The 3 Most Important Steps to Self-Improvement

If you want to live a happy, fulfilling life, then you will want to get started doing these 3 steps to self improvement!

Most people have a few areas in their life that they want to improve.

These areas commonly include finances, time management and goal setting.

As you might know, I’m a bestselling author, award winning designer and happiness researcher. I wrote a book called Happy Habits.

In my research, I learned a lot about how to make sure you develop positive habits which lead to your best life – by embracing specific principles of “habit formation.” 

Below I’ll be sharing the 3 top beginner’s habits you need to take take to move forward to self improvement.

The 3 Most Important Steps to Self-Improvement

Getting started in these areas is often the hardest part, and the tips below can help you do that.

1. Finances

Many people struggle with saving and budgeting. Whether you need to save money on your monthly expenses, you’re looking to reduce your debt or you simply need to organize your finances better, you may feel stressed out and overwhelmed by your financial situation. Identify just one step that would improve your situation and take it.

If you have student loan debt, you may want to find out if you could save money by refinancing the loans. Having favorable repayment terms can mean lower interest rates and paying off the debt a lot faster.

On the other hand, if you are struggling in general with your spending, just start by downloading an app that lets you track it. Taking that first step to organize your finances can lead you naturally to the next ones.

2. Time Management

Time management is another common problem. It can be a tricky one to solve as well because while it might seem like the answer is to plan everything down to the last minute, this won’t work for most people. Too much rigidity will probably make you want to abandon the plan altogether. On the other hand, without some self-discipline, you may find yourself binge watching or scrolling through social media every night instead of accomplishing the things you want to do.

There are several popular approaches to time management that may help you, but as with managing your money, the most difficult and important step is often getting started. One way to push past this initial reluctance is to simply tell yourself you will do something for five minutes and stop at the end of that period if you want to. Usually, you find it’s no problem to keep going.

Another approach is to divide your time into short bursts of work followed by breaks. For example, you could set a timer, work intensely for 20 minutes, then take a five-minute break. While these time units may seem small, you might be surprised at how productive you can be when you work in this way.

3. Goal Setting

Few things give people as many “where do I begin?” feelings as thinking about goal setting. The problem is that it can be hard to see the path from where you are now to the goal you hope to achieve. The solution is to break down this goal into several smaller steps. Think about how you will do something regularly to get closer to that goal.

It can help if you start with something fairly inconsequential just to build your confidence and demonstrate the technique. For example, you might set a goal of cooking a complicated dish or learning a certain number of words in a foreign language.

Write down the steps you need to take to reach that goal and follow them. When you are successful, you can then apply this same approach to reach more complex goals.

Learn More Steps to Self-Improvement

Read my bestselling book Happy Habits