Improve Yourself: Everyone Can Make Improvements
Improve Yourself: Everyone Can Make Improvements
By Charles L Harmon
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We all could use growth in our life. Even the most conservative of us who are satisfied with the status quo could benefit from personal growth. Without personal growth life is just plain, stagnant, and a bore. To many of us it is unsatisfying. After all, growth is something we experienced the first eighteen years or more of our life, growth in many areas. We are definitely used to it.
Yes we feel a resistance to change, change of any patterns away from normal, resistance to change of habits that are ingrained in us through years of constantly doing them. Just change in general takes some getting used to.
Most of us would like to improve ourselves in some area. Personal improvement always carries some benefits, which are excellent motivational factors to help us in effecting any changes needed. It often turns out there are unseen benefits that show up later, well after we’ve made some improvements. But for improvements in our personal lives we usually have something we wish we could accomplish, even if it’s only a thought at the time.
For instance, you are an introvert and not at all keen on appearing in front of a group of people, especially should you have to give a speech or take a leadership role. But you have aspirations of moving up in the company, not just a step up, but up to a high management position. You feel you have to make some significant changes to break out of your “go along with the program” mode. That is a conflict with your current personality that you want to put behind you. You need to improve your communication skills. This can be related to presentations at work or being more articulate.
Toastmasters are a wonderful group that can assist you with this process. Your family would probably be happy to hear you practice a presentation the night before. You could even invite a small group of close friends to hear you too. People like to give feedback. The fact that you listen to their analysis and might make self improvements due to them would be a good feeling to them also. You’d kill several birds with one stone, improve yourself, gain some immeasurable experience and feedback, and make others feel wanted in the process.
Suppose you feel your weakness in communication is in your interpersonal relationships. Then that area can be improved by practice. In addition you could utilize some counseling to work out any of the issues causing your weakness in communicating. Some people lack confidence in what they say. By working on the underlying insecurities causing the problems, their inner strength will get stronger. If you have anger stored up inside you that gets in the way of a calm and peaceful discussion, this can be overridden by insight, gaining new habits, and lots of practice. If you grew up in a family that had trouble expressing feelings, this will also be something you need to develop, as you had no role models when you were a child to copy from. In many cases a competent counselor can help get to the root of some of the problems concerning your personality and weaknesses you have today.
There are other areas that people want to improve. Here are just a few including personal grooming, ambition, time management, goal setting, relationships with others and leadership skills. All these can be worked on through practice and discipline. In addition you can take some continuing education classes for most of these and many other areas.
Going from where you are to where you want to be can be a real challenge. However there are many ways to get there. Continuing education classes, online courses, personal mentoring and counseling are all options available to help change patterns that seem to be holding you back. What helps in this process is having the motivation to change or improve yourself. How do you get that? Taking a break three or four times each day to really visualize the new you would help give you the motivation and positive thoughts to plant the seeds of change. It would also help get you through the tough parts; similar to putting a picture of your ideal weight on the refrigerator is a boost for those wishing to lose weight.
Copyright © 2007 Charles Harmon
Charles is a software developer and owns several websites. He creates websites and writes articles. Charles is collecting recipes. View info products and buy at low cost. Download free computer software. Charles is also interested in WordPress websites.
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