Lifelong Commitment to Self Improvement

Transcript

Welcome beautiful thinkers.

Today I’d like to talk to you about a lifelong commitment to self improvement.

I remember many years ago, it must have been 17 or 18 years ago…. I have this distinct memory I was descending a stair case at a friends home and all of the sudden I came into this realization.

I began on this path of self improvement. I began reading several books, for example Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers.

It’s one of the books that got me going along on my journey, starting to look at parts of myself or how I could be better as a communicator, how I could be more courageous and many other aspects.

And I started to realize “Alright, so I’ve been studying this self improvement stuff and I’ve been putting it into practice. Some of it is even working, the results in my life are changing and I’m starting to have a better social life.

Women are starting to find me more attractive and other things like starting to be more bold and building my confidence. Performing in the theater among other things and in that moment descending the stair case I thought “Wow, if I keep doing this…if I merely keep doing this, implementing a few habits a few perspectives and continuing them throughout my life, I’m gonna be great. Or things are gonna be really good for me, things are gonna work out okay.”

I saw the future I could say, a little prophecy within my own head. I could see the trend and where it was going and I thought it was good.

Now everyone has the power today to gain in self improvement. There are more resources than ever if you have practice to the internet.

You can do so many things you can even pirate books if you can’t afford them and use them to increase your personal power. Your personal power a secret book by Tony Robbins. Awaken the Giant within, that’s another one that had a good effect on me.

There’s so many things that you can do and it really just takes those few little things.

Like if you can commit yourself to being a little better every day.

Or perhaps improving some aspect of yourself every week. And you will be better in the long term and things will get better for you socially, financially, spiritually, emotionally.

All of these aspects of your life can be improved and all it takes is this, what do they call it kaizen I think is the term. Small incremental changes.

You notice something that could be better, you set yourself on changing that. Then you will be better. You applied the effort, you will be better.

I remember the words of my friend sage. She was working as a sort of healer. She was working on nutrition and exercise coaching.

Sometimes she would have people even in a terminally ill state, if they had cancer or something like that. She would tell them “maybe things are never going to be perfect. Maybe you will never be at perfect health. That’s the reality but you can always be a little bit better.

And she would help people to be a little bit better to show them a path to a more fulfilling life as long as they were willing to take those steps.

So there is the theory element and there is the practice element.

Reading this book, its another book I recommend if you wanna help people “The Skilled Helper by Gerard Egan.

And he has this quote, I don’t know who he’s quoting but it’s something about organized stagnation is always inferior to chaos that has potential.” I’m remembering that wrong.

But it’s something like you need to introduce a little chaos into your life so you can begin to get better.

You don’t always know what’s going to happen because you’ve never been in that situation before. New factors get introduced and that gives you more information you can go on and reflect on that.

Use that to become better and use that to expand your sphere of influence and help other people around you be happier and more fulfilled as well.

And that’s kind of amazing stuff which is possible.

I was also thinking about Benjamin Franklin. He had this 13 week cycle so he would look at 13 virtues and write them down in his journal which is a wonderful practice. Journaling upon your day and thinking about the things that you did and could do better.

So he wrote down these 13 virtues, 13 weeks and a quarter. So for a single week he had a certain virtue for example discipline.

So in that week he would apply himself to becoming more disciplined.

Maybe he’s feeling a bit lazy at some point, I know I have this problem. I ask myself the question “What would a disciplined person do at this time” like when the alarm goes off for me to do my evening meditation and I’m playing video games.

What would a disciplined person do in this situation Kurt?

And I’m like “Alright, I’ll do what a disciplined person does for those 15 minutes of meditation and calm the mind and allow wonder to enter.”

You can get better, you might never be perfect but you can get better.

If you have a lifelong commitment to self improvement, who knows where you will end up?

The potential is limitless in applying yourself every day or every week to improve yourself. After about 50 years there’s a sort of compound interest.

Every little bit, every little increase, every little increase in efficiency and kindness and all these other qualities.

They all add up and then they compound and then who knows what you will be?

Thank you so much for listening, thank you for applying yourself to make those little changes to make all the difference in the long run.

Thank you for thinking beautifully. I’ll talk to you soon, have a great day.