WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO IMPROVE YOURSELF?

Sometimes, when all our doubts, fears and insecurities  get wrapped around us, we come up with thoughts like, “I wish I was somebody else.” More often than not, we think and believe that someone or rather, most people are better than us - when in reality, the fact is, most people are more scared than us.

You spot a totally eye-catching girl sitting by herself at a party, casually sipping on a glass of Asti Spumanti. You think to yourself, “she looks so perfectly calm and confident.” But if you could read her mind, you would see a cloud of self-doubt; and you might just be amazed that she’s thinking “are people talking about why I am seated here alone?… Why don’t guys find me attractive? …I don’t like my ankles, they look too skinny… I wish I was as intelligent as my best friend.”

We look at a young business entrepreneur and say “Woah… what else could he ask for?” He stares at himself in the mirror and murmur to himself, “I hate my big eyes… I wonder why my friends won’t talk to me… I hope mom and dad will work things out.”

Isn’t it funny? We look at other people, envy them for looking so outrageously perfect and wish we could trade places with them? While they look at us and think the same thing. We are insecure of other people who themselves are insecure of us. It can become a vicious circle of thoughts. We suffer from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and lose hope in self improvement, because we allow ourselves to become enveloped in quiet desperation.

Everyone has their own challenges in life that they must overcome. There is no such thing as ‘the perfect’ life. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t make our life ‘perfect’ for us. While it’s true, money makes life a whole lot easier to deal with, there are many rich people who would trade their fortune to find that one true love. Everything in life has some sort of trade off, it keeps life balanced. But, you don’t have to trade the most valuable thing you possess - the ability to focus and appreciate all the good things in your life.

The Ability:

Sometimes, you notice that you have an irritating habit like biting your fingernails, having a foul mouth, and you - of all people - are the last to know or realize. But, with that realization comes the ability to change and improve.

I have a friend who never gets tired of talking about herself. And in most conversations, she is the only one who seems to be interested in the things she has to say. So all of our other friends tend to avoid the circle whenever she’s around, and she doesn’t notices how badly she became socially handicapped - gradually affecting the people in her environment.

The greatest key to self improvement is to LISTEN first, and then TALK. Find someone who you find comfort in opening up with, even the most gentle topics you want to discuss. Ask questions like “do you think I am ill-mannered?”, “Do I always sound so argumentative?”, “Do I talk too loud?”, “Do I ever bore you when we’re together?”. Then listen to what they have to say. Think about what they said with an open mind. Then, talk about it with your friend, ask for suggestions and come up with a positive plan to make improvements.

In this way, the other person will obviously know that you are interested in the process of self improvement. Lend him/her your ears for comments and criticisms and don’t give him/her responses like “Don’t exaggerate! That’s just the way I am!” Open up your mind and heart as well. And in return, you may want to help your friend with constructive criticism that will also help him/her improve.

One of Whitney Houston’s songs says “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” True enough. In order to love others, you must love yourself first. Remember, you cannot give what you do not have.

Before telling other people some ways on how to improve themselves, let them see that you yourself are a representation of self improvement. Self improvement makes us better people, we then inspire other people, and then the rest of the world will follow.

Stop thinking of yourselves as second-rate. Forget the repetitive thought of “If only I was richer… if only I was thinner” and so on. Accepting your true self is the first step to self improvement. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others, only to think in the end, that we’ve got 10 more reasons to envy them. Because you know what? They are most likely thinking the same thing.

We all have our insecurities. Nobody is perfect. We always wish we had better things, better features, better body parts, etc. But life need not be perfect for people to be happy about themselves. Self improvement and loving yourself is not a matter of shouting to the whole world that you are perfect and you are the best. It’s the virtue of acceptance and contentment. When we begin to improve ourselves, we then begin to feel contented and happy.

Realizing your own self worth improves your confidence, thus improving everything from body posture to speech and eye contact. Don’t just talk about how you feel, show it through your actions. Back that up with positive reinforcement and you will be amazed at the results, as well as your improved mood.

Here’s a real good example, that keeps it simple:

A child touches or plays with something [maybe of financial value or just plain dangerous] that you would rather they not touch. The worse way to ‘attempt’ teaching that child is usually a swat on the hand and firmly stating, “No.” And I say attempt, because this will only make the child desire the object more.

Instead, try the following: (Explain in words they understand) Pick up one of their toys, a book, or safe alternate object - while displaying extreme interest in object. Most children will refocus their attention to the object you possess. For those children who do not, suggest a trade or tell them - “Here, you may play with this, but that [the object they possess] is not safe, let mommy/daddy have it. Gently remove the object from their hand, saying “thank you, that was a very good girl/boy.”

The same positive reinforcement applies with adults. When you focus on the positive, the negative moves to the background. The more positive your focus, the better you will feel and the easier solutions will come to follow. People will see you in a positive light, because you are positive as a person. Only good things can come from that. The positive feeds off the positive - get it?

Now start starving the negative and feeding the positive!

Change your point of view and you can change your life, it’s all about perception.

“Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud, and one sees the stars.”- Frederick Langbridge, A Cluster of Quiet Thoughts

If you’ve placed second in a writing contest, will you jump for joy and push for better results the next time or will you be discouraged and find an excuse not to join again?

In life, you are always filled with choices. You may opt to have a pessimist’s view and live a self-defeated life or you may decide to take the optimist’s route and take a challenging and fulfilling life.

So why nurture an optimist’s point of view? And why now?

Well, optimism has been linked to positive mood and good morale; to academic, athletic, military, occupational and political success; to popularity; to good health and even to long life and freedom from trauma.

On the other hand, the rates of depression and pessimism have never been higher. It affects middle-aged adults the same way it hits younger people. The mean age of onset has gone from 30 to 15. It is no longer a middle-aged housewife’s disorder but also a teenager’s disorder’ as well.

Optimists expect the best

The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events, which will last a long time and undermine everything they do, are their own fault.

The truth is optimists are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world. What differs is the way they explain their misfortune—it’s the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case.

Optimists tend to focus on and plan for the ‘problem’ at hand. They use ‘positive reinterpretation.’ In other words, they most likely reinterpret a negative experience in a way that helps them learn and grow. Such people are unfazed by bad situation, they perceive it is a challenge and try harder.

They won’t say “things will never get better,” “If I failed once, it will happen again” and “If I experience misfortune in one part of my life, then it will happen in my whole life.”

Positive expectancies of optimists also predict better reactions during transitions to new environments, sudden tragedies and unlikely turn of events. If they fall, they will stand up. They see opportunities instead of obstacles.

People respond positively to optimists

Optimists are proactive and less dependent on others for their happiness. They find no need to control or manipulate people. They usually draw people towards them. Their optimistic view of the world can be contagious and influence those they are with.

Optimism seems a socially desirable trait in all communities. Those who share optimism are generally accepted while those who spread gloom, panic and hysteria are treated unfavorably.

In life, these people often win elections; get voted most congenial and sought for advice.

When the going gets tough, optimists get tougher

Optimists typically maintain higher levels of subjective well-being during times of stress than do people who are less optimistic. In contrast, pessimists are likely to react to stressful events by denying that they exist or by avoiding dealing with problems. Pessimists are more likely to quit trying when difficulties arise.

They persevere. They just don’t give up easily, they are also known for their patience. Inching their way a step closer to that goal or elusive dream.

Optimists are healthier and live longer

Medical research has justified that simple pleasures and a positive outlook can cause a measurable increase in the body’s ability to fight disease.

Optimists’ health is unusually good. They age well, much freer than most people from the usual physical ills of middle age. And they get to outlive those prone to negative thoughts.

So why not be an optimist today? And think positively towards a more fulfilled life.

Why not look forward to success in all your endeavors? Why not be resilient? Like everybody else, you are bound to hit lows sometimes, but don’t just stay there. Carry yourself out of the mud and improve your chances of getting back on the right track. And why not inspire others to remove their dark-colored glasses and see life in the bright side?

Remember this: What you seek is what you will find, so why not look for the positives?

The emotional and mental aspects of a person, when combined, leads to better self improvement.

Emotions love to dominate our actions and reactions, even though we do not want it to happen sometimes. Society often sees emotions as a sign of weakness, so people are used to putting them aside and focusing on the rational aspects more and more.

No matter how strict and logical you may be, you will always feel emotion. One way or another, someone or something will get through you.

Positive emotions are a lifelong goal for many of us concerned about emotional health and self improvement. What is more important; the amount of money you made during your life or the times you laughed out of sheer joy?

People tend to put their positive emotions behind their negative feelings. This is one of the biggest problems that people face during their lives. Yet, there is no clear way to ignore a negative experience and try to replace it with a positive one. Life just does not work that way.

For example, when you were a child, if your pet died, you would be heartbroken. Your parents might have gotten you another pet to ease your pain, but the sorrow was still there.

Things get even more complex when you become an adult. A fight with your spouse can affect your entire day. You might go to work angry, tired, and your mind will wander. On the way home from work you might not notice the sun shining, nor would you be tempted to stop at a roadside stand to pick up some fresh fruits and vegetables. All this because that one negative thought has contaminated the way you perceive the reality around you.

At times like this, you might realize that finding a safe place to relax your mind will do wonders for your emotional and mental improvement. That place is relatively easy to find. It can be an actual place or an imaginary location. The best idea is to totally lose yourself in it.

Say you have a problem on your mind and it just would not go away. Try bowling or another activity that requires focus, yet poses little risk if you get distracted. Get caught up in the activity. Your mind will drift away from the negative thoughts that dominated your last hours or days and start processing a whole new kind of information. The main thing is to allow yourself to get completely involved with this new activity. You might still get flashes of the problem every now and then. Ignore it and get even more absorbed in what you are doing.

When the bowling game, the song, or the movie ends you will abruptly return to reality. You will probably want to retreat back to the safe place. The safe place exists only as a helping hand, not as a solution to your life’s problems, may it be a small or big. It serves only as a temporary escape route, until you have passed the raw emotion.

Once we can get past the raw emotions of a situation, we often will see things are not as bad as we thought. By separating ourselves temporarily, we allow the subconscious to process what we find too emotional on a conscious level. This is how a small escape from a harsh reality can increase your emotional and mental health. Try to do this often enough to become habit and you are on your way to better self improvement.

“Anatomy of An Illness” written by Norman Cousins, is a book based on his own life and how he treated his own painful illness, with the assistance of laughter. Cousins had a theory that the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine”, was more factual than many people realize.

In modern times, society has come to understand that stress has a negative impact on both physical and
mental health. What is not as commonly understood is that laughter has many positive health benefits, which
can counteract the negative affects of the stress response.

Laughter increases the functioning of the immune system, helping the body to fight off illness and
disease. Studies have demonstrated that laughter causes the increased production of catecholamines and
endorphins. These chemicals, when released by the brain into the blood stream during laughter, increase
feelings of happiness and well-being.

Laughter also decreases the secretion of cortisol as well as the sedimentation rate, and therefore is
beneficial in stimulating the body’s immune system.

During laughter, the flow of Oxygen in the blood increases. Arteries relax, heart rate and blood
temperature are lowered, circulation increases and the skin temperature rises. All of these physical
responses have a beneficial effect on both cardiovascular and respiratory health.

Laughter has the potential to help speed healing, and increase overall health and well-being, when it’s
benefits are fully realized as a part of a stress management plan.

While the average human laughs approximately 8 to 10 times daily, a stress management plan which
includes laughter as a part of the daily program would include rigorous “laughing” as an exercise to be
performed several times throughout the day.

Full belly laughter is an involuntary response of the human brain. Full belly laughter can be triggered by watching comedies, listening to comedians, telling jokes or just allowing oneself to participate in fun and silly activities.

You must be determined to improve your self esteem, to achieve great things in life. Low self esteem can ruin a person’s life. It all boils down to ‘what’ and ‘how’ you have trained your mind to think.

The way you think about yourself determines how you interact with others. It can also affect how others think about you. When you show others that you lack confidence in what you do or say, it raises questions within their minds. I mean, why should they trust what you do or say, when you obviously don’t trust yourself.

People can have low self esteem for many reasons. Here are some of the common reasons or should I say ‘thoughts’ that encourage and create low self esteem:

1. Nothing you do seems to go right

2. You believe that most people do not like you.

3. You believe that you are not attractive.

4. You choose something and it turns out to be the worst choice you could have made.

5. You are afraid to converse with others for fear that what you say might not make sense.

6. You feel swallowed up in a whirlpool of frustration.

What’s wrong with you, you might ask yourself? The answer to that question is quite easily answered - Your thoughts.

Stop thinking that the world is closing in on you or out to get you. Get determined instead, to achieve what you desire. Stop blaming other people for your misfortunes. The world is not your problem, you are your own problem.

From this moment on, begin the process of self esteem improvement. Think the right way and be determined to win, and win you will. Just remember that success never comes easily and that is why determination is its counterpart.

Oftentimes, one gets to the brink of success and with just a little disappointment or setback, they lose heart and give up too easily and too soon. A surefire candidate to low self esteem improvement. Who knows what great things might have been achieved if only they had persevered.

Without a high self esteem, your life could be rather boring. Change your thinking and begin to see yourself on top of the world. Make a very special effort to be what you really want to be.

You have to seriously decide either to remain in a miserable state of low self esteem, or acquire self esteem improvement and develop a high self esteem with good character and self image.

The origin of low self esteem.

A low self esteem could begin way back in childhood when children are made to believe that they are worthless. Their self confidence is eroded and they succumb to the idea that they can never achieve success in anything that they do. They were picked on, laughed at, pushed around, called ugly names, and treated with disdain. No wonder they grew up to be full of resentment.

If that was your experience, it is time you cut yourself loose from that mindset and do self esteem improvement. Start reading about the life of successful persons and you will soon discover that many of them had such low self esteem that they could not even complete an elementary education.

Many decided to override their low self esteem and improve their attitude, whatever it took. They became some of the greatest men and women that ever lived.

Low self esteem has never helped anyone else and it sure will not help you. It can only drive you into depression, anger, grudge, fear and all the other evils that it generates.

Re-program your thinking and control your state of mind. You must believe that you are worth much more than you think or you will remain at the foot of the ladder and never make an attempt to climb it.

Do not waste your life away with feelings of inadequacies. Instead, think of ways to go about self esteem improvement. Success is yours, just reach out and grasp it.

There’s a lot of discussion about the B complex vitamin and how it is essential for the body to perform a multitude of functions. However, the B complex vitamin is not simply one very complicated vitamin, as the name might suggest. There are actually eight B vitamins that are in the B complex vitamin as well as a few other related substances.

The eight vitamins that make up the B complex vitamin are thiamine or vitamin B1, riboflavin or vitamin B2, niacin or vitamin B3, pyridoxine or vitamin B6, cobalamine or vitamin B12, folic acid, pantothenic acid and biotin.  The other related substances that are also in the B complex vitamin include choline, inositol and para-aminobenzoic acid.

Every part of the B complex vitamin performs its own individual function within the body but it is when they work together as the B complex vitamin that they provide essential maintenance for the body to remain healthy.

The B vitamin complex comprises B vitamins which are water soluble and it is essential that enough of these vitamins are consumed on a daily basis. The body cannot store water soluble vitamins such as the B complex vitamin and this leads to a regular intake being required.

The B complex vitamins are extremely beneficial for a number of conditions and may be needed in additional quantities at certain times in a person’s life. Of course, there is a recommended daily allowance for the B complex vitamins that varies according to the sex and age of a person. However, doctors and other health professionals have discovered the benefits of increasing the intake of the B complex vitamin to help overcome certain illnesses.

Many people suffer from anxiety and stress at one time or another and research has found that the B complex vitamin can be beneficial in helping alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and stress. If a person has been unwell the B complex vitamin can be extremely valuable in aiding the recovery process. Fatigue can be a symptom of a multitude of illnesses as well as simply overdoing things but the B complex vitamin can help alleviate general tiredness and lethargy.

Interestingly, some skin conditions, such as dermatitis, can also benefit from addition B complex vitamin intake. In fact, a number of creams and other skin preparations contain added vitamin B complex that can be absorbed by the skin to alleviate the condition. The condition of a person’s hair will also be greatly improved with sufficient B complex vitamin intake.

Being a women over 40 myself, I found once again, Andy Rooney’s thoughts are right on the money. I felt this was well worth posting - enjoy:

There are days when it seems like everything goes wrong, despite your best efforts. Days like that are enough to make you give up and resign yourself to the mentality of “why should I even try.” What might have started out as a great day can wind up in the toilet in the blink of an eye.  And, most of the time you will find yourself bouncing back to your usual ‘happy’ self.

But, for some people, repeated events over time can drain one of their energy, cause self doubt and in the most drastic circumstances - depression and despondence. A smaller group might find themselves pulled into a deep depression and lose their lust for life - hopefully for only a very short period of time.

Common sense tells us that by preparing and planning for future events we can avoid complications and lessen the effects in some situations. We plan vacations, weddings, dinner dates and everything right down to daily routines. Overlooking alternate planning or plain failing to plan for the unexpected can really throw a monkey wrench into the best laid plans. Depending on the importance of the circumstance, you could find yourself crying or even lashing out in uncontrollable anger. Neither of which is going to improve your mental state.

Unfortunately, we fail to plan counter attacks to minimize potential future events. I like to call it the ‘band aid’ effect. We become complacent as we go through the daily routines, assuming good days will be followed by more good days.

Then … BAM! We get blindsided and knocked on our butt. Always waiting until ‘after’ something goes wrong. Now we attempt to piece things back together or undo what has been done with half-hearted patch-ups. Ergo, the band aid effect.

Now, I know we can’t plan for every potential event that might ‘possibly’ happen; but we can use our common sense and plan with foresight when it comes to the more important things. The things that hold our day together, or hold us together mentally.

Here’s some real food for thought: Remember the old saying “when it rains, it pours?” How about “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?” Well, I’m of the mindset that an ounce of prevention is worth Ten pounds of cure!

Those days when it pours will appear at some point or another and if you are already stressed, depressed, or feeling defeated, the chances of handling the situation effectively are next to none. This can create a downhill spiral with a ’snowball’ effect.

Instead of passing by that nail that somehow worked its way out of the wood, stop and fix it. Then go one step further, take measures to prevent the nail working loose again. Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today. This applies to every area of life, but most importantly good mental health and loved ones.

Forethought is great medicine for the mind, body, and soul. It only takes a few seconds to destroy what it can take a lifetime to create. So protect what you value by planning for the unexpected, expecting the unplanned and focus on being positive.

And, when the bad stuff comes at you, look for the silver lining or lesson to be learned. If nothing else you will have walked away from the situation with less mental anguish and better coping skills for the future.