You would agree with me that for you to be able to improve yourself, you would first of all have to know yourself, your essence, purpose, meaning. Knowing yourself comes first in solving the puzzle.
Self discovery leads to self improvement
Just as we learned in biology, an organism is made up of cells and molecules, which go on to determine and inform us about the attributes and characteristics of each organism. It’s the same for humans since we are living organisms ourselves.
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You know the way water takes the shape of a container, it's the same way with us; our lives take the shape of the forces operating on the inside of us.
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Man is a function of his thoughts and the forces acting on his inside. These forces will either rid him of his chance at fulfillment or propel him to greatness, bring about commotion or promotion depending on their negativity or positivity. In other words, thought is the foundation every action is built upon. Thought is the seed, action is it’s product. When the actions on the inside are good, the reactions on the outside would be beautiful. Let’s affirm this statement by elaborating on one or two forces acting on the inside of a man:
1. FAITH
A leap of faith precedes giant strides, the way hard and smart work precedes success.
Faith is required to transit from despair to hope, from pessimism to optimism.
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Faith reflects on your confidence level, reflects on your purpose, on the kind of relationships you keep, and causes you take on. In the actual sense of it, the presence of faith or the absence of it births all other internal forces. Faith makes a lot of difference. This is why it is rational that we mention it first. I love the way Dr Norman Vincent Peale puts it;
“Faith puts fight into a man so that he develops a terrific resistance to defeat. Obstacles no longer awe him. He uses obstacles as stepping stones to cross over from failure to success. Fortitude and faith are the words; they keep a man going even when he seems defeated.”
Now such a man would be too optimistic to give up when his back is against the wall because a force beyond the ordinary is acting on his inside, so much that he now lives in a whole new world filled with possibilities. The truth is our belief system plays an important role in our lives, without faith we become a victim of fear, doubts and worries.
On your journey of self discovery, you need faith more than anything because the moment you set out, it becomes imperative that you have the conviction that your efforts shall be fruitful. Bearing in mind that no one stumbles on greatness, it’s a deliberate act and you’ve got to believe you can do it.
2. FEAR
No one is closer to death than the man who’s afraid of living.
Fear has the capacity to eliminate all the positive energy going for you, the same way faith can eliminate all negative forces. In other words, fear exerts the opposite effect of faith; meaning if faith can move mountains, fear can build imaginary mountains in your mind. If faith can put fight into a man, fear can equally put defeat in a man.
Fear works with the principle of a mirage by making an unreal problem appear real; you then begin to chase shadows aimlessly, looking into the future with hopeless eyes. The presence of fear seems to be the absence of faith. John Mason puts it in a very striking way:
“Fear wants you to run from things that aren’t after you; it’s never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear. No poison so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of action and reasoning than fear.”
Fear is an enemy that we must deal with if we are ever going to improve ourselves.
WORRY
After worrying about the things you do not have, what usually follows is that you start comparing yourself with those people that have those things you are wishing for. And before you can say Jack Robinson, depressing and defeating thoughts would start to creep in like a thief in the night.
Worry puts our heads down, making us lose sight of our goals and purpose.
We worry about a lot of things, we worry about acceptance, hair colour, skin colour, weight, our statement of account, our background and so on.Instead of living, we are busy devoting our time to worry, forgetting that this would lead us nowhere. Worry acts as a block as seen in the image below.
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Many routes lead to self improvement but worry is definitely not one of them! And in most cases, we eventually find out that what we were looking for in the valley has been in our belly all along. Inbuilt; and all we had to do in a bid to unravel the mystery was just to tap the inner man. A common mistake we make is to underrate the things that we have while overrating the ones that we don’t have, thereby giving room for worry and anxiety to set in.
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This post seems to be getting longer than anticipated, I better call this volume 1. Positive feedback on this one would mean a second volume is needed.
But before I round this up, how about a quick recap. For us to improve ourselves; we need to
Internalize positivity and possibility
Take a leap of faith on self discovery
Deal with our fears and stop worrying!
Cheers to your developmental goals. Get busy living