Self Helping Yourself

Self Improvement Made Easy

Living Better

Meditation, Candles, and Knowing Yourself

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When trying to improve yourself, it’s good to stop and think about whether something really works for you in particular. 

Different people are different. Just because a book, blog, or your friends tell you to do something, doesn’t mean that it’s right for you. Something that’s the best thing ever and completely life-changing for someone else may be useless or counterproductive for you.

A few weeks ago, I decided to try using a candle for meditation. I had read that focusing on the flame could be a good meditation aid. And I found it helpful for a few days.

But then I noticed a problem. I had bought a fancy large-sized Yankee Candle. It occurred to me that these candles are designed to be burned for hours at a time. But I was only burning it for a few minutes at a time. That meant that only the wax very close to the flame had a chance to melt.… Read more

Celebrate progress instead of focusing on distance from your goals

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Recently a friend of mine said to me, “When you review your progress, there are two ways to look at your results: glass is getting fuller, or glass is getting less empty.”

For example, if you are trying to lose weight, you can see things as “I’ve lost seven pounds,” or you can see them as “I still need to lose eighteen pounds to reach my goal weight.”

Or you can compare yourself to 500 kg.

I think this is a great distinction. The first way of looking at things, where you celebrate your progress, is the much healthier and productive attitude.

When you focus on how far you have to go, things can become overwhelming. It’s tempting to say, “What’s the point?” What you do today can seem like a drop in the bucket. The entire time you spend working toward your goal is time you spend feeling inferior, because you haven’t reached your definition of success yet.… Read more

What does self-improvement for realists mean?

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hat is self-improvement for realists? It's the understanding that there's no magical easy fixes. Making our lives better takes time, effort, and commitment. It's hard to do, but with the right techniques, we can make it easier. And in fact, figuring out the ways to make it easier is the only way to succeed.

Why I Don’t Like the R Word

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Let’s talk about a dirty word that causes quite a bit of confusion, anger, interpersonal strife, and self-hatred.

It’s not the sort of dirty word that will get you kicked out of classrooms or make people gasp in church. In fact, it’s taught as a good thing. And that’s what leads to a whole mess of problems.

That word is responsible.

Why is responsible a bad word? Because it conflates two very different concepts: ownership, and blame.* 

Ownership means that you are taking control of a situation. You are the one who will handle it going forward. If something gets done, it’s because you did it, or effectively delegated and followed up on it. You will be accountable – even if only to yourself.

Blame means that something that has gone wrong is your fault. You screwed up or committed a transgression. You are somehow a bad person.

Blame implies judgement and moral condemnation.… Read more

Ten Minutes to Change My Life – An Update

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I’ve been keeping up my Ten Minute Regime for a few weeks now. (If you haven’t read that post, go read it now, or else nothing I’m talking about here will make any sense.)

Here are some things I’ve learned from it:

  • Two minutes at a time just isn’t enough for the meditation. By the time I find myself getting into a meditative state, the alarm is already going off. So I’ve increased the meditation to four minutes in the morning and three minutes at night. That’s turned this regime into thirteen minutes a day instead of ten, which isn’t quite so snappy a name. But it’s more important for this to be effective than to fit into an arbitrary number of minutes.
  • I’ve found sitting down in the morning to think about the day is very helpful. And I like giving myself stars for what I achieved. But I’m not finding it effective to think about what I could have done differently.
… Read more

Meditation for Dummies

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yoga pose ocean woman female lady person stretch healthy fit exercise meditation relaxing serene tranquil water rocks sea shore fitness lifestyle namaste peace sitting

Heard of all the great benefits of meditation, but don’t know how to do it? Think it’s only for weirdo hippies? Think you have too active of a mind, or are too ADHD?

Meditation is easy. Anyone can do it. If you think it’s too hard, that’s because nobody has told you the easy technique.

Here’s how:

  1. Sit down in a comfortable position. No, it doesn’t have to be the lotus position. A comfy chair, or sitting up in your bed is fine.
  2. Set a timer. Start off with two minutes, and as you get more used to meditating, increase the time.
  3. Close your eyes.
  4. Take a deep slow breath in. Try to focus on the air coming into your nose, down your throat, and into your lungs. As you do, think to yourself, “In.”
  5. Pause, then slowly breathe out. Focus on the air coming out. As you do, think to yourself, “Out.”
… Read more

Ten minutes a day to changing my life

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Stop Watch representing ten minutes to change your life

Change is hard.

I’ve read dozens of self-help books about how to change. And for me personally, I’ve run into two big barriers:

First, it’s extremely difficult to maintain a radical change in habits. To sustain a habit change, it has to be easy.

Second, most methods for change are time-intensive, and between my job, chores, desire to spend time with my wife, friends, and downtime relaxing, there aren’t enough hours in the day to devote to change. I could sacrifice time I spend living my life and instead spend that time changing my life, but is that worth it? And even if it is, I tend to lack the willpower after my energy is drained from long hours at work. See my first point about how habit changes need to be easy.

But I recognize that there are changes I would like to make to my life, which would make me happier if I implemented them.… Read more