SELF-IMPROVEMENT Do Something Better

Meaning Making is a series of reflection provoking exercises that will help you gain clarity about the life that you desire to live. When done with complete focus and honest awareness you will develop deeper understanding about yourself and how to be more intentioned in your day to day experiences, relationships, and goals. To get the most out of these exercises, I recommend that you write them down either in a journal or on the downloadable free worksheet. Let’s get started!

How many times have put ourself on a self-imposed mission of self-improvement in some area of our life, thinking to ourselves how much we wanted to get better at this, or that, but never actually take the steps to start the process. We keep coming back to that skill, hobby, or personal characteristic with a yearning to get better at it. There’s a part of us that knows why and what it would change for us if we did invest more focus, time, and energy – but instead for some reason we continue to put it off.

We don’t really integrate those reasons into our active conscious mind and unknowingly push them aside as if they didn’t even present themselves to us in the first place.

Maybe, we even get far enough on the self-improvement path to take some steps to start to make it happen. We might work at it for a few days or times but often though what happens is that we find that other things, and sometimes things by our own doing, get in the way. We then might end up feeling guilty or start being self-criticizing, blaming ourselves for not being good enough, not being worthy, not smart enough, etc. And then that thing that started from a positive desire to make yourself better turns into something more complicated, difficult, and riddled with negative emotions and thoughts. What at first started as a trip down a positive path becomes a path we instead want to u-turn on and avoid.

If we wanted to venture down the self-improvement path in the first place why do we easily get put off track? Because we did not make a conscious and intentional commitment to it, we allowed subconscious factors to take over the driver’s seat.

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Do Something Better

This exercise gives you a chance to set aside some quiet time to really wonder about why you desire this self-improvement change in the first place, what value it would bring to your life or the lives of others, what gets in your way, and what you can do to start making change or decide that you can finally put that things aside because you realize it’s something your heart doesn’t truly desire.

Be honest with yourself and without self-judgment answer the following:

What is it that I would like to get better at?
What does “getting better” mean for this?
What does “better” look like?
How would I know that I reached being better?
What made me realize I wanted or needed to get better?
After I had the realization, when and why did a decide to make it a goal?
Was it first a want or a need?
Is it now a want or a need?
What would the process require of me?
Imagine that it was a requirement, how would it fit into my current life?
When I visualize reaching the goal, how do I feel?
What positive changes would result?
What are my thoughts about myself?
If someone asked me what I learned about myself in the process, what would I say?
Imagine that the goal is reached and has been sustained for a long period of time that it has become a part of who you are and your life, what advice would you give your past self who was at the beginning of the process?
What’s one small step I can take to get started today?
What’s one small step I can take to make progress in the next week? Month? Six months? Year?

Now that you’ve completed the exercise, and if you did so honestly without a critical filtering self-judgement, then you’ve gained some insights on what action steps to put into motion next to keep on your self-improvement course. So go forward from this moment and do something different, do at least 1 thing to move you closer to what your heart desires.

If you found this exercise useful and would like more reflection and journal exercises to gain a deeper self-understanding, click here for other reflection prompts in the Making Meaning series.