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My Guide To Complete Self Improvement (self.selfimprovement)

submitted 4 years ago * by TheCacteanWarrior

Hey r/selfimprovement, I'm a swedish student that - perfectionist as I am - always have strived for improving upon myself. However, because of this search for optimization I developed an eating disorder, orthorexia if you will, and while in treatment I began reading philosophy and psychology in order to understand what I had done wrong. After a month or so, I made the conclusion that I will find a meaning by the accumulation of things I do IN life, not find the meaning OF life - since there is no one defined meaning of life that is true for every organism, as every possible answer is debatable. I'd say, that even if you don't believe in this, it would be true that you will find meaning in the things you do when these actions or events are aimed at the overall meaning you think you believe "instead of" finding the meaning in the thing you have done. Feel completely free to correct me if you find any logical holes in my reasoning. The same is true for all of this post.

Now, I didn't come here to debate philosophy, but to give you my guide and views of self-improvement on all aspects of a human being. This is because if you improve yourself as much as possible, you will increase the capacity for attaining most goals, at least as long as they are not about becoming "worse" in an area. I have therefore made a list that, although far from perfect, can be used for creating a structured plan in maximising your potential. It uses the knowledge of several books, podcasts, documentaries, YouTube-videos, articles and alike that I have consumed throughout my life.

So what do I consider be the pillars of our potential? To start, you can make the categories of physical and mental abilities, which are intimately related. Then you also have the knowledge which you can apply through these two. The physical part is comprised of all the functions in your body and is the tool for interacting with your world. The mental part is then made out of your physical part, as it exists as an function within the intricate network of connections between all the neurons of the brain, just like your knowledge is. If you improve one part, you improve the others, just as you will become generally better at other sports if you perform another.

And to my list now, with explaination of simple whys and hows for each item:

Mental

By improving your mental capabilities you will improve your core that controlls everything else

  • Meditation; There is loads of versions of this, and it can be aimed for general health, stress management, willpower training, well-being, improveme reasoning etc. Several other items on this list can be trained through meditation.

  • Hypnosis; This one is far from necessary, and is just a possible tool. I know it may seem like some kind of quackery, BUT I do have my reasons to include it since there evidence of it effectiveness. Read upon it and form an oppinion. Anyway, it can be used to rather easily induce desired attributes in our mind.

  • Memory training; To do this, you can use any method and various exercises. I myself use the GMS-method. This is to dramatically increase your learning, which is very usefull for the acquiral of information that can help you in decision-making

  • "Courage training"; It was hard to make a precise term for this, but in short it is the act of becoming familiar with challenging yourself, either throughout everyday life only or by adding complementary exercises. This is to reduce the risk of being hindered by challenges, or more specifically not succumb to fears. By not stopping yourself through excuses and telling yourself that "this is dangerous" when you logically KNOW that it isn't, you can perform actions that you need to, but don't do because you are simply too afraid of it.

  • Willpower training; This is done partly by some meditation, "courage training", hypnosis and specific exercises to facilitate motivation and "drive" you towards your goals. It is kind of the ability to push through, similary to "courage training", but instead of fighting fears you have a "stronger will" to work towards whatever goal you want. Call it becoming stubborn, or why not "not giving up", if you want.

  • Social training; This is more specifically combined training that uses your knowledge of psychology, your willpower and the ability to challenge your social fears so that you improve your social interaction and increase the ability to influence others for your goals (or helping their goals, maybe?).

  • Stress management training; This is essentially meditation, breathing techniques, challenge training, hypnosis and the specific action of deliberately relaxing without external input (media, games, TV etc.) when all combined and practiced in the long term. It is used to better manage stress and to reduce stress so that you prevent its influence on decision-making and also minimize symptoms of fatigue that decreases your abilities.

  • Musical/artistic training; This is entirely optional, but benficial nonetheless. You do this by things such as playing an instrument, drawing, painting, sculpting, designing, composing and writing. It is used to contribute towards most mental abilities such as memory and logical thinking, but also to develop creativity, expression of emotions or ideas, possibly controll emotions, stress management and simply well-being.

  • Emotional training; A bit vague, but can be used for managing, controlling, distancing and reasoning about emotions as they arise. It can be practised by consciously telling yourself that you have a certain feeling, and then "take a step back" to observe it and think about why you feel that way, and if it makes things better.

  • Philosophical/logical thinking; The act of thinking/discussing logical problems, moral questions, defitions of words and the causes of all things etc. It will increase reasoning, problem-solving and (hopefully) wellbeing.

  • Positive-thinking-training; This is another optional and debatable item, but by being "forgiving" and "kind" to yourself, it can increase wellbeing.

Knowledge

To make a solid basis of as correct information as possible for making decisions that are better aimed at your goal. Here it is health-focused.

  • Psychology; To, for example, identify psychological phenomena when they occur and how you can influence these to achieve goals.

  • Physiology; For knowledge of how to optimize/improve bodily functions.

  • Nutrition; To know how to optimize function in the body's various processes.

  • Specialized learning; To learn about and make use of knowledge in all possible subjects to achieve goals. You can learn whatever you want, that is.

Physical training

To improve bodily functions

  • Strength training; Rather important for increasing bodily functions, well-being and reduce the risk of illness, etc.

  • Condition/cardiovascular training; Just as important as strength training, it increase brain function, and of course to help the heart and reduce the risk of disease etc. You should absolutely include both at some point, but choose whatever proportion of effort you want between them. And DON'T do my mistake and become addicted to it, it will cost you too much in other areas. Recovery is absolutely essential to gaining any benefits from it. If you feel that you are not recovered (and you will know), be sure to stop for a moment. Observe what you are doing, and why.

  • Breathing Exercise; This is related to meditation and stress management training, but by doing this you can improve oxygen uptake (just as with other physical training) you can reduce stress and make relaxation easier. Just do not neglect it completely because of this.

  • Mobility and flexibility training; Not necessary, but quite beneficial for reducing injury risk and optimize the effect of strength/cardiovascular training by the increase of range of motion. It can also provide relaxation. This is debated, though.

  • Balance training; Not necessary, but can be beneficial to reduce injury risk. Much of it comes through other training

Ok, so this became a longer post than intended. I may seem... very extreme with all this, but it is just a framework for making a complete "training program" by using periodization of your focus while keeping some basic things at all times. Begin with just meditating for 10 minutes a day, and maybe after a month you are meditating 20, 40 or 60 minutes. Then you can add memory training, and so on. Combine it as you like. My personal and "final" goal is to have implemented all of these wtihin 40 years, so I have basically all of my life to do so. And for this month, I have the goal of meditating 30 minutes a day, and 40 minutes the next. Think of the athlete that focuses on different things at different times, or else he might get overtrained - or not. It depends on you, your effort, goals, views, environment and the rest of the universe, even particles at quantum-levels.

I don't want to induce stress or give you all anxiety over optimizing every aspect of your life. This would literally counteract the intent of improvement. "Just" don't overdo it. If done "correctly", you will be able to prevent obsessions of optimization by for example thinking about why you are doing something and then ask if what you do is "balanced". Do you need 10 percent more cardiovascular training, if you would be better of doing 100 percent more meditation, or 200 percent more on learning about something you like. It is the whole that counts, just as the best house and most sustainable house can not consist of only planks. You need nails, some tools to put them together and cutting them, something to measure things so that they fit where they should, a foundation to set them on, isolation for warmth when it's done, paint to protect the walls from the weather, a roof and so on. Only then should you go on adding comfort appliances and decorations such as windows and heating systems. The big problem is that it is hard to know what is the best way to build your house, as it is you that decides how you want it and not a single person around you. Listen to those - as in a little from several and not all from one source - who have designated their lifes to their field, and then think of what is most applicable to you. So, don't be too experimental trying every single thing out there at once, and choose one (POSSIBLY two if it's a really easy goal, but be careful) thing at a time so you can make it througly. You only need it to be good enough for it to stay where you left it and not so throughly that you can not keep it where it is when you go onto something else. When you have the foundation, specialize in whatever you find being the best for your situation and goals. Write down what YOU want, and then what YOU need to do that. Then tell yourself that if you want that, you will do this. And DO the work, not theorize over it for hours on end. All results comes from action and a recompensating recovery, and if your action is only reading about the topic forever and never applying it because you want it to be perfect, you'll just lose the time needed for your actions to grow into results. You can have a million seeds and be the most educated expert in the world on planting this particular seed, but if you never sow it or sow it a week before you die, you can never harvest any crops.

Lastly, I want to remind you that it is your life after all, so go do whatever with it. Others may want you to fail or succed, but you also have a will which is yours only. And this is just a resource of swiftly organized instructions for helping you reach your goal, if you have any. I thought that it would have helped me, as perfectionist as I am...

Now, do the work - Nothing makes nothing, something makes something. Start with your goal on a paper.

Edits so far: formatting and wording, renaming "challenge training" to "courage training", adding some text.