The Missing Key To Self-Improvement
Without this it's difficult to improve anything: let alone yourself
Good day All - I hope your week is off to a splendiferous start. Apologies for the radio silence last week. I have been working on a pertinent longer form piece of work, which should be with you in a couple of days.
In the interim, I wanted to quickly share a practice with you that has been pretty revolutionary for me the past couple of weeks. This simple practice has helped me dial in my sleep-wake cycle, nutrition, training, thoughts and perceptions, mood - everything.
We talk a great deal about the importance of knowing yourself. We mean this in an existential sense: journeying to the inner depths of your being to find out who you are. What I have missed though, is a whole other facet to this command.
Ever focusing on the deep and existential, I have neglected the surface and logistical, which is where we reside and function day to day. Yes: it is important to know yourself in the spiritual, existential sense. However it is imperative you know who you are in the practical sense too, if you are to be a better, more improved individual on a daily basis. This is everything from what foods you digest best and what time you begin to yawn in the evening, to what sparks the first negative thoughts of the day and what motivates you to get moving in the morning.
The practice to achieve this self-awareness is simple; observe, record, analyse, act. Let’s run through the steps:
Observe yourself.
Record the observation - whether it be in a journal or on your phone.
Analyse the records as you continue to gather data.
Act in accordance with the data to bring about the ‘best' (the desired) results day to day.
The practice itself is not revolutionary. It’s science 101. However I never thought applying it to myself on such a mundane, surface level basis would be so beneficial - but it is.
In just 2 weeks I have become abundantly more conscious about the foods I put in my body and when, where the thoughts I am thinking have come from, why I feel demotivated in certain situations, why I am who I am and how I do what I do each day.
“What gets measured gets managed” is the saying, I believe. A better variant is “that which is measured is improved”. ‘Measurement’ has been a missing key to my daily improvement, I have realised. Become aware of your daily self, record these observations to reinforce them and so you can later refer to them, and then act in response to them to improve yourself.
Apply this practice in the areas you desire improvement the most, whether it be your diet, your sleep-wake cycle, your mood, your libido - anything. Start to gather the data, and you will quickly build a picture to see who you really are: not just at the end of the day, but day to day too.
Observe, record, analyse, act. And have a blessed day.