Self-growth is an important field to work on for all individuals. When you’re pursuing one or more goals, and when you’re trying to improve yourself in one or more areas of your life. To be able to grow, you’ll need to improve your knowledge, your skills, your understanding, and your self-awareness. You need to increase your motivation and seek out new goals, and new things to learn. You need to get better.
What is Self-growth?
Self-growth is the continuous act of improving yourself, and developing your potential – it’s growing as a person. It’s not just about getting more skills and more knowledge – it’s about getting better at what you do, and about becoming the best person you can be.
Self-growth is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. It’s an investment in your future and in your life. When you grow, you’ll be able to achieve more than you could before. You’ll be able to reach new levels of success and happiness, and you’ll be able to live your life on a much higher level.
So, are you ready to challenge yourself for a better you? Take these 15 challenges to start growing today.
1. Boost Motivation
Do not underestimate the power of motivation. It is very important for success and self-growth. Motivation is a driving force that pushes you to work harder. It is a feeling that makes you want to achieve something.
Motivation helps you to ignore your limitations and to do things that are impossible for you. If you want to improve yourself and your life, you need to have motivation. You can get it by reading inspirational books, listening to motivational speeches, watching motivational videos, etc.
How to boost motivation?
Here are some simple things you can do to magically increase your motivation and desire to work harder:
- Visualize success.
- Think about the effect of your success on your loved ones.
- Believe in yourself, trust your potential.
- Set small achievable goals.
- Set manageable objectives.
- Find a role model for constant inspiration.
- Eat healthy and work out.
- Be a morning sparrow instead of a night owl.
- Discuss your plans with your friends, family.
- Focus on progress, not perfection.
- Forgive yourself for your mistakes.
- Watch this inspirational speech by Tali Sharot on motivating yourself to change your behavior.
2. Practice Gratitude
Showing gratitude means feeling thankful for what you have, appreciating the little things in life that you usually ignore. With this attitude, you will always have reasons to be happy. You will appreciate the people who are in your life and the things you have accomplished. It will help you to have peace of mind.
Gratitude is the single biggest killer of negative ego. Gradually practicing gratitude will induce and install positive thinking in you. Positive thinking is, in fact, a pre-requisite for self-growth.
How to practice gratitude?
- Every morning when you wake up, remind yourself of the luxury of having a family.
- Think about all the friends you have.
- Tell your best closest friends how important they are to you.
- Appreciate your health, and think about those who don’t have it.
- Before going to bed, tell your loved ones you are thankful to them for being a part of you.
- Visualize all the opportunities life has given you_ some of them almost for granted. appreciate them, be thankful for them.
3. Believe in Yourself
As Theodore Roosevelt once said, ”Believe you can and you are half the way there”. Having faith in your skills, and potential to improve is essential to self-growth.
Belief and faith gradually drive you towards your goals whether you are conscious or not. And don’t forget the fact that if you don’t believe yourself, no one will.
How to start believing in yourself?
- Celebrate small successes.
- Treat yourself with respect.
- Know your strengths.
- Get feedback from friends, family members.
- Work on a new skill.
Related: Feeling Stuck? Lost Motivation and Hope? 15 Keys to Reboot Life
1. Pre-meditate For Clarity
Pre-meditation is simply pondering about a problem before making a decision. When you pre-meditate, you will be able to gain clarity on what you really want, and you will be able to make better decisions in your life.
It is a process of thinking of your goals before you sleep at night. This helps to imprint your mind with your goals so that you’ll be able to achieve them.
How to pre-meditate?
- Sit in a quiet room, turn off the lights, turn off your mobile phone and think about what you want to achieve in your life.
- Think about your goals before you sleep.
- When you wake up in the morning, make a list of your sub-goals and write them down on a paper.
4. Find a Role Model
Find a role model that you admire, someone who has achieved what you want to achieve. Learn and copy his/her habits to achieve your goals. Get in touch with them if necessary.
Your role model doesn’t necessarily have to be a celebrity or a leader. He/she can be any person who has achieved what you want to achieve, or who is working the way you want to work. He/she can even be a member of your family or a close friend.
Additionally, you can have more than one role models. For instance, Kathy for healthy eating, and David for sports.
How to find your role model?
It’s super easy to find our role models, they are all around us. Here is how to find your particular role model/s.
- Pick one of the things you want to do or something you are already doing but not good at. Look around your surrounding and visualize people who have achieved it. Take the one best fitting your goal as your role model for that particular objective.
- If you want to have only one role model, look for a person who is hardworking, patient, has high moral values, is optimistic, respectful, and confident, driven and determined, approachable, disciplined, and above all, responsible.
- Watch this great Ted Talk by Toku McCree about picking role models that matter.
5. Set Small Achievable Goals
You are more likely to achieve your goals if they are small, measurable, and time-based. For example, if you want to lose weight, set a goal of losing 2 pounds every 2 weeks. Or a goal of losing 3 pounds every 4 weeks.
If you want to learn a foreign language, set a goal of learning 5 new words every day. Or to watch a foreign movie every day.
Additionally, you can also set short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals are goals with a time frame of less than 6 months. Long-term goals are goals with a time frame of more than 6 months.
Long-term goals should be broken down into smaller goals with a time frame of 6 months. For instance, if your long-term goal is to get a Ph.D., your short-term goal can be to get accepted into a university, and your 6-month goal can be to complete your first semester.
Some examples of small achievable goals:
- Sharon is 180 lbs. She wants to lose 17 lbs in her first month of starting a healthy diet. Sharon gives it a second thought and sets her goal at 7 lbs instead to manage it better without getting exhausted. By the end of the month, she successfully sheds 7 lbs and feels happy. For the next month, she is motivated to set her goal at 10 lbs with diet and workouts.
- Mary is 42 years old. She wants to run a marathon. She breaks down her goal into manageable steps. First, she trains to run a 5k, then a 10k, then a half-marathon, and finally a full marathon.
- You are an international student who wants to be a citizen of the U.S. You start by learning basic English. Then you start making friends with people of different ethnicities and practicing cultural sensitivity. The next step is to take a citizenship test. You can then apply for a green card and after that, you can apply for citizenship.
6. Filter Your Friends
The choice of friends you make has one of the greatest impacts on your overall success or otherwise failure. Surround yourself with people who encourage you to grow. Your friends should be your cheerleaders, and you should be their cheerleader.
You might think this should have been the first thing to do, why at no.6?. Well, before making some important changes in yourself, you are in no position to choose between friends. You can say NO to certain friends only when you are already driven, determined to change, motivated to succeed.
Your choice of friends can affect you in 2 ways:
A) Your friends can help you achieve your goals. For instance, if your goal is to lose weight, spend time with friends who are healthy, physically fitter. Friends who invite you to sports, physical activity, and tell you to eat healthy. Friends who support your goals and ambitions.
B) Your friends can hinder you from achieving your goals. For instance, if your goal is to lose weight, keep your distance from friends who don’t care about their health, eat junk food, run away from physical activity. Friends who always ask you to join them on Playstation, PC games, and movies.
7. Learn a New Skill
Learning a new skill will benefit you in multiple ways. The addition of a new skill into your toolkit means you are more knowledgeable than before, more confident than before, and, in fact, more skillful than before.
Additionally, learning a new skill will help you be more productive and fulfilled. For example, if you learn how to play the guitar, you will not only be able to play your favorite songs but you will also gain some free time to enjoy on weekends, this will also make you more sociable.
Your new skill doesn’t necessarily have to be a game-changer. It can be as simple as learning how to create a website using WordPress, for instance. Or maybe learning a new language, or sport.
Important things to consider:
- Choose a skill that is needed. It is important that the skill you learn is useful. For instance, learning a foreign language that you will never use in real life, won’t benefit you.
- Make sure the skill you choose is reasonable and compatible. For instance, if you have a really bad voice, it’s better not to invest time learning how to sing.
- Additionally, you need to make sure that your new skill fits into your time seamlessly. Don’t select a skill that consumes much of your time and distracts you from your major goals, of course, unless that skill itself is what you want to achieve in your life.
8. Volunteer Social Events
Volunteering is a great way to boost your self-growth and self-confidence. It helps you to meet new people, make friends, discover your skills and talents. The social activity makes you more compassionate and empathetic.
Volunteering gives you a sense of fulfillment. It also improves your social skills and makes you a better negotiator.
9. Read a Self-growth Book
Reading self–development books will give you new insights on how to grow as a person. You will learn about self–help topics such as emotional intelligence, personal growth, time management, goal setting, etc.
Some great self-development books to read:
- Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? by Seth Godin.
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen. R. Covey.
10. Be Ready to Sacrifice
Successful people are always ready to sacrifice. They willingly give up on their past and present for their future success. These sacrifices include saying NO to friends for things that go against your objectives.
You need to be willing to spend hours working on your goals every day, and turn down and say no to almost all of the distractions and requests that will hinder you or slow you down on the way.
Some everyday small sacrifices:
- Sacrifice an hour of sleep to go for a walk in the morning.
- Sacrifice a party with friends (definitely go and chill sometimes) to read a good book.
- Turn down a tasty meaty cheaty meal for a much healthier one.
And, that’s all for this time. Are you ready to make the change? Are you ready to sacrifice your small luxuries for your higher goals, for your self-growth? It’s now or never! Get up and start working on your self-growth today. Best of luck!