a more active creature, in contrast to a woman, who is a more feeling creature.
Whatever your husband, boyfriend, lover does - cars, racing, books, science, fishing, nature... He will consider you his best friend if you, like him, are passionate about his interests.
Relationship
This point applies more to men who have not found their soul mate or do not even want it, which is what I was. If you are alone and have a lot of time, develop the skill of meeting girls. Register on dating sites, meet people in cafes and on the street, chat in the gym, ask friends about girls you know.
Try different communication strategies: gentleman, macho, shy, sporty guy. Meet girls smarter than you, admit it, win them over.
In various situations, not everything will work out: the wrong words, the wrong method, the wrong person, failures in bed. But don’t stop, this should strengthen you.
And over time, you will learn to understand the opposite sex, learn to easily start a conversation, and make beautiful compliments. Girls will often reciprocate and feel that you are an interesting personality. But don’t be self-confident, look for someone who will appreciate your qualities “without cuts”, and be devoted and faithful to her.
To put it simply - love, suffer, conquer, break up and start over. Become someone you want to spend time with, with whom you will be comfortable in any situation, be able to understand and listen to the other person. And remember that your significant other can always leave you, so enjoy every moment together.
How to become a good friend to yourself
How to be your own ideal friend? Sometimes troubles happen in life. And then you really want to lean on someone close. Who will support, give advice, sympathize, wipe away a tear if necessary.
And it turns out that becoming a friend to yourself means learning to support yourself in difficult circumstances. Don’t wait, like a little child, for someone to come and decide for you. And rely on yourself.
This may seem unusual at first. But after doing this trick a couple of times, we begin to understand what’s what and how it works.
Skills
Start developing skills you didn't have before: for example, breaststroke, speed typing, context planning, defensive driving. Master them, find a mentor on the topic, get training. Such achievements develop a personality and make it multifaceted.
You will also learn to intentionally step out of your comfort zone and overcome fear, which will later become your driving force. All great achievements begin with small victories over yourself.
Over the past 12 months, I have done things that I have never done before: heavy strength training, meditation, training with children, conducting trainings, asceticism.
Understand the importance of positive interactions with great people
Always surround yourself with positive, great people. They will help you in every possible way to bring out your best qualities.
This is one of the most important steps you can take for your personal growth and improvement.
Make it a habit to only surround yourself with amazing people who help you in constructive ways.
- Surround yourself with winners and you will become a winner
Spirituality
Determine your values in life, create internal and social rules for yourself, find your “I”.
Finally, find the answer to the eternal question: “Why am I here? What is my mission?
How? Ask yourself important questions, don’t look at other people who are drifting like a boat on the ocean, become a guide for both yourself and others. Read spiritual books, visit spiritual places and, finally, create your own picture of the world order. This is very important, so you will become unshakable and you will have your own faith. Not the one that is shown in the media, but precisely the inner one.
Most people are afraid to ask themselves difficult questions and close themselves off with materialism, like I did in my time, but this is a dead-end branch of development. You can’t close yourself off with things and the bustle of everyday life; they won’t give you the happiness that you will feel when you find something important inside that will lead you further.
Read
Books for self-development: Freepick
Books about personal growth, biographies of famous personalities, literature on psychology and works of art - such books broaden your horizons, form new thinking, and give productive ideas. In addition, they distract from obsessive experiences and make a person an interesting conversationalist.
You can devote a little time to reading every day. The acquired amount of knowledge will turn into an assistant. Choose books that:
- useful for your work;
- necessary for working out internal conflicts;
- will help you acquire communication skills;
- expand their worldview;
- will help you find a hobby, etc.
This could be literature on psychology or about a healthy lifestyle, about time management or about successful people.
Work with literature: write down important and interesting points, discuss them with friends. Psychologist Natalia Kholodenko focuses on the fact that literature provides about 20% of knowledge, everything else comes through experience, overcoming, questions and search.
Useful habits
As you break bad habits and make structural changes, you will need other habits—and they better be good ones.
For example, if you talk a lot, learn to be silent and listen to your interlocutor, even when your tongue is itching - remain silent.
If you eat a lot of sweets, replace them with nuts or dried fruits, do not eat so much chocolate and cookies, and drink sweet tea.
Books are a great way to save yourself from TV and Internet addiction. The brain just doesn’t want to “liquefy” anymore.
If you don’t have anything planned and everything happens just like that, keep a notebook and write down all your tasks for the day, week, month. Write down the thoughts that come to you, fresh ideas, describe events and people. Keep records and analysis of your life.
If you smoke, quit and immediately get into a sport, preferably one where your lungs work the hardest to get all the tar out of you.
Don't focus only on yourself.
To prevent a person from becoming disillusioned with the world, it is important to pay attention to those around him. Not everything revolves around the person himself - there are so many things around that require attention. Compassion is a personality strength that many people neglect. Charity and mutual assistance and support reveal inner potential.
Financial assistance to orphans, planting a tree in the yard or a cleanup in the park will not cause any harm. It is also important to listen to others. Advice from experienced people can bring undeniable benefits to someone who is just starting to develop. The understanding of the people around us lies in the philosophy of self-awareness.
Take the selfishness test
Algorithm for structural self-change in 12 months
- Sports activity every day. Decide on your sport for a long time, do it, no matter what, for a whole year.
- Read a lot of books, 3–4 per month. Write down a summary of what you read.
- Develop discipline. Deny yourself pleasures. Stay calm when things are stormy. Try to deny yourself something every month.
- Develop financial literacy. Keep a financial journal and find extra income throughout the year.
- If you are single, look for your soul mate and develop the skill of seduction. If you are no longer alone, fall in love again with your chosen one.
- Learn new skills you didn't know before. Preferably - 1 skill in 2 months.
- Find the answer to what you are here for, even an approximate one - it will be good. Spend as much time on this as you think is necessary.
- Get good habits instead of bad ones. This is everyday work.
Victory over yourself is true success in life.
Change is difficult, but possible. The main thing is to want to set yourself interesting (and not so interesting) goals and achieve them, no matter what. Everything will not work out right away, there will be misfires and breakdowns, but the vector of movement must be maintained, and you will definitely break through the barrier of your weakness.
If you think that this requires motivation or money, you are mistaken: you only need one pure desire to become better than you are, and time, which is already so little in our lives. But remember, there is no limit to perfection, this is constant work on yourself, and it continues until the end of your days. A developed personality lives much happier than those who are weak in front of themselves and retreat before life’s circumstances.
First steps
Throughout life, a person needs self-improvement. There is no such peak where development ends; you can always become better than you are. This path will teach you to be flexible depending on the situation; desires and goals may change.
Personal values
Without a clear sense of values, even the best intentions will be of no use. This concept is based on a person’s beliefs that shape his lifestyle and personality. Thinking about values will help you understand the things that really matter. Everyone chooses their own concept: “become a better parent,” “find a job you love,” “spend more time with loved ones.”
There is such a thing as value coherence, which means how a person’s values are combined with his behavior. For example, there is not enough time to spend time with family due to work. In this case, actions and values are not consistent, causing feelings of guilt and disappointment.
Thoughts about myself
People around you directly influence the formation of your personality. After research, psychologists have confirmed that human prejudices develop at an early age. If you find the reason for what affects your personal attitude towards yourself, then you can reject negative beliefs and accept useful ones. Looking at others creates a certain attitude towards oneself, which may even touch upon the problem of gender or racial difference.
Behavior
It’s worth stopping and thinking about your reaction to stress, failure, anger, and attitude towards your family. First you need to understand who the person is at this moment. Only after this is the path for self-development determined and which areas of life need improvement.
Changes
The main thing here is specificity. Steve Jobs was an amazing person; he asked himself every day what he would do today if this was the last day of his life. If there was no affirmative answer, he made changes. This is a great question to try asking yourself.
Goals for self-development should be reasonable. An introvert should not strive to regularly attend noisy parties. It is necessary that the task assigned corresponds to the character of the person, his personality type. It's better to start with the easier goal of greeting strangers.
Target
It is recommended to write down your aspirations, or better yet, keep a separate diary. Written instructions will help you better understand your desires and open up. All important life moments are recorded in the diary, excluding random thoughts. Next to each situation it is worth indicating feelings and reactions to them. The note indicates a personal opinion about what could have been changed.
You should decide on the questions with which to begin your notes. Here are some of them: Do you want to improve your relationship with your loved one? Do you want to do more for the environment? Are you trying to become a more organized person? Are you trying to be a better parent/wife/spouse?
Positive language
Scientific research has proven that positively formulated goals are achieved much more often. It is necessary to indicate your intentions to do something, and not what you want to stop doing. With negative formulations, a person experiences self-condemnation or a feeling of guilt for achieving the goal. Motivation should motivate you to move forward, not backward. For example, a person wants to become noble:
- correct - “I will be grateful to people when their kindness is directed towards me”;
- incorrect - “I want to stop being ungrateful towards others.”
Role Model
To become better, you need to find a source of inspiration that will give you strength and energy in difficult times. Such a person could be:
- relative;
- familiar;
- politician;
- actor;
- religious figure.
Anyone can be a model for admiration. Most often they focus on a familiar person. If you choose an unfamiliar person, there is a risk of developing a distorted perception. This leads to a deterioration in the situation and a decrease in self-esteem. The inspiration does not have to be a world famous person.
For example, a work colleague is always in a good mood. You need to ask what his secret is, what he does in his free time and what he thinks about life. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is a famous astrophysicist, does not support the idea of imitating popular people. He advises considering their ways of achieving their goal.
The right path to help you become better
To become better for yourself and in the eyes of other people, you should develop your horizons, leave your comfort zone, and master new skills. This will bring feelings of joy and happiness.
Talents
Each person has some skills better than others that bring him pleasure. If it seems that there is no such thing, then the talent has not yet been discovered. Here you will have to search, engage in different hobbies and find the right one.
- Research has proven that one human psychotype has similar skills. If a person likes hobbies that provoke the production of adrenaline, then he will never become an artist. Defining the type will allow you to find out a list of interests that may be of interest.
- Changes will not appear suddenly, so you need to be patient. Sometimes, in order to achieve what you want, you need to expand your social circle, give up some habits and free up more time for a new hobby.
- The courses will help you quickly develop the necessary skills and meet other people. Such ways to find your talent are the most productive and safest for getting out of your comfort zone.
Favourite buisness
To be happy, you need to devote more time to your favorite things. The best way is to turn your hobby into a career, but not everyone succeeds. A feeling of satisfaction comes when a person does things that are very meaningful to him. For example, feelings can be expressed through music, drawing and other hobbies.
- Many believe that purposeful people who are not distracted by other areas of life are more successful in their careers. This is an unhealthy lifestyle. Don't get too hung up on one thing, otherwise you might miss out on other more interesting opportunities.
- If you feel hatred towards your work, then there must be reasons for this. Even minor changes can make you look at work differently. If nothing changes, then it is better to find an activity that will correspond to the person’s values.
Experiments
To become a better person, a person must find a balance between rest and work. If you devote more time to one area of life, then a person will drown in monotony. People tend to quickly get used to good events and there is a possibility of developing dependence on positive life experiences.
- Research has proven that productivity increases greatly when you step outside your comfort zone. It can be scary to take this step, but new acquaintances and impressions will lead to success.
- A person ceases to be flexible due to a reluctance to leave the comfort zone. Any challenge to your own weaknesses leads to valuable life experience.
It is worth returning to mindfulness meditation again. Practice is a good starting point to help you develop the ability to identify recurring habits of thought that arise in the process of self-discovery.
