Personal Improvement - Benefit Your Life In Ways That Matter

Personal improvement. What does this bring to mind? Improve our person - perhaps how other people see us, or how we see ourselves. Improve our persona - how we view ourselves. Boost our self image, have enhanced self esteem.

Close to home

To make anything personal brings that subject very close to home. It gives it that little bit more emphasis. It not only means something to us, and often a lot. But making something personal is just that. We get involved. Get involved that little bit more, and often a lot more. A great deal more as it, and it does not matter what it is, it hits home. We realize that we can do it? We can help ourselves. We can improve ourselves. And also realize that if we don't do it for us, who will? (Equally we can assist and help others, but we cannot 'really do it for them' either.) It is our personal improvement after all.

How important is personal improvement to us?

It really means something to us, or to something or someone we hold dear. Until that moment it may not have meant a lot. Most times we had not seen it. Or the need for it. We had not seen it coming. We were only made aware when it came into our sphere of influence, our sphere of attention. Into our life on a very close, and personal level. And in a very meaningful way. Until then it meant little. But now it may have taken over. It means everything. And we want to get it right.

Allow improving to become personal

So, can we make our improvement personal? Make it such that it means that much too us. (It probably already does, just we are not aware of it.) If we can make it personal we have made a huge leap.

How can we improve personally? Have a leap in faith and action. A leap from our improvement being a 'yes, we could do that', 'yes, we might do that', 'yes, we ought to do that', TO the level when we WILL do that. It means that much to us. And if we don't? What will happen? We would really be missing out. Our life won't advance forward as smoothly as we like. We might even be wasting our time on redundant activities, rather than be forging ahead on relevant, meaningful, life-intended pursuits. Making our difference to our life and a real contribution to life as a whole, and our personal improvement in particular.

When will it happen?

So how do we know when this will occur? Will we know where? Hopefully we will know why? Will we know when? Do we know if it will happen this way for us?

And what about the how? How will it happen for us? How will we discover that? This is one of life's little secrets. How. Our chance to ponder. Our chance to wonder. To look at life with fresh eyes and appreciate. See life once again as the magical, special and precious experience it really is.

Life's interventions

Life has its own way of doing things. Of affecting our lives. Of participating with us in our little adventure. Giving a little here, taking a little there. But there for us, each and every day.

Is it a matter of perception? Of us being aware of what is happening to us and the life close and around us. Or of something coming in that we need to attend to. Or at least place in its rightful place in our grand plan. Or is it something crucial but small. A little happening or occurrence.

The experience is there. It has happened for us. Perhaps uncertain at first, but then we welcomed it. We benefited from it. We were grateful for it. And now we have moved on.

So what is it that occurs and how are we aware?

What does really happen and why?

• Is it a matter of awareness? Are we aware that we might need any improvement to either our life or ourselves? Or are we happy with our status quo?
• Is it a matter of routine? Can we expect it? Or is it more special than that?
• Is it a matter of neglect that we need to attend to? We've tried hard and yet there are gaps in our lives. Things that need attention. Big things, yet quietly sitting in the background waiting for us to be ready. Ready to take them forward once more. Ready to be us, live us, experience the 'us' within, once more
• Is it a matter of interest, stimulation and excitement? Not boring or tedious at all. Not dull and bland. But really sharp and in high contrast. Real and vibrant for us. Up close and personal. Yet gentle and caressing. Loving and nourishing. Smoothing out the wrinkles of our life

And all providing we contribute. We take part in our life. Not a bystander but an active participant. Making a real effort to make the most of our life and all the things within it. Making a real contribution. Make our personal improvement really count.

What does it really mean to us?

What should this personal improvement 'lark' be to us? For us. How much should we rate it? How high? And, therefore, what effort should we put in? Concerted? Determined? Disciplined? Or wasteful, neglected, rare. Only when we don't have anything better to do. Our choice.

More questions than answers, or answers than questions?

Should we be in control or let our personal improvement control us? Lots of questions? Things to think about for sure. Should we have a broad perspective or a narrow one? In fact, what is our perspective? How much have we thought about this aspect of our life? Have we come to any conclusions? If so what? And have we acted upon them or are they gathering dust in a drawer somewhere? Decisions. Questions. Choices.

Take it easy, but mean it

But, as with all things, there is no success or accomplishment obtained, deserved or otherwise, that is really worth banging our head against the wall for? For getting up tight about? Getting worried or stressed about. What gain is that other than to make life thoroughly miserable? And if anything this will lead to us shelving the whole thing. And perhaps when we were starting to make progress, if only we had hung on in there that little bit longer. So don't give up. Don't quit on yourself. Don't beat yourself up. Be firm with yourself to keep on going, but no so much that you put a (unnecessary) yoke around your neck. Or find yourself in a straight-jacket of your own making.

So what areas of personal improvement could you influence and make an impact?

In what areas could your personal improvement efforts best be used? What areas of your life could you best improve?

• our self confidence and with it our self esteem and self image
• our self motivation and with it better use of our talents and values
• our self discipline and control leading to improved goal setting and achievement
• our personality and behavior will lead to improved self management and body language
• our self development will leading to boosted growth and worth

What should we do?

We need to distinguish what is important to us? What we can reasonably tackle now. For ourselves. Do that and reassess. Get help as required. Do what you can alone. Get some progress under your belt. Improve your confidence and esteem. Get more motivated and put some more effort in and one step at a time real, solid, meaningful and satisfying progress can be achieved. And we (and our lives) will feel the real benefit of the effort and labors we have applied to our personal improvement.