Life will beat down on you perpetually, you either accept defeat or learn to fight back. The path to greatness will never get easier, you have to learn to mold yourself into a superior form to become worthy of it. If you don’t improve yourself to adapt, you perish.  Suffering a life of mediocrity is the only alternative you are left with when you choose not to improve with every passing moment.

In order to achieve the extraordinary you must be willing to do the impossible.

Evolution is always in motion, the ones walking hand in hand with it care to improve themselves perpetually, the others become obsolete. When you improve yourself you add to the evolutionary pool rather than holding it back. You only get better by acquiring new skills, knowledge and experiences, These nourish your sub conscious and consequently enhance your perception.

With an improved perception you see the same situation differently, read the same books with a wider paradigm, speak similar words but mindfully and manage to read between the lines. Your receptive powers become magnified and so do your deductive skills.

Your perception can be enhanced by a number of voluntary and involuntary exercise for both mind and body. The most significant aspect is the regular enrichment of your current thought pool with fresh matter. Lethargy and reluctance to change prevents or at least delays self improvement. If you manage to overcome the initial inertia of rest you are well on your way to galvanizing yourself into a better you.

Here are the steps involved in self improvement, these might help you if you are wanting to make minor changes to your lifestyle which will have major consequences:

1. Ignorance– This is the stage when you think you know it all. You believe that the knowledge and skill that you posses will last you a lifetime and hence time spent on improving is time wasted.

You end up basing your judgement on outdated concepts and stubborn policies. This is the most important stage in self improvement. If you are too happy in the cocoon of your stagnant thoughts, you will seldom make sense of this dynamic life. Only when you realize the importance of self improvement will you make the effort, till then you will be in a state of ignorant bliss.

2. The painful Initiation– This is perhaps the hardest part. Initiating improvement of any kind involves putting yourself through alien conditions, situations and people. This is not an ideal scenario for your comfort friendly mind. But if you manage to suck it up for the initial bit, not only will you come out stronger, but you would enhance your bare-ability for discomfort, making you stronger for life.

This part is like putting yourself on stage in front of a crowd or getting yourself to the gym when you don’t feel like or focusing your mind for those 15 minutes of meditation. If you manage to overcome the initial resentment you will manage to pull through.

3. Determined struggle– Although the initial part of any self improvement activity is the toughest but it is the most rewarding too. You see most improvement when you first start to learn something new. For the first few weeks or months, you go from a zero level of skill to around sixty. But then you stop. This is when you face a temporary plateau in improvement. Where, although you are putting in 100% or even more effort you see minimal or negligible improvement.

It takes around 20 hours of practice to gain a workable knowledge of any activity, but then you reach a phase where you have to spend more time for even little improvement. It gets hard for an individual to swallow this bitter pill. No one wants to spend an excessive amount of time with minimal rewards. This is where your resilience is tested. You either chose to quit or carry on till you reach as close to perfection in the skill as you can.

4. Sustaining perfection– When you reach an acceptable level in a skill you cant rest on your laurels. If you have to be able to put the skill to good use, you got to still look to improve, even after knowing that there is no scope left, just to sustain the level you reached. As if you don’t, you will most definitely rust. The people at the top of the game don’t rest or relax, they keep seeking beyond perfection. The hallmark of a true champion is to keep revising his skills even after achieving everything that the skill has to offer.

5. Limitless Influencing  – One way of sustaining perfection is by sharing your knowledge and helping others. Even otherwise, the absolute satisfaction from pursuing a skill or habit comes only when you can influence others to follow in your foot steps. The sole purpose of self improvement is to make yourself capable enough of helping others. This way you will push each other beyond the common paradigm of perception and expand the generic horizons of thinking.

Never think twice before sharing what you know, your power of influence can work wonders for someone else’s life.

Crack the cocoon 

The wisest ones keep learning well beyond the mandatory period through school and college. You should have no qualms about learning from every source possible. Ignorant people don’t feel the urge to adapt to a changing world. They think they are well aware about their cocoon and never try to crack out of it.

Each step on the ladder of self improvement is daunting, hence many give up on themselves. By recognizing where you are on the ladder, you can at least make concentrated efforts in the right direction.

Self improvement should be taken as seriously as breathing as with every passing breath you miss an opportunity to improve your mind,body and soul. The actual purpose of life is to live a life full of purpose, dedicate yourself to the path of perpetual self improvement and see how you succeed in all your conquests.

 

Have a great day.