8 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life

Introduction

Living things grow. Growth is so core to our existence that it is one of the characteristics of living things along with respiration and feeding. So, given the right conditions (and sometimes even in the wrong ones) all living things will grow. Humans are at the apex of all living things and this is because man has developed a complex social structure. This means that for humans, growth is multi-sided and complex. It's both physical and mental, personal and social. 

The conditions for growth are provided by the society around us. Through socialization and education, formal and informal. Want to build a family? Society provides you with families around you and a structure. By the time you are ready to have your own family, you have been shown how it works. Want to be a doctor? There's the medical school for you and there is a set path for you to get there. But society can only do so much. Sometimes, these conditions for growth are not there and you have to provide them yourself. 

The socio-economic realities of the world mean that depending on the lottery of birth, you may have access to the best society has to offer or you may receive the short end of the stick and get nothing from society. This may be a function of poverty or health or simply geographical location. 

Or in some cases, society has done some but it's simply not enough. Let’s say you were born at the right time in the right society to the right parents. You have access to education and the resources to pursue a good life. Society has done its bit, but is it really enough? Think about it for a second; you were trained to be a doctor? So were two thousand other people in your city alone. You want to be a father? So does half of humanity. Either way, it is up to you to figure out how to grow and be the best you want to be and this is where self-improvement comes in. 

The Mariam Webster dictionary defines self-improvement as the act or process of improving oneself by one's actions. So, while there are many ways to grow, to improve, often provided and demanded by society, by our families, self-improvement is the improvement that you do for yourself. I draw your attention to this because I believe it is at the crux of the matter. Self Improvement is the extra mile, and it is this extra mile that makes all the difference. Self Improvement is a decision, a journey you take upon yourself. 

This book is designed to be your guide on that journey. This guide can be applied to achieve growth in personal life, business, and for an overall successful and happy life. A successful and happy life is what I desire and since you are reading this book, I would wager that you want the same too. 

In the following Chapters, I will share the 8 steps for self-improvement. These steps are structured in such a way that you can utilize them not for just immediate goals and targets but an entire lifetime of continuous growth and improvement. 

I have tried not to make this book about psychology or science or even inspirational. Rather, the book is an easy-to-understand conversation on tips and actions we can apply in our everyday lives. What this book offers you is an 8 step guide of ideas we all fundamentally understand to be helpful in our growth. The goal is to put it in a way that can lead you to imbibe them and take action in your everyday life. 

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy to self-improvement, but this book outlines an actionable guide—one that works regardless of where you start or what you are attempting to improve or achieve. Anyone looking for a step-by-step approach to improve their health, money, productivity, relationships, or all of the above can benefit from the strategies I discuss. This book will be your guide as long as self-improvement is your objective.

The book has been laid out in Eight chapters with each chapter dealing with a step. We advise that you read it the way it has been organized as one chapter feeds into the next. However, you are also free to read and reread any chapter that calls to you first and strongly. 

In Chapter One, we will start with our fundamental need as humans to do better; to be happy. It is this need that drives us towards self-improvement; you can't solve a problem that does not exist. You can't grow until you feel that there is the need to. To start, we discuss the need for change and how to identify what needs to change.

In Chapter Two, we move to the second step; visualizing your happiness. An important step towards self-improvement is to know what you want, the future you want for yourself, and not just knowing but seeing it as well. Visualization takes you where you want to be and we discuss why and how to visualize the future you want.  The chapter ends with a practical Visualisation guide that can get you started right away. 

Chapter Three gets to the meat of it; goal setting and planning. You have visualized the future you want, now the tough part, working towards it. How do you achieve them? There is no growth without planning. Studies have shown that one of the most effective ways to achieve growth is to lay down goals and plans on how to achieve them. We also discuss habits and how they help you work on your goals. We will discuss all these with a goal-setting guide in Chapter Three.

There is no growth without listening and learning and we will discuss listening in Chapter Four. I am sure growing up, your parents and your teachers talked to you about paying attention. Years later and we have come back to it. You can't improve yourself without listening to what people are saying. We will discuss communication and explain the concept of active listening.

This book is designed to be a concise guide to self-improvement. However, it is not a shortcut; there are no shortcuts. Self-improvement requires commitment and consistency and dedication to the long term. In Chapter Five, we discuss how to achieve consistency and sustain your motivation for the long haul.

One of the motivators you need for consistency is the knowledge that you are capable of achieving your goals. In Chapter Six we discuss how to draw strength by recognizing your capabilities.  We do this by focusing on how you can build your confidence by looking at your track record. Don't worry dear reader, we will provide a guide on how you can evaluate your track record.

The tips and steps provided in this book are holistic in nature. In Chapter Seven, we urge you to branch out. These tools you have acquired can be directed towards improving every part of your life and we encourage you to do so. Overall growth is the goal here and it includes your improvement in your personal and career lives as well as areas such as your finances. 

What happens when you become the big guy? Who do you become when you have achieved the growth you desire? Our answer? You keep learning. In the final chapter, we teach you how to be a lifelong learner by being humble in growth and leadership.

This book offers a guide on how to improve your life. Ultimately, the guide does not choose the destination; you do. So, for all we can say here, the decision is yours to make. The fact that you are reading this book means that you are on the right track. Now, you just have to stay on it. There is no need to rush through this book as the goal is to imbibe and not just read. Feel free to pause and take breaks to figure out how some of the things apply to your life. Get a pen and paper and do the exercises. 

Let's get started.

Chapter One: Identifying The Need For Change

The Universal Concept of Happiness 

In 2019, 15 times Grammy-winning British singer Adele announced that she was divorcing her husband Simon Konecki. They had been married for a year and had been dating since 2011 and had a son together. The news took the world by storm with fans and critics alike surprised and shocked at the news. For starters, the singer was a very private person and was believed to have had a wonderful marriage.

In a tell-all interview with Oprah, the singer said that she had decided after a moment of realization; she was not happy. Adele claimed that telling her friends about her dissatisfaction with her marriage had helped her decide to divorce Konecki. I recall answering these questions in this extremely posh magazine with my friends, she added. It was something along the lines of 'what's something no one would ever know about you?' and I simply said it.

It might come as a bit of a surprise that Adele, at the peak of her career, a millionaire with a lovely family is not happy. What else