Self-Improvement
Here’s a quick topic for a Monday!
What do you think your capacity for change is? Do you regularily try to grow and develop (and look back often to learn from mistakes made), or prefer to stick with the status quo? What precipitates growth and development in your life? When you do make changes, do they stick?
As many of my friends, and certainly my family know, I’ve been trying to make some positive improvements in how I interact with others. I’m wondering if anyone else out there has been going through a self-improvement phase, and have your efforts paid off?
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this is my lifelong goal. what else is life but change?
what i’ve learned is that things really only change if you *really* honestly want them to change. You’re on a really good start
I’ve heard that it takes at least nine weeks of doing something consistently to make it a habit – this myth was attached to working out. I find it’s even longer than that.
The funny thing is that I don’t think I’ve ever been successful at changing my personality because I felt that it needed to be changed in some way. I don’t know – maybe I just wasn’t doing the right thing. I find that my personality changes in response to different levels of stress or happiness in my life, not because I want it to be different. That’s a pretty “external locus of control” perspective to take, which is definitely not my normal mode of thinking. However, I do know that I feel the worst about myself just after I’ve identified something that I wish I could change. So I try to avoid those moments… but they never go away.
Good point, Jen! Done…
Hey guys — Your points are valid. I’ve been in this self-growth phase for a while now, and what I’ve learned so far is that it literally takes months to change habits… Especially when they are so ingrained. Much work, but I do see a real difference these days, with how people respond to my interactions, so it must be paying off in a small, yet meaningful way. …I’m getting there. Man, it’s hard, though!
also, if you’re going to ask all these questions that require long comments to answer, you should change your comments layout so the comment content display box is about twice as big, plztnx!
I don’t think it’s so much embracing change as using the right tools to bring it about. You’re obviously ready for the change if you’ve taken the steps to start. Changing personality aspects is much like changing or forming a habit – they’ve become definable aspects because we do them all the time – and need patience and perseverence to change.
A mistake many people make (myself included) is expecting to make the change happen overnight. Making the decision to change is very exciting, and it can get discouraging when it doesn’t just happen.
When I’ve tried to make a change like that, it’s always come in very small steps. I used to be horrible at answering email. I promised myself I’d respond to every email I received (that warranted a response) for a whole week within 24 hours (remember, set S.M.A.R.T. goals). Once I managed that week, I tried another, and another. Soon, the change was “complete” (though I still slip every now and then) and I moved on to another thing I want to improve.
I’m pretty much constantly wishing to improve myself, but I’m not very well organized so I don’t always get very far.
Any change that has stuck has required effort over a long period of time.
My current personal project is to get over a certain amount of shyness and self-doubt. Only time will tell how well that’s going.
Good luck with your personality renovations!
Looking for positive improvements in how you interact with others?
How about RETURNING THEIR PHONE CALLS. That’s be a good start.
I think it’s very easy to talk about making changes in one’s life, but bloody difficult to actually implement them on a long term basis.
Let’s take losing weight for example – something like 95% of people who lose weight gain it back within 5 years. That’s unbelievably high! And it’s not because people want to fall off of the wagon, it happens for a bunch of reasons, including because people no longer continue to make a daily conscious effort to stick to their exercise program and watch what they eat. Once they’ve reached their goal of losing 20lbs or fitting into that size 6 dress they slowly (perhaps even subconsciously) slip back into their old habbits (no matter how good their original intentions/drive were to succeed).
The weight loss thing is just an example, but I have seen many people with the best intentions fall back into their old habits (lighting up a cigarette to have “just one”, cheating again after their partner forgave them for the last episode). I think it takes an incredibly strong person to make personal changes driven primarily by their own desire for wanting change. This doesn’t mean it can’t be done though . Some people do quick smoking for good, lose weight and keep it off, and learn to be nicer forever. Just not everyone.
That being said, Tan, you happen to be one of the strongest people I know, so if anyone can do something she sets her mind to, it’s you!
Not that you need to change one little bit. I love you just the way you are
to go along with what col said, and to drag in some old tony robbins stuff (the guy annoys me and says a lot of things I disagree with, but he’s got a few valid points) … the only real way to change is to get angry about something. now, I think it’s possible to change *without* getting angry, but it certainly is the easiest way. Anger (or in some cases, strong passion) is the key to changing. If you can get really *angry* with the thing you want to change, you’ve got a much better chance of changing it.
like, if someone gets *angry* with the fact that they’re too fat, they’re more likely to lose weight than if they just say “hmm, I wish I could see my feet…”. Or if someone gets *angry* that they don’t have the job they want, they’re much more likely to try to get the job they want, rather than a “gee, I wish I had a better job…”
I’ve generally found that the more passion I feel about a change, the easier the change is to make.
On the flipside, this means that the minor changes that would be nice to change but don’t really incite any passion in me are unlikely to change at all. I’ll need to make myself angry and/or passionate about them before they’ll change. Alas, one of those things I’d like to change is procrastination, and I keep putting off working on it..
I have a technique that has proven to help me.
1. I recognize what I need to change. I also understand that in order to change, I have to change the original thought pattern first, because really that is where all habbits come from, a thought process.
2. So instead of always stating that you want* to improve how you interact with people, just start saying “I always have a possitive experience with everyone you meet.” Or whatever sentence will suit your purposes and must be stated in the present tense.
*Want – I have learned over the years through various books that “wanting” something and “creating” something are very different. The Universe will recognize that you are “wanting”, therefore give you full recognition for the act of “wanting”. It will state I see that you want to want and so be it. This is usually why people do not receive what they ‘want’. You have to put whatever you ‘want’ in the present tense. Otherwise whatever you wish to achieve will always stay in the future… hanging out in the cosmos waiting for the time that you stop wanting.