Are you someone who wants to improve yourself and be better ? Then you my friend, have come to the right place ! I myself am an advocate of self improvement. I will elaborate on a few self improvement goals I could achieve in 2022. I will tell you the secret of how I did it!!
Looking back almost an year ago I wasn’t the same person that I am right now. I can proudly say that I have come a long way.
What made me choose the path of Self improvement?
I had just given birth to twin daughters. Put on a 100kgs of weight, had missed giving my post graduation final exams as I had conceived and had some complications with my pregnancy , had lost all my freedom as I had two more people to take care of. At this point in my life, i felt that there was nothing that was working in my favour. Because as a medical professional (Doctor) I was expected to serve the people, be financially independent and have the best life. And here I was almost hitting the rock bottom with no freedom no post graduate degree in my hand and literally zero financial independence . I was resenting my life!
Although I had two beautiful babies whom I had just given birth, I couldn’t enjoy the first two months of being a mother as I was so pre occupied with the thoughts of my ruined career. I used to be in tears while feeding my babies, I used to lose my patience many a times for very little things. I was a total mess. Neither was I enjoying my motherhood, nor was I moving forward or finding a solution to my worries.
That’s when my family came to my rescue. My husband and my mother in law counselled me about my current situation. They enlightened me on how I can’t have the best of both worlds, if I keep worrying about all these things.
They told me that :
A) Worrying takes me nowhere. Rather find solutions to your problems.
B) Prioritise ! Prioritise ! Prioritise !
So that day i realised a few things :
A) I had two beautiful daughter’s who meant the world to me , yet I couldn’t do my best as a mother as I was so preoccupied with my miseries. I realised how pointless worrying was.
B) I realised it is very important to set my priorities right.
C) Due to my irritability , anger I was pushing my loved ones away from me.
The Self improvement goals that I achieved by the end of 2022 :
A) Learnt to Prioritise : I wasn’t ready to leave my babies with nannies/maids yet. I knew that I can work and build my career at any point in my life but motherhood doesn’t come back. I realised that I have to appreciate what I have in-front of me right now. So I made a final decision of being with my babies at home for the next 3 years, until they’re ready to go to school. I didn’t want to lose complete touch of my medical background , so I applied for some jobs that could be done from the comfort of my home. I worked everyday for about 4 hours and provided virtual medical consultation to my patients. So it was a win win situation for me. I was getting ample amount of time with my babies and I was earning !
Prioritising helped me work on different things , hassle free! I knew what I had to work on first and what was more important. It saved me a lot more time and energy and gave me a lot of clarity.
B) Became a Pure Vegetarian: I was researching a lot on healthy eating habits and came across a lot of articles that suggested how eating meat could increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and increased cholesterol levels. It’s been more than a year since I stopped eating meat and I can see the results ! I feel much healthier.
C) Learnt something new : Although I am a Doctor and had no background of the tech industry whatsoever! I always had a creative side so I decided to explore that and added a skill to my list. I took up a UI/UX design course online and now I am a certified web designer as well ! Adding skills and creating multiple sources of income gives you financial freedom.
D) Worked on Anger issues : I used to lose my temper for very little things. Even a little difference of opinion would make me so defensive and irritable. I would snap at my loved ones before. My spouse showed me how I was narrowing/shutting my door for insightful discussions by getting angry for every little thing . So I made a ‘1 Minute Rule’ for myself. If I get angry instead of reacting I promised myself to stay quiet for a minute and take some time to calm down. Every morning I started listening to some peaceful affirmations from notable spiritual leaders like B.K Shivani and Shri Sadhguru. This habit of filling my mind with positive things in the morning helped me remain peaceful all day and to remain mindful of the decisions I make.
Looking back at the 2022 version of myself i have definitely come a long way and grown a lot more in various aspects of my life.
How to achieve Self improvement goals?
A) Identifying your Pain Points : Ask yourself what you want to improve yourself in? May it be relationships, finances, career, study, physical and mental health etc. Rate yourself in each of these from 0-10 (0- the lowest score and needing lots of improvement and 10- being the highest score). Work on the areas where you feel you need to improve.
B) Establish a Purpose: Once you’ve decided on the things that you want to improve , ask yourself why you want to improve? To create lasting change, you must connect your self-improvement goals with what will ultimately bring you the most fulfilment. For ex, I want to improve professionally, because I want to financial independence and give the best to my family. When you have your ultimate purpose in mind, you won’t be deterred when problems arise – and you’ll find that you have the strength to work through them.
C) Retrospection: Once you start working on your self improvements goals , at the end of everyday before sleeping ask yourself if you did better than yesterday. If not, where you went wrong and how you can make it right and do better? For ex: If you promised to keep your anger at bay and not snap , but failed at it today, ask yourself why you couldn’t stick to the rule you made and promise yourself to not repeat this mistake again.
D) Positive reinforcement: This is celebrating your little victories of self improvement at the end of every month. For ex, if I had promised myself that I would lose weight this year and after consistently working on it ,I lose a few kilos , I would celebrate that! May be go for a spa day with my girls or anything you prefer. This method is one of the easiest and most effective ways you can boost your morale and performance. It’s important to reward the behaviour you want to see more often.
E) Build a Support system: Self improvement is a very long , tedious process. Most of us tend to take it lightly by the end of a month or two. You keep falling and seeing a lots of ups and downs every now and then. Hence it is important to have a support system around to remind you , of why you started it in the first place. Usually your friends or family can help you with this. If not, you can write a journal/log regarding your self improvement process everyday and if you’re at your low , you can go back to remind yourself the reason why you want to achieve it.
So these were some important steps I followed to keep myself on track.
The key to self improvement is : Self awareness, Determination to change and Persistence.