Small Steps to Your Better Self

Do you ever wish you could just better yourself as a person? Do you feel overly pessimistic, especially judgmental, or too self-involved? If you aren’t happy with who you are, you can improve this just as you can improve your financial situation, health, or skills. Although it is less common to hear that someone’s goal is to be a nicer, more positive person, it isn’t any less important or admirable. In fact, it might be one of the most important goals you can have.

If you’ve read my book, you know about the power of the ‘Bite Size’ approach to reaching your goal. If you haven’t read it, you can get your copy here, then go to Chapter 6 on page 57 for the story of how this method kept a man alive and helped him rescue himself when everything was against his survival.

Becoming a nicer, more positive person may not sound as monumental a goal as keeping oneself alive in dire circumstances, but the approach that will get you there is not really any different. The most important thing to remember is to take it one small step at a time. That’s where the Bite Size approach comes in.

You became who you are over a long period of time, and you were affected and changed by many small influences and experiences. It makes sense that your road to changing your attitude towards others and how you live your life will likewise take many small gestures and encouraging encounters.

You can begin by taking note of the things you do that make up the behavior you want to change. Then take on just one of those little things and focus on eliminating or transforming it into something positive for others and yourself.

If something so simple as taking one bite size step at a time can be so powerful as to save a man’s life, it can certainly help you to improve the person you are and better your life and the lives of those around you. It just takes that first small step. What will be your first small step to becoming a better person than you are even now?

A Beautiful Life Now

If someone is really rude and totally offends you but then later offers a very sincere apology, most of us would probably forgive that person and move on with our lives. However, when most of us human beings make a mistake or screw something up, in many cases we will not forgive ourselves and so we carry that guilt around for days or years and that can hurt us in so many ways.

Quoting from Pema Chodron’s Living Beautifully, a great book that I’ve quoted before, “Over time, as thinking minds begin to settle, we’ll start to see our patterns and habits far more clearly. This can be an experience. I can’t overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be. By cultivating nonjudgmental openness to ourselves and to whatever arises, to our surprise and delight we will find ourselves genuinely welcoming the never-pin-downable quality of life, experiencing it as a friend, a teacher and a support and no longer as an enemy.”

Pema talks a lot about acceptance of ourselves and the world as it is and how we should appreciate it as it is now. She talks about what she calls the “third commitment”, which is key to this kind of acceptance and appreciation. (You need to read her book to find out what the first and second commitment are and how they can greatly improve a person’s life.) To quote her again, “The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself.” She goes on to add that, “The attitude of the third commitment is that we live in a world that is intrinsically good, intrinsically awake, and our path is to realize this. Simply put, the practice at this stage is to turn toward your experience, all of it, and never turn away.

Pema talks a lot about being kind to others especially to ourselves. She talks about the process of growing-up and working toward feeling totally relaxed and free. She says, “that process, that transition, is one of becoming comfortable with exactly what we’re feeling as we feel it. The key practice to support us in this is mindfulness–being fully present right here, right now. Meditation is one form of mindfulness, but mindfulness is called by many names: attentiveness, nowness, and presence are just a few.”

Pema Chodron further explains that we need to pay attention to all the details of our life. “The specific details of our lives will, of course, differ, but for all of us, wakefulness concerns everything from how we make dinner to how we speak to one another to how we take care of our clothes, our floors, our forks and spoons”.

I think the bottom line is, if we pay more attention to the details of our lives it will give us more ways to free ourselves and that can help us free ourselves from suffering. So, we need to accept ourselves, appreciate our life as it is now, and pay attention. And we need to do all that, right now.