Self-Improvement: Coming Right Up!

Close up of dandelion plant blowing in wind

September is known as “Self-Improvement Month,” and it’s just around the corner. While you’re fantastic the way you are, there are ways you can change your thoughts, habits, and behavior that can transform your life to a more joyous and less stressful one, which is something that can benefit almost everyone. Small steps can bring significant change, and those are the ones we’re going to focus on.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing tips in my Daily Piece of Peace newsletter that can help you to make shifts in your thoughts–shifting that inner critic into a cheerleader without sacrificing realism, focusing on the resources you have in your life so you’re more able to access them, and things like that. We’ll also focus on actions–small habits you can enact that will make your day easier and your resilience stronger. We’ll even take on emotional baggage and find ways to sort through what’s there and process stress in a healthy way as it happens. You can sign up for these brief near-daily pick-me-ups that offer small but actionable steps and useful information, or you can stick with this once- or twice-a-month newsletter that brings larger ideas and a higher concentration of links to your fingertips. Or you can do both!

For now, in preparation for Self-Improvement Month, I’d like to give you an idea that can help you make the most of the month and of your life. Here goes:

• Write down what you love about your life, your personality, and your daily experiences. (This can be a bullet list of three or thirty things, a paragraph in your journal, or an expression of whatever sort works best for you, as long as you think about it and jot something down.)
• Write down what you’d like to change about your life, your personality, or your daily experience. This can be something like, “I would like to have more time,” or “I would like to be more positive” or “I’d like to feel happier day-to-day.”
• Now go over your second list and decide what you’d like to work on in the month of September, what you’d like to take steps toward changing.
• Then look at your first list and remind yourself that you’ve created so much already, and have so many personal abilities and resources, you’ll be able to create this change in your life, too.
• Look for my next emails and decide to take steps toward putting some of the information and ideas into action. That’s it–but that’s enough for now!

If you’d like to make more changes now, you can find tons of useful information, actionable steps, and even templates for stress management game plans in my book, 8 Keys to Stress Management, published by W.W. Norton as part of their 8 Keys to Mental Health series.

I hope you have a wonderful day and month ahead! Savor your day