My Self Improvement Journey

Are you someone who is looking to try and improve a few things about you? Or many things? If you just said yes then we have a few things in common.

I am no expert on this, but using some common sense (not that I have much), life experiences and how I got on I would like to share this with you.

---

So the past few months got me thinking, how can I improve myself….in any way?  more so now during lockdown since we have lots of free time.

So many of us want to achieve something, it could be loose weight. Learn something new or break a bad habit. But! so many of us also don’t tend to keep to these goals, which is why come New Year the resolutions come back into play.

A great example of this is just how many Weight loss diets there are, you could go into a book store and find many books on this, you search online and find millions and all these celebs are endorsing it. But when you try, you do loose weight woohoo but after a while you stop following these guidelines and slowly the weight comes back on.

As humans, we find it hard to keep things up as we get bored very easily so self improving is a very difficult thing to do. Just like going to the gym, we might go but if we don’t have that motivation we will get bored and stop and what we wanted to achieve never happens.

So don’t believe in what you read, or hear as the key to any of these is you need to be motivated to keep it up which at first is difficult but then it becomes your new norm.

So what things have I been trying to improve?

1. Pick up a new hobby

Just like you am sure, one of my fav hobbies is to sit comfy on the sofa or the bed with a nice movie at nights to relax and wind down before going to sleep. Yeah this is a great hobby, but one that doesn’t really help us does it? Apart from being able to chat about what happened in X episode of the current popular show.

For me, I have tried Karate, Art, Tennis all in my past when I was younger but never kept them up so what have I started and aim to keep up? Yoga?

A few years ago if you stopped me and said I would be taking up yoga and enjoying it, I would have looked at you and laughed but yeah I have and I am enjoying it.

Unfortunately due to lock down, this is on hold but I will start it up again once this crazy time in the world is over.

2. Wake Up Early 

You probably read that and thought “Wait, what?” But yeah if you waken up early like 5am or 6am and just get up, its proven to improve productivity and quality of life.

For me even during lock down, I am still getting up at 6am and going to bed at my normal time during the week. The reason for this is, your body and brain work better (so they say) if its kept to its normal routine.

My body clock is now fully set that I start to waken up somewhere between 5:30am and 6:30am without the need for an alarm, yeah it sucks when I really do want a long sleep in and my body is like nope get up but I am now used to it and feel very wide awake and ready to start my day.

3. Learn a New Language

For those of you that don’t know my ex-fiancee was Romanian, and speaks excellent English. Me? I am Scottish and speak very very little Romanian. 

We had been together for just over 4 years now, and with Lock down I thought lets try and aim to know more than 5 words.

I went to Youtube for my lessons, as for me hearing and repeating is how I slowly remember things. For you, you may need to read it etc 

My goal is not to instantly become fluent in Romanian, no that would be too high a target to hit.

My goal is to learn the basics and hopefully build on that 🙂

4. Build on your existing skills

Now when it comes to skills, my skills are very limited if I say so. I didn’t do great in School, and struggled a lot so my skills are minimal.

So the skills that I have that I enjoy (key being enjoy, as you will boost these skills faster) are cooking and blogging.

My blog was created for me to try and improve my English, typing, photography and learn social media and now its something that I enjoy doing. By trying to do more diverse posts, and expand on my normal 500 word posts, improve my Instagram page I am you could say boosting my skills.

5. Regular exercise routine 

Yup, going back to what I said about the gym apply’s here.

Start small, like 10 of x y and z every two or three days, and try and keep it up for a month, then once you are happy with that double it and keep going.

Do you really need to go to a gym? well it depends they have the equipment which you might not have in your house, and maybe because you pay for the membership it forces you go to but is it a positive force or one that you get bored with?

By taking these small steps and trying to repeat them and keep them up this is how you will see change and feel better and if your practise at home becomes fun then yeah go join a gym and bring that experience into your life.

6. To Do Lists (Reminders)

I am someone that if I plan on doing something, I will create a list to make sure I don’t forget any parts.

Just like you might do when you are planning on going shopping, you create a list and go over it a few times to make sure everything is there.

By having these lists you stay focused on what needs to be done, and by the end you see the list is empty (if digital) or every point is scored/ticked on your paper list and you feel good as you achieved something.

7. Read

Yup reading is a good way to self improve! it gets your brain going, gets you thinking and helps your imagination.

I am not a reader, its something I would only do if I went on a relaxing holiday as I prefer to put on Netflix or something over a book.

This year I want to try and read a few books, and so far I have managed to read two so far this year (this is a lot for me as it was normally zero) and I will continue.

Overall

This is just a starter, as I am someone who likes to use the phrase “baby steps” by walking instead of leaping you get to achieve more than trying to cram everything in together.

Again I am not an expert, but this is common sense stuff and from my experience.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as it was completely different to my normal posts.

Let me know what you think, and good luck 🙂

Chat to me on here via the comments below, or on my Twitter or Instagram and let me know if you have tried what I said in this review. I want to hear from you so lets have a wee chat 🙂