Selfalot

Daily Quote: “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” Aldous Huxley

Deciding on what to improve on could be an overwhelming thought. What of the many areas of your life do you want to have more success at? Where do you want to feel more confident?

Some people are lucky. They have one overwhelming passion and they end up spending all their efforts in improving their performance in this area. This could be anything from a hobby such as growing orchids to a professional athlete.

These people set their goals seriously and with intent. They know what they want to be able to achieve. They track their progress minutely and record every success and failure. This focus is what gets them to their goals.

Most people do not have the same passion. They can’t even decide on a specific goal they want to achieve. Their goal is a vague one such as ‘want to earn more money’, or ‘have a nice relationship’.

Then others set vague goals such as ‘want a better job’ or ‘climb a high mountain’. They want to ‘run a race’ or have a ‘nicer garden’. None of these goals will bring you any further achievements. They are so vague that they cannot be achieved.

How can you decide on what to improve upon if you have no idea what your goals should be. If you are Usain Bolt you know that to break the 200m world record you have to run quicker than 19.30 seconds. So you target a quicker time than that to a fraction of a second. Then you run it during the World Championships in Berlin in 2009. A cool 19.19 seconds in fact.

Would he break that record if he had this vague notion that he wanted a world record but had not idea what time he would need to run in order to break it? Yet we find ourselves day after day deciding on getting better at something, more efficient, better skilled or more knowledgable and yet we have not quantified what that actually means to us.

So how do you improve? You have to decide what exactly you want to improve upon. Of course in some smaller goals you will find it easy to do this. It boils down to a mental exercise.

You got to work late? You know you need to find a route that is not as busy or get up earlier and have a clear run on the road to work. You know exactly what time you have to be in the car or at the bus station in order to get to work on time. You just take a chance every morning.

In your mind you can work out what needs to be done. You just need to get up fifteen minutes earlier. That’s all it takes. You just do it in the mornings. If you push that behaviour through and make it a habit you have your improvement. And it didn’t require massive amounts of planning or goal setting on paper.

But that’s an easy one. There are goals that can not just set up in your mind. They need to be planned and worked at. Inevitably the big ones will have many set backs that you need to face.

Cut them down into small achievable steps of improvement that you can tackle easily. It will make your work that much easier.