Personal Growth + Development

[positiveselfimprovement]

I think that most people out there underestimate their own power and their own passion. ➡️ It's so easy to tell ourselves that we aren't ready - That we aren't smart enough, not prepared enough, not skilled enough. But those are all largely excuses. Not to dump on preparation, of course it's good to be prepared before launching into something new. But preparation can only take you so far, and sometimes you've got to take leaps of fate. ➡️ Here's the deal: You're going to fail in life. With that in mind, you have two options: Understand that you will fail, and you will continue to fail until you reach success, or you can keep yourself away from fear, and keep yourself exactly where you are now. ➡️ There is no success without failure. And "keeping yourself safe" does you no favors in the long run. I encourage you to embrace your true energy - Forget being realistic, forget being comfortable. So many of us out there have let the world around us dull who we are in the name of stability or comfort. ➡️ You've got so much passion and energy to share with the world. You've got an impact that you want to make. You've got a purpose. But it's never going to show through if you keep chasing comfort. It's time to do the hard things - The things that you know you should be doing, but are uncomfortable or hard. It's time to push through your fears and have faith in your true self. You've got the drive and you've got the passion - You're the only person that can get in your way. 💖💖 ➡️

[positiveselfimprovement]

How do you start living life with a purpose? ➡️ For years, I lived "The hustle". I always pushed myself to do more and to work harder, because I thought that was the only way to get ahead in life. Ultimately, I worked hard and I was proud of what I was able to accomplish. ➡️ Over time, the inevitable burnout hit me. And I didn't know how to deal with that. All of the sudden I wasn't motivated, didn't feel a spark with my old passions, and didn't care much about what I was doing. And because I had spent so long being in "Work, work, work" mode, I didn't know how to relax and enjoy myself. ➡️ Self improvement had basically become who I was. I spent my time always trying to better myself. I pushed off going out with friends, I pushed aside hobbies, and I became very one-dimensional. ➡️ What I didn't realize is that this was actually my coping mechanism. I made sure that I was always focused on something, always moving, and by doing so, I didn't have to deal with my insecurities or my fears for the future. It was just "go, go, go", largely as a way to not have to think about my life. ➡️ Feelings are important (Duh). I think that, in the world of self-improvement, we often forget that you need to get down to the basics before you can improve. You need to have a "self" before you can improve on it. ➡️ By that, I simply mean that you need to have your head in the right place. So many people feel lose or broken or insecure and so they turn to reading, learning a new language, etc., as a way of validating themselves. Not nearly enough time is spent on first loving yourself, building your confidence, and building a solid foundation that will allow for you to build yourself up. Your physical, mental, and emotional health should be the priority before all else. If that's not in check, then massively prioritize it.

[positiveselfimprovement]

I cannot stress this enough: You need to be persistent and you need to be patient. ➡️ So many people want to talk about strategies and tactics for bettering your life - And there are so many useful tips out there, many of which I follow myself. I've come to notice, however, that they don't mean anything if you aren't patient and aren't persistent. ➡️ I used to have about 10 goals at any given time. At one point, I wanted to lose 100 pounds, read a book a week, learn Spanish, volunteer 20 hours a week, and many more. And this was coming from a person that was overweight, barely read and didn't volunteer. ➡️ I wanted to focus so much on the quantity of things. If I could've done all of that, it would have been amazing. But I found that it just wasn't possible, and it just lead to stress and feeling like a failure. I started to evaluate myself and realized that I don't want to have 10 different goals at a time. ➡️ I still see myself as an ambitious person. I strive to, one day, accomplish all of those goals. But for the time being, I've put a lot of them on the back-burner. One day I'll learn Spanish, but today I'm going to focus on reading. Recognize that this isn't backing down or going soft - It's being pragmatic. ➡️ What I've realized is that my aggressive goals came from a space of insecurity. I felt like I needed all of those things to justify that I was smart, that I was ambitious, and that I was going places. Today, I'm so much more secure in myself and my ability to accomplish things, even if they take time. I'm comfortable with things taking time because I know I'll never give up on myself. I believe that I can and will do everything - I've just come to realize that it won't all happen in the next month.

[positiveselfimprovement]

I’m going to say something that goes against the entire “Self improvement” ideology: Cut yourself some slack. ➡️ It takes time to get your mind right. It takes time to love yourself. And it takes time to heal. If it were as easy as simply saying “I love myself” than everybody would do it. But it starts with small actions, small reminders that build up overtime. The bad news is that it will take time, but the good news is that, at some point, you will be okay. ➡️ Start small. Write some affirmations, and say them out loud - Even if it feels silly. Tell yourself that you’re capable. Tell yourself that you’re worthy. Tell yourself that you can do it. ➡️ Learn to look out for yourself. Spend your time doing the things that you want to do, and avoid the things that wear you out and drag you down. If you’re not sure where to start with this, start keeping a journal of all the things that pull you down and all the things that light you up. After a couple of weeks, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what works for you. ➡️ In the maelstrom of life, it’s so easy to lose track of yourself. But to heal, you have to set yourself up on a path of success. It takes time, but you will get there. Prioritize your own mental health, your attitude, and the things that bring you real happiness. 💖💖

[positiveselfimprovement]

What're you doing? NOW is the time to go all-in on yourself. ➡️ Too often we wait to feel "ready". We read, we study, we wait. Because we like to think of our future self's as superheros. We think "In 3 months, of course I'll be ready!" We keep telling ourselves that if we just read X amount of books, or once we graduate, or finish this online course that we'll be ready. ➡️ The fact of the matter is that you'll never feel ready. No amount of preparation will make eliminate all the fears or reservations that you have about something - And if it does, then you're thinking too small. ➡️ And so I beg of you, go all in on yourself, right now. Take the risks and dive blindly into that thing that you've been telling yourself that you can't have. And don't hold yourself back. People spend too much time being "Realistic" about what they want. I'm telling you right now, once you find your thing, and you put yourself 100% into that thing, you can have absolutely anything you want. ➡️ Part of it is believing in yourself, having faith in yourself. But part of it is also the ability to call yourself out when you're slacking, when you're procrastinating, when you're not doing what you know you should be doing. ➡️ What would you say to a loved one that was doing what you're doing? If you saw them want something, but they procrastinated, hesitated, and never fully applied themselves? I, for one, would push them to move past their fears and their reservations. Now hold yourself to the same standards.

[positiveselfimprovement]

I'm going to say something that goes against the entire "Self improvement" ideology: Cut yourself some slack. ➡️ It takes time to get your mind right. It takes time to love yourself. And it takes time to heal. If it were as easy as simply saying "I love myself" than everybody would do it. But it starts with small actions, small reminders that build up overtime. The bad news is that it will take time, but the good news is that, at some point, you will be okay. ➡️ Start small. Write some affirmations, and say them out loud - Even if it feels silly. Tell yourself that you're capable. Tell yourself that you're worthy. Tell yourself that you can do it. ➡️ Learn to look out for yourself. Spend your time doing the things that you want to do, and avoid the things that wear you out and drag you down. If you're not sure where to start with this, start keeping a journal of all the things that pull you down and all the things that light you up. After a couple of weeks, you'll get a pretty good idea of what works for you. ➡️ In the maelstrom of life, it's so easy to lose track of yourself. But to heal, you have to set yourself up on a path of success. It takes time, but you will get there. Prioritize your own mental health, your attitude, and the things that bring you real happiness. 💖💖

[positiveselfimprovement]

Remember to focus on the basics, make sure you're secure, and then you can conquer the world. ➡️ When we're in a rut, the first thing that comes to mind is to revamp our goals and double down on our efforts. But the fact of that matter is that you can't truly unlock your potential until you've nailed down the basics: Your nutrition and your mindset. ➡️ If you don't already, start to prioritize your nutrition. Eat less processed foods, and cut out sugar. Get out and move, go for a walk or join a gym. Get enough sleep. Drink plenty of water. It won't take long before you feel the impacts - Not just physically, but mentally, too. You'll have much less self doubt and negative thoughts when you treat your body right. ➡️ Learn to accept yourself, faults and all. You're unique and you're perfect for it. Understand that self improvement is about reaching your true potential, and not about making yourself capable or lovable. You already are. And maybe there are real barriers in your life - Maybe you don't know enough, or you aren't experienced enough. But that doesn't mean that you aren't capable of getting there - You can do anything with some self-belief and persistence. ➡️ So focus on the basics. Put yourself in a position of strength before you take on new goals. It may feel small and it may feel insignificant, but you cannot pour from an empty cup. Prioritize yourself and see the ripple effect. 💖💖 

[positiveselfimprovement]

One of the hardest things I had to learn was that any and all progress matters. ➡️ I spent so much time beating myself up over not accomplishing every single component of my goals. Went to the gym 4 times a week instead of 5? Failure. Read 200 pages this week and not 250? Failure. Practiced Spanish for only 15 minutes a day and not 20? Failure. ➡️ I was soooo hard on myself is wasn't even funny. And it got to the point where I was hurting my own progress. I realized, over time, that I was putting a ton of negativity into my life, to the point where I was largely discouraged from my goals. I thought "Why bother" if I could do everything that I should do, and I discounted the steps that I was making towards my goals because they weren't as good as I felt they should be. ➡️ All steps forward are steps forward. That sounds ridiculously obvious to say out loud, but it's something that we often forget. If you take one day a month to work on your goals, that's still more progress than the person who gave up will make. Any progress should be celebrated, because you're closer than you were before you had made the effort. ➡️ So, do not beat yourself up because you didn't do everything. Focus more on celebrating what you were able to do, and evaluating why you didn't do more. When you move yourself from the mindset of "I didn't do enough" to "I'm working on it, getting closer, and will be there one day" your entire head-space will shift with you. ➡️ 💖💖

[positiveselfimprovement]

Your mindset is going to determine how your day goes. ➡️ If you focus on the negatives and the hardships of your life, then your thoughts are going to be full of negativity, and all of that negativity is going to work to block out any positivity or happiness that the day brings. ➡️ Negative thoughts are like a cloud. And that cloud can hang over your head and haunt you, weighing you down and hampering your potential. ➡️ But the good news is that your thoughts are what you make them. Negativity does creep in, but make no mistake that it is 100% in your power to guide your thoughts and emotions. You don't have to be a bystander in your own mind - Make the very conscious choice to focus on positivity, and feed that side of your brain, and you'll find yourself lighter and more positive in general. ➡️ Appreciate the small things. Thank people for anything and everything. Be gratful for what you have, and optimistic about what you could have. This will take mental work at first; it will feel weird and unnatural, and maybe a little silly. But this is how positivity manifests 💖💖 ➡️

[positiveselfimprovement]

I spent soooo much time “Grinding”. And despite the fact that I spent all this time working on my goals, I was much less efficient than I am today. I would force myself to just simply work - Whether it was reading, working out, learning, posting, it all felt forced, and as a result, I never made it very far. ➡️ After a while of trying and failing, I decided that it was time to focus on myself rather than my external goals. I started to love myself, I started to do things that I genuinely enjoyed, and I began to find reasons to be grateful for everything that I had. ➡️ This took a while for me to do. I felt that, if I stopped “Grinding”, I would stop progressing. However, once I started to focus on myself and my mental state, I was able to find much more satisfaction in working towards my goals. I stopped seeing my goals as work. I didn’t have to force myself anymore. I started to feel myself literally being pulled to my goals. ➡️ The point is this: You can’t build yourself up if you don’t have anything in your tank. You have to love yourself and who you are, and what your life is, before you can start to improve anything. It’s all mindset, people. Love yourself, and your goals will start to naturally manifest. ➡️ Follow PositiveSelfImprovement for daily self improvement posts!

[positiveselfimprovement]

Here's the truth: You're never going to be ready. In the same way that "Tomorrow" never comes, neither does "ready". ➡️ You can spend all your time reading, studying, and preparing, but that will only get you so far with your goals. You can study how to do a pushup all day long, but until you actually get down and start doing pushups, you'll never learn how to do a pushup. ➡️ So put yourself out there. Apply for jobs that you have no business applying for. And if you are rejected, then, well, of course you were - You aren't qualified! And you can allow it to roll right off your shoulders and go about business as usual. ➡️ But, if you are accepted, then holy shit! You just launched yourself far ahead of the "Typical" advancment of your life. I implore you: Take risks. Put yourself out there. Try for things that you don't think you could ever achieve. ➡️ I want all of you to think big and be bold. If you fail, the experience of trying will better prepare you for the future. And if you succeed, then you've launched yourself way ahead in life. It's a win-win. The only way that you can lose is if you don't try. ➡️ Follow @positiveselfimprovement for daily self improvement posts!

[positiveselfimprovement]

I spent soooo much time "Grinding". And despite the fact that I spent all this time working on my goals, I was much less efficient than I am today. I would force myself to just simply work - Whether it was reading, working out, learning, posting, it all felt forced, and as a result, I never made it very far. ➡️ After a while of trying and failing, I decided that it was time to focus on myself rather than my external goals. I started to love myself, I started to do things that I genuinely enjoyed, and I began to find reasons to be grateful for everything that I had. ➡️ This took a while for me to do. I felt that, if I stopped "Grinding", I would stop progressing. However, once I started to focus on myself and my mental state, I was able to find much more satisfaction in working towards my goals. I stopped seeing my goals as work. I didn't have to force myself anymore. I started to feel myself literally being pulled to my goals. ➡️ The point is this: You can't build yourself up if you don't have anything in your tank. You have to love yourself and who you are, and what your life is, before you can start to improve anything. It's all mindset, people. Love yourself, and your goals will start to naturally manifest. ➡️ Follow PositiveSelfImprovement for daily self improvement posts!

[positiveselfimprovement]

They say that you are the average of the 5 people that you associate with the most. If this is the case, then it's vital that you take a close look at the people that you keep in your life. ➡️ Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, I'm not going to recommend that you cut anybody out of your life completely. Instead, I want you to think about the people closest to you, and I want you to think about the person you are when that person is around. Do you find yourself always abandoning your goals around a certain person? Do you find yourself taking unnecessary risks, or doing things that are against your personal values? ➡️ The people around us make us who we are. If the person you spend most of your time with is a person that makes you want to go against your goals, then it's important to seriously reconsider the relationship. You can have a conversation with that person, reduce the time you spend with them, or cut them out of your life if that's what necessary. Once the relationship stops being beneficial for the both of you, it's time to reshape things. ➡️ Instead of these toxic relationships, focus on building relationships with people that have similar mindsets to you. People who are inspired, motivated, and passionate will rub off on you, and you'll find yourself more driven than ever before. 💕💕 ➡️ Follow PositiveSelfImprovement for daily self improvement posts 💕💕

[positiveselfimprovement]

One of the worst thing that we can feel is comfortable. Constantly, our brains and our bodies are working to be comfortable. From an evolutionary viewpoint, this is ideal. When you're comfortable, you don't have to expend energy and you don't have to worry about unexpected problems arising. ➡️ The problem with being comfortable is that you aren't living life the way that it's meant to be lived. Comfort almost always equals stagnation. And while being comfortable feels great in the moment, and working hard does not feel great in the moment, the long-term impacts of comfort will hurt your quality of life long term. ➡️ Strive for discomfort. Working hard, grinding, resisting the easy path, these are all things that don't feel good in the moment. They're hard, they're work, and the majority of the time, you aren't going to want to do the hard things. But, pushing yourself forward is the only way to develop your life and who you are. Comfort = Stagnation, and so discomfort = progress. ➡️ Follow PositiveSelfImprovement for daily self improvement posts 💕💕

[positiveselfimprovement]

If you do not have yourself a plan, then you need to get one. This isn't a suggestion - It's mandatory if you want to accomplish your goals. ➡️ For a loooong time, I didn't have a plan. I had ideas. I had goals. But what I mostly had were puzzle pieces that made sense in my head, and that I thought could fit together to create the life I wanted. I knew that I wanted to work in politics, build an Instagram community, and lose weight. But without going any deeper than that, that's all that I knew. I didn't have concrete plans to get there or specific, measurable goals by which I could track my progress. Because of this, I fell into stop-and-go progress, where I worked on my goals for a few days, then quit, then picked them back up again. Needless to say, this was not an efficient way to make progress. ➡️ And so I decided to get serious. I wrote down EXACTLY where I wanted to be, and when I wanted to be there by. I wrote down exactly what job I wanted by the end of my career. I wrote down exactly what I wanted to weigh, and the date by which I hoped to weigh that. ➡️ From there, I figured out what steps were necessary to get myself there. I made daily goals, monthly goals, and yearly goals. And when I hit my deadline, I evaluated my goals. If I met the goal, I reflected on what I had done to stick with the goal. If I didn't, I reflected on what stopped me, and what traps I may have fallen into. ➡️ The point is that simply having goals isn't enough. If you want to be successful, however you define that, it's going to take a specific, measurable plan. Oh, and a whole lot of patience. 💕💕 ➡️ Follow PositiveSelfImprovement for daily self improvement posts 💕💕

[positiveselfimprovement]

We all want to hustle. We all want to work hard on our goals, and we all want to change our lives. So many have us use motivation as a way to get things done, and it usually shows. When people rely on motivation to accomplish their goals, their productivity usually comes in boom-bust cycles. ➡ What that means is that people will start out strong: A two hour long workout, reading for an hour, eating the perfect balance of macros. This is the boom phase, where your motivation hits you hard, and you're inspired to go all-in on your goals. ➡ Overtime, motivation fades. And suddenly, trying to go in for a two hour long workout sounds like hell, and most people don't have the willpower to force themselves to go when it gets hard. This is where the second part of our cycle comes in: The bust. Once the motivation runs out, many people are down and out with their goals, until their motivation comes back to repeat the cycle. ➡ Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes at a whim. Instead of focusing on motivation to accomplish your goals, build actual habits that will make you want to go out and do things that will help you. Instead of starting a two hour workout, start with just 15 or 30 minutes. If you're starting from scratch, start small. It's easy to force yourself to do anything for just 15 minutes. And after a few days of 15 minutes, then 20 becomes easy. From there you build on yourself, and continually up the ante until you've gotten to your big goal of doing X for X amount of time. ➡ Follow PositiveSelfImprovement for daily advice on personal growth 💕💕 ➡

[positiveselfimprovement]

Yesterday I touched on my own experience lacking self confidence, and today I wanted to expand on that in today's post. ➡️ As I mentioned yesterday, journalling about times I felt my emotions spike during the day helped me to realize that I had a big self confidence problem. It started by not being able to take criticism, but quickly turned into learning much more about why I do the things I do. ➡️ Here's the thing: I've always known that I struggle with self confidence. I'm quiet, bigger, and have never seen myself as particularly attractive. However, I've noticed a big difference in acknowledging the self confidence problem and really looking into it. ➡️ After journalling, I started to think about other times that I felt inadequate. After numerous journalling sessions, I figured out that my wardrobe is almost exclusively black clothing because I don't feel comfortable wearing anything else. I found out that I don't speak up because I never felt good enough to say things in a group (Assuming that literally anybody else had more important/better things to say). I learned that I don't like going new places because I felt judged for how I look. ➡️ I know that it's almost totally in my head. I'm bigger, but I'm not extremely big. I'm not hot, but I'm not ugly. But simply knowing that information doesn't diminish the feelings. ➡️ I was able to hide it from myself for a long time. I've worked the same job for the past 4 years, with close to the same people doing the same job. In my department, I'm the life of the party. But with new people, new situations, I was crippled. And it was easy to use my work life to convince myself that I didn't have a self confidence problem. ➡️ This is my story, and I wanted to share it with all of you  💕💕 ➡️ #Selfconfidence #Love #Selflove #Acceptance #bodypositive #bodyacceptance #allbodiesaregoodbodies #edrecovery #monthlymindset