Every day in every way, I am getting better.  I keep repeating this to myself to get me into improvement mode.  It only takes a little bit of improvement each day or week to make a significant impact on your life over time.   Here are The top self improvement tips to get you started.

Everyone can improve somewhere.  If you don’t think you can, then you you can more than you know.  If you want to improve the quality of your life, improve the quality of yourself and you will reach higher levels of fulfillment.

* Click here to learn three powerful thought exercises that will lead to greater success in finances, relationships, and family.

These 7 tips will help you kick start your path to personal growth and achievement.  It’s not an end result though, it’s a continuous process.  Periodically come back and review where you were and where you are now.  You must have an end result in mind.  But during the path there you can become lost.  So make it a point to continuously evaluate your progress on the way to your end result.

Keep A Journal

A journal helps you in two ways.  Your memory isn’t perfect.  If you learn something significant one day, write it down.  You’ll find yourself going back to it and building on it over time. Think about it, if you had a good thought several years ago and went back today to readdress it, you’d be looking at it with new wisdom.

All of history’s greats were avid writers.   Your daily journal will aid you to organize your thoughts.  It will also improve your sense of self.  And it will remind you of your past.  For those who forget their past are likely to repeat it.  Do you know anyone like that?  Anyone like you?

Learn To Meditate

I once saw a t-shirt that read, “Meditation, It’s Not What You Think”.   And that’s exactly it.  If you think about the conscious and the subconscious, there’s a point where they meet.  And that’s where you meditate from.  Remember, your conscious and subconscious are like an iceberg, where your conscious is the 10% that sits above the water, and your subconscious is the 90% that sits below the water.  Your subconscious is so much larger than your conscious and it controls us more than you know.

Think about it.  If you sleep 8 hours a day, your subconscious has total control of your body over this period.  And during the day, it’s humming away, running us, moving thoughts in and out of our head to consider.  We control what thoughts we let in.  Meditating is a way of clearing and cleansing your thoughts.

Meditation is an effective way of eliminating stress and clearing out your mind from the cluttering thoughts that lead to things that can harm you, like worry and anxiety. I suggest doing it daily.  It can helps to slow your heart rate and even regulate your digestion among several other health benefits.

It also makes your sleep more restful and helps your body to recover faster. Basically, the practice of meditation is the one thing which can make the other six of these self improvement tips effective.

Expect & Envision Success

I’m a true believer in what you think about, grows.  And how you think defines who you are.  Great achievers are not any more intelligent than you or I.  What they have in common is that the expect to win.  Even before they know how they’re going to do it.  They envision their future success. Remember what I said about the subconscious?  Well, it can’t tell the difference between the real world and a world that you envision.

This is a state of mind that you need to put yourself in.  Everything exists in thought before it exists physically in this world.  If you want to be successful, imagine yourself already having what you want.  Put yourself in that place.  I call it dream building.  Your subconscious mind solves problems while you’re going about your day (and even more so as you sleep).  By imagining these things, your mind will go about the solution to bring them to you.

Record Your Goals and Action Plans

This is called setting your intentions.  It’s your way of letting your subconscious know that this is something you want your focus on.  And what you focus on grows.  Every self improvement guru will recommend this.  I also like to begin with the end in mind.  Sometimes you can get so focused on the many steps it will take to get somewhere, like a to do list – that you lose site of the end result – the goal – and where you want to be.

Make it a habit.  Review it daily, weekly or monthly depending on what it is.  Don’t just set it and forget it, this isn’t New Years!   Writing down clear and specific goals and plans of action for achieving those goals.  This sets expectations in your subconscious.

Be Well Rounded

If you focus too much of your energy in one area of your life, other areas of your life will falter.   Focus on work, your family life will suffer.  This process of self improvement needs to be holistic.  Every aspect of your life affects every other aspect of your life.

This also helps you in identifying what you need to improve the most.  If your relationships are bad, then they’ll affect your health and your finances.   Anyone who has ever gone through a divorce knows this best.  The level of uncertainty, one of the 6 basic human needs, is so high, that it disrupts everything in your life.

Improve your relationships, and you’ll find that other areas of your life will improve.

If your health is poor it will stunt your personal growth and you will have no energy to achieve any of your goals.

So regardless of what you’re trying to accomplish, being well-rounded is the key factor to experiencing a balanced life and for developing the physical stamina, the emotional fortitude, the financial security and the social support system required in order to achieve what you desire.

Positive Affirmations

First, let me define what an affirmation is.  It’s simply a statement or proposition that is declared to be true.   They have the power to impact your subconscious and literally change yourself down to the core.  You should have at least one positive affirmation for each of your key areas of life (health, relationships, finances and career) and rehearsing them out loud at least twice daily.

I like to place post its of affirmation on to my mirror in the bathroom.  Look at it every morning when I wake up, and every night before I go to bed.

We all come with an inner programming based on how we were raised, who we were exposed to and our environment growing up.  This can create bad programming.  The only way to get over it is to reprogram your brain.  That way, when your subconscious is operating, and you’ve programmed it to believe “I make healthy choices when eating” then you’re more likely to make healthy choices.

Teach What You Learn

I truly believe that the learning process is established after you learn, when you apply and then, and more importantly, when you teach.

If you teach people the principles you learn here, you will develop a clear understanding.  In addition, you will be able to apply them more effectively in our life.  Sign up at a local Adult Ed program to teach self improvement.  It is an awesome way to get to meet people of a similar mindset.  And you never know, you may just find it’s your passion.

Here’s something to try.  Write about each of these simple self improvement tips from your perspective and then as if you were teaching these principles to someone else.  It will deepen your understanding.

Tags: Expect & Envision Success, Keep A Journal, Learn To Meditate, Positive Affirmations, top self improvement tips