Tag: Self-improvement

One step at a time

Currently, the tagline for this blog is ‘becoming better one step at a time’.

I chose that because I thought it was the best way to explain how we get through any kind of journey whether it is long or short. We move forward one step at a time.

Over the past few months,  I can’t confess to have forgotten that idea but to have lost the appreciation I originally had for it. Mainly because taking any purposeful step seemed painful, difficult and almost impossible. As I alluded to in my post ‘I’m 19‘, my mental health has taken a turn for the worse which paralysed my motivation and killed my slow walk forward. In fact, I feel like I’ve taken a few steps backwards.

I’m still in this position but having to force myself to move, write, and generally not become a complete recluse, I’m beginning again to find my appreciation of becoming better one step at a time. Although the appreciation often slips out of my hands as quickly as a bar of soap, while it’s here, I’ll explain the reason for my revived appreciation.

These steps forward need not be large, exciting or even particularly important. They can and probably will be very difficult at times. Sometimes it’ll feel as if you’re trying to walk through mud with bricks in your pocket. Nonetheless, it’ll still be a step forward.

These small victories are invaluable. Whether that victory ranges from putting on your shoes and stepping outside to writing significant portions of an important paper, remember them. Write them down if you must.

They’re a reminder that you can move forward.

It will take some time but you’ll get there and maybe even pick up a light jog along the way.

We’ll all face difficult times when we’re trying to reach whatever goals we have. If you feel that it is becoming overwhelming, remind yourself that you only need to take it one small step at a time.

Even if the step is tiny, it keeps us moving.

We’re all going to become better one step at a time.

 

The Struggle for Self-forgiveness

I’ve written about the importance of forgiving yourself in a previous post and I’d like to expand on it.

Forgiving and accepting the mistakes you may have made in the past is difficult. If we’re used to criticising ourselves about everything we do wrong, downplaying our achievements and complaining about the lack of perceived progress, it’s difficult to change that mind-set.

I’m still struggling with it.

A helpful question to ask when you begin criticising yourself is:

Would you talk to your friend the same way you talk to yourself?

If your friend failed to start learning a language like she said she would, would you call her worthless, lazy and stupid? If your friend didn’t make consistent progress with programming, would you say he’ll never learn in the future?

Hopefully, you wouldn’t.

There’s an important difference between being honest and harmful. If we wouldn’t pile on these criticisms to a friend, why the need to do it to ourselves?

I would never tell a friend that she’s worthless I don’t believe she is. They’re capable of doing better and if I can I will help them reach their goals. This isn’t the same as simply excusing all the bad things one might do. Sweeping it under the rug will only result in more problems in the future.

We can run into the problem of holding ourselves to an extremely high standard without making the necessary changes to reach it. We skip the fact that building habits takes time. We skip the fact that being good at most things requires a lot of practice.

Such a trait might be seen as admirable but it’s useless if it simply results in self-hatred. Eventually all the criticism we pile onto our shoulders will bring us to a halt instead of making us stronger.

We don’t deserve the relentless criticism we give ourselves.

We don’t need to hate ourselves to make a positive change.

We deserve compassion. If anyone should be kind to you, it should be you.

The first step: awareness

I would be lying if I said I had this all figured out. There are many times in the day where I still feel disappointed with myself and wish I had done better in the past. There are times when I look at the progress I’ve made and see it as useless.

However, the first step to reducing the self-criticism is awareness. Realising that what you’re doing to yourself is not beneficial but instead harmful to your progress means you have identified what you need to change.

Forgiving yourself is the first step to accepting who you are and identifying what you want to change.

A Very Short Guide to Meditation

This is a very short guide to mindfulness meditation. If you want a few reasons for why you should meditate, you can read my post: 5 reasons to start meditating

You will need:

  • Yourself
  • A timer
  • A comfortable place to sit

How to begin meditating:

  1. Sit down with your back straight (or lie down)
  2. Set the timer to two minutes
  3. Focus on your breathing

And that’s it.

You don’t need to get into a complicated lotus position. You don’t need to wait until the world is silent.

All you have to do is sit still and focus on your breathing. When a random thought pops into your head, gently bring your focus back to your breathing.

You’ll find it difficult at first. Your mind will race in many different directions simply because you aren’t used to slowing down for couple of minutes in the day but it will get easier. You only have to do it for 2 minutes. Then do it again the next day. Maybe in a week you’ll increase it to three minutes.

It’ll get easier and you’ll be able to meditate for a longer time. Then you’ll reap more benefits of meditating every day.

You’ll feel calm, relaxed and more mindful of the things you do.

Mindfulness is Beautiful

For my last post, I gave 5 reasons to start meditating and I want to focus on the last point I made about increased mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a beautiful thing.

A few days ago, I was drinking a hot chocolate after my lectures and I realised something wonderful. I was enjoying the drink.

I wasn’t thinking about what I wanted to do for the rest of the day.

I wasn’t self-conscious about being alone.

I wasn’t feeling sad because of the pain I was in.

I wasn’t reading anything or looking at pictures.

I was just enjoying a hot chocolate.

I was simply immersed in what I was doing in the present moment and loved the experience. I didn’t need to do anything else . This is something I hadn’t actively done until I began meditating.

Of course, this doesn’t need to be limited to drinking hot chocolate. When I’m talking to other people, I give them more of my attention. When I’m writing, I immerse myself with the ideas I’m trying to get onto the page. When I’m walking, I take in my surroundings instead of rushing to where I’m going.

Throughout the day, I feel that we don’t allow ourselves get properly immersed in the things we’re doing because we’re scared of being bored. Even when we’re walking, the desire to look at our phone becomes overwhelming. When we’re talking to other people, our attention seems to shoot off into a different direction.

The beauty of mindfulness comes from its simplicity. Experiencing what’s happening now instead of being a slave to superficial desires and distractions, allows us to experience what we’re doing with complete immersion. You don’t need to be doing something all the time. You’re allowed to spend time with your thoughts.

The experience of just being without external distractions or harmful self-criticism is something I wish I experienced more.

Being more mindful of the simple things you do everyday definitely takes practice. You’ll need to remind yourself many times to bring your focus back to what you’re doing. Sometimes you’ll be frustrated, other times you’ll feel experience small moments of happiness. You can do this by practising mindfulness meditation or making an active effort to focus on the small things you do everyday.

With this being said, go and enjoy your hot chocolate :)

Do you have any similar experiences you want to share?

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1. The picture comes from dharmaschool.co.uk

5 Reasons to Start Meditating

I’ve been meditating for about 6 months now. It nearly skipped my mind because it feels like such a normal thing to do but I feel like I’ve learned a few important things during that time.

Here are 5 reasons to start meditating.

1. Increased Focus 

Staying focused on things can be difficult because we have to remind ourselves not to succumb to small distractions. That requires energy and it’s significantly easier to be distracted than ignore them.

While meditating, you aim to just focus on your breathing (at least the mindfulness approach to meditation). Meditating daily means that you’ll improve your ability to remain focused on one thing instead of following every thought that pops into your head.

I no longer feel the need to follow everything that pops into my head because I understand them for what they are. Small urges.

2. Less guilt

Noticing that you’ve failed to do something we think you should have done can result in a lot of self criticism. It can be extremely harmful to your overall well-being and difficult to stop. I’m still quite self critical. However, while meditating I don’t have those feelings at all.

It’s a beautiful moment. Even if it is brief.

When thoughts of inadequacy rush into your head, it’s tempting to follow them into an even darker train of thoughts. However, all you have to do is bring your focus gently back to your breathing. You’ll probably find it quite difficult to do but it gets much easier with time.

The practice is something you can do even when you aren’t meditating.

3. Less stress 

When we’re stressed, we’re often worried about things that we need to do in the future or there are too many things that are going on in the present moment. We feel overwhelmed and want it all to stop but we can’t make it stop.

Meditation is fantastic at reducing stress. When you meditate you’re just trying to focus on a single thing instead of allowing yourself get consumed with the various commitments you have. Taking a few deep breaths and slowing yourself down will let you approach the things you need to do with a clear mind.

4. Better posture

I have a bad back problem and tend to slouch a lot because of it. While the problem is far from being over, my posture has improved slightly. Both in front of the computer and while walking.

Meditation promotes a better posture because you need to be fairly alert. Eventually, good posture will become a habit. It’s improved my concentration and breathing is actually easier!

Remember, having a good posture does not mean keeping your back completely straight. That’d hurt more if you have upper back problems.

5. Increased mindfulness

When I think about my position before I start meditating and now, I’d say that meditating is a positive aspect in my life now.

However, the biggest influence it has had on my everyday living isn’t the act of sitting down and meditating. It’s how I go about my day.

I think about the things I’m doing instead of thinking about what it’ll do for the future. I savour meals and drinks more instead of rushing them for no good reason. I get completely involved in what I’m doing instead of continuously dividing my attention with unimportant things.

Ultimately, I actually feel like I’m experiencing the things I do instead of just doing them. That is what it’s like to live in the now.

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If you want to know how it felt after 1 month, you can read my last post on meditation. It’ll show you my experience when I first started. It can be quite frustrating but like anything else, it requires a bit of persistence to get used to!

I hope at least one of these reasons is a reason to begin meditating for at least 5 minutes a day.

If you already meditate, how would you convince someone else to begin? I’d love to hear your reasons! If you don’t, do you think you’ll try it?

1. You may ask why I didn’t do 6 reasons after 6 months to meditate. You may not. Either way, I don’t have an answer to your question.

2. If you feel like a peaceful person after reading this, you can share the peace by sharing this post.

3. I like meditation and will write more about it. If you want to keep updated on whatever I write, you should follow the blog. It’s easier than not laughing at any of my jokes.

How to be happily unproductive

I’ve noticed that I don’t do all that much with my free time. I do mindless things like browse the internet and watch videos. I always link free time with relaxation so I disassociate myself from anything I perceive as work.

I’ve also noticed that this trend leads to more frustration that it’s meant to. I feel better when I’m making progress with work. However, it seems odd to exclaim I enjoy working instead of relaxing but that’s exactly what happens. Doing nothing constructive can be extremely boring and even tiring but I almost feel obligated to continue doing nothing with my free time because I don’t want it to become like work.

Being in the flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has produced some great research on what makes people happy. He noticed that a surprising number of people are actually happier at work than during their free time despite saying they enjoyed their free time more.  In light of this, the solution for some is to either fill up their free time with more work or do nothing about it. Neither are ideal. One just leads to burnout and a build up of resentment towards it. The other doesn’t help change your position in any way.

Csikszentmihalyi says that being in a state of flow is what makes people happy. There are a few factors present when someone is in the flow.

  1. They’re completely focused on one activity
  2. They feel in control of what they’re doing
  3. It’s intrinsically rewarding
  4. They essentially lose their sense of time

All these factors point to a situation where you’re so focused on an activity you enjoy that you don’t have time to be frustrated with yourself. You feel relaxed because you’re living in the present and very mindful of what you’re doing.

Best of all: you’re happy. 

How to be in the flow

While you’ve probably experienced this feeling before, you might not know why it happens.

This chart shows what it takes for someone to be in the state of flow.

The difficulty level of the activity should match our perceived skill set. This means  it shouldn’t be so difficult that you feel like throwing a chair through your window. Nor should it be so easy that you could fall asleep at a moments notice.

People usually feel happier while actually doing something (even if it’s at work or while studying) because of a constructive environment. You’re more likely to be completely focused on a project you want to work on, than sifting through pictures of birds with arms.

Why free time can make us unhappy 

The reason why people can feel frustrated or unhappy with their free time is mainly because they don’t do anything with it.  If you spend all day refreshing YouTube, then you’l probably feel extremely unfulfilled. Boredom will rise at an alarming rate, time will disappear and ‘damn, where did the time go?’ will be exclaimed.

Being happily unproductive 

If you don’t feel like you enjoy your free time or have even found it draining (like I have!), here’s a list of a few things you could start doing:

Learn a new skill – There’s so much out there that can help you learn things for free or a small price. Online courses offered by websites such as Coursera, edX, Codecademy and Duolingo are fun and engaging. You don’t need to put pressure on yourself to complete them by a certain date.

Read a book – If you have a list of books that you’ve been meaning to get started with, actually do it. If not, there are over 800 new books published each day in the US. You’ll find something to read! Losing yourself in a good book is a perfect example of what it feels like to be in the flow.

Create something – At least try. It’s easy to dismiss this option because you’re ‘not a creative person’ but creativity is something that can be developed as well as anything else. Write, draw, make music or even build something! It doesn’t need to be a best seller but spend a small time creating something and you’ll probably find it fun and try again.

Have a hobby – That can be anything from maintaining a blog or learning something new to marking origami turtles. If you have no idea what you could do, try a variety of things and you’ll find something you’ll want to pursue more. (Try origami, it’s a lot of fun)

Do some gaming – This isn’t an excuse to game unconditionally for hours and hours on end but the reason why we can play games for so long is because of flow!

Enjoy your free time 

After reading this, you might have realised that you don’t actually care for much of what you do in your free time. Switching through TV channels in an attempt to find something interesting is boring. Instead, do something interesting.

You don’t want it to be be mentally draining or become like work but doing next to nothing might not help you feel that relaxed either.

If you want to find out more about flow and where I got my information from, I’d recommend watching Csikszentmihalyi’s TED talk on the topic and reading his book called ‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’.

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Another thing you can do, if you found this post helpful, is share it. You can follow the blog too. It’ll put you in the zone if you do. (It won’t. Sorry)

1. The ‘800 books a day’ statistic was simply found by dividing the number of books published a year in the US by 365.

2. The image came from news.cnet.com

3. Birds with arms is exactly what it sounds like.

4. I can’t say Csikszentmihalyi’s name. I just stare at it. Should I feel bad? Csikszentmihalyi if you ever read this post, hi and sorry I can’t say your name.

Stop doing so much

Ambition is good because it means that we want to actively improve ourselves and achieve great things.

There’s nothing wrong with this. However, there is a problem with trying to do too much at once.

Is it possible to be too motivated? 

Some self improvement efforts start from struggles with depression and apathy. Others may start from moments of bliss and happiness.

In the context of self improvement, extreme happiness and motivation leads to far too much enthusiasm for a better future. This actually results in a loss of focus and nothing actually being completed.

This issue tends to get ignored more than complete apathy to improvement because it’s mistakenly viewed as a desirable trait. The person who wants to do everything is better than the person who wants to do nothing. 

Start small 

A symptom of this extreme motivation is often having a laundry list of goals that must be completed because they will make you a better person. For me, it was trying to develop in all sorts of areas like art, fitness, writing and education. Not only did I not complete everything I wanted to but I ended the summer with half finished projects. Many that I never ended up touching. If i remember correctly, I only finished one online course.

I didn’t complete anything worthwhile because I didn’t focus my efforts on a single project.

My biggest strides in self development have come from adopting habits so small I couldn’t say no to them. I would focus my efforts on them for a while. When they became routine, I moved onto something else. This stopped me from becoming overloaded with lifestyle changes and never making any substantial progress.

For example, choosing to make my bed everyday was a small enough for me to begin and continue without any strain. This would later develop to keeping my desk and room more organised without thinking about it.

Meditating everyday for five minutes a day was not difficult to start. It later developed to meditating 10 – 15 minutes daily.

Drinking an extra cup of water everyday was a small addition and quickly led me only drinking water throughout the day.

Small steps are easier than big leaps

You don’t need to read 10 books in a week or paint Starry Night in a day in order to be make valuable progress with reading or art.

Focus on one area of your life and break it down into small sections. You’ll put more energy into the project or habit which will make you more likely to succeed. If it’s something you have in mind for the long term, focus on the beginning until it becomes a ‘non-focus’. That being, you no longer need to put as much energy into remaining consistent (which is a habit!) Then you can focus on the tougher parts of the project or goal. Or a completely different one.

If you sprint at the beginning of a marathon while juggling bricks, you’ll be the exhausted runner with a sore foot after ten minutes.

Start small and you’ll end big.

The Importance of a Good Attitude

The attitude of ‘this could be better’ plays a part in many areas of our lives. We are always trying to find ways to improve ourselves, whether it is our writing, fitness or just general well-being. This is motivation can stem from being disappointed with how we currently are or the need to achieve something else we want.

We then find different ways to improve ourselves by reading about how to instill good habits, become happier, wake up earlier and so on. Our efforts might not go the way we plan first time round or even the second. But we promise ourselves that we won’t make the same mistakes. However, our disappointment and frustration only continues to grow. If you exercised regularly a year ago, you already would have lost the weight, right? This disappointment will only fuel your current effort and make you even more determined than before.

Not really.

It’s important to understand just how powerful your attitude can be when approaching any form of self-improvement. A lot of self-improvement journeys start from moments of sadness and disappointment but we seldom look back and give ourselves credit for the good things we have done.

At what point does it change from wanting to improve things to simply focusing on the negative?

Forgive yourself.

Always saying ‘this could have been better’ can be more harmful than beneficial.

This isn’t the same as simply trying to forget about any goals you failed to achieve in the past. It requires honesty and willingness to let go of self-imposed burdens. Deciding to forgive myself for not reading much more when I was younger or not being more proactive with my education was tough. It meant that I had to admit that using disappointment and frustration as a basis for my attitude was only leading me towards more frustration. It meant I needed to stop dwelling on what I hadn’t achieved but on what I am going to do.

But ultimately, it meant that I freed myself from cycles of self-criticism of a past that I couldn’t change. My attitude towards self-improvement, and more importantly myself, started shifting from focusing simply on what I hadn’t achieved, to the progress I have made and the progress I will continue to make.

Why is this so useful?

  • It doesn’t prevent you from looking for areas of improvement.
  • You’ll dwell on past misfortunes much less which means you put more energy towards future goals.
  •  You enjoy the progress you make instead of worrying about the things you haven’t yet done.

Allowing yourself to appreciate your current progress and putting aside the anger you had for your previous actions will result in a more positive approach to your work.

Your attitude towards yourself and work also affects how likely you are to complete goals. Here are a few things you should remember when trying to complete something:

1. Perfection is impossible

Whether we admit it or not, we always want our best work to be the first piece of work we produce. It leads to constant worrying about whether our work will be good enough and we may even doubt our ability to get it done at all.

We seem to forget that work is actually worked on. Not produced and framed straight away. If I could write the perfect book without having to edit it, I would have written it yesterday. But I can’t do that and neither can any of the famous authors you read.

They begin and later improve on it.

2. Improvement is slow

A large reason why people give up on goals (especially New Year’s resolutions) is because they expect to see visible change instantly. When we don’t see the change we expect straight away we become demotivated and give up.

However, we shouldn’t expect fireworks to straight away. Musicians practice regularly, writers write regularly and runners run regularly. See the pattern? If you ask a person about how they lost weight, they won’t say it happened in a day. If you ask an author how many times they edited their work before they experienced some success, they won’t say only once.

Realising this helped me understand why consistency is the key to getting things done.

3.  You’re better than you give yourself credit for

Doubt is normal but it shouldn’t stop us from trying to work towards goals we want. Having a realistic outlook on things is good but that should not equate to always telling yourself that you’re worse than you actually are. This eventually leads us to the point where we believe that there’s no use is starting something. Usually because we don’t think we are intelligent enough, as hard working as we used to be or have the necessary self-discipline.

We essentially say to ourselves that we can’t run the race before we even get out of bed. Try letting yourself believe that you’re capable of completing what you want and see what happens. After all, you’ve probably downplayed your ability for much longer than you’ve praised your work.

Looking at the how influential my attitude towards myself and my work is has increased how much I enjoy it. Self-criticism should never result in self-loathing or continuous disappointment. It should only serve to improve the work that you’re doing.

Try changing your attitude towards yourself and your work. There’s little value always being negative about your progress or character.

30 days to Polish and gratitude comes to an end

My first monthly challenge ended yesterday. Here are my thoughts on how I did and whether it was worth it.

Gratitude

My first challenge was keeping a daily list of things that I’m grateful for or things that I enjoyed during that day. The main aim was to focus on more positive parts on the day so I don’t feel like I’m engulfed by darkness when a negative thing happens.

Looking through my list, it seems like extremely small things were worth writing down. I didn’t need to be kissed on the cheek by a fairy or win the lottery everyday to find something that was worth smiling about. A large number of the things were simple. For example,  enjoying a sandwich or noticing that the moon looked big one night.

Simply trying to find a positive thing put me in a better state of mind. Maybe temporarily. It might have lasted for the rest of the day. Regardless of how long it lasted, it was much better than being negative for the whole day.

I’d recommend you try it too.

Polish

This part of the challenge required me to simply learn a new word each day. I did that and a little bit of grammar but I can’t honestly say I’m better off. While the challenge was successful, I don’t think the challenge was useful in my aim to learn the language.

It was too passive and didn’t really force me to actively learn the language. I could make much more progress if I changed the challenge to make it more demanding. Speaking more often would help.

Overall, I’m happy I did the challenges. I will continue with gratitude and make changes to my Polish attempt. I’m unsure of what I’ll do for my next challenge but I’ll think of something, if I decide to do it this month.

Why should I write?

I’m not a writer but I write.

My attitude towards writing has changed a lot over the past few years. I’m glad it’s evolved because it’s far more accepting and positive than it was before. In primary school, I hated nearly everything to do with writing. Writing stories, letters, diary entries – you name it. I didn’t like it. I found it boring (and probably difficult) so I never cared about improving it deliberately.

I’m not going to lie to you and say that writing is now my undying passion. I don’t wake up, jump out of my bed and thank Zeus that I have an opportunity to write. I can’t say I’ve found a passion for anything yet. However, that doesn’t prevent me from saying I’ve grown to appreciate writing much more.

Writing is important is because it improves your thinking. We go from a state of confusion to clarity when we write ideas down and change them. We share them with other people and makes sure that our ideas live longer than we could ever hope.

Mastery of the art is difficult. People put hours and hours into improving how their work reads, how their characters develop and how they present information. Sometimes you dislike the process because ideas aren’t appearing as quickly or the sentences read poorly or the perfect word eludes you. But looking back on the final draft on whatever we’ve done is almost relaxing.

We’ve shared our thoughts with other people instead of keeping them locked inside our heads.

I began thinking about this issue because I want to improve my writing. I find it amazing how some writers can approach important issues respectfully while remaining entertaining. Some news reports can change a person’s mind on an issue convincingly or just illuminate an area that we never considered. Academic books and articles can do the same, although they seem to have a limited audience due to the complexity. Retelling stories about places we’ve visited or things we’ve done give us permission to relive the memory. Even if we can’t get the words completely correct,

Writing is beautiful because our minds are. We can help others, inspire them, make them cry, make them laugh and give them the opportunity to learn.

I write because it lets me connect with other people and, perhaps most importantly, it helps me understand myself.