10 habits to constantly improve yourself

Become a better person by applying these 10 habits to your life.

The key to making this work is to focus on each habit for a month. Spend one month repeating each routine daily until it becomes a habit. Then move on to picking up the next habit.

Remind yourself to do each habit every day, when you wake up, before each meal, and before you go to bed.

1. Cultivate good habits

Identify bad habits and replace them with good habits.

“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.”
W.H. Auden

You have the power to change your life by changing the way you think, changing your attitude, changing the actions you take, and most importantly, forming habits that are beneficial to you.

Spend the first month making it a habit to cultivate good habits.

2. Be positive

Be patient. Always think and react positively.

All the bad will become good. The good can also turn bad. If you are enjoying the good, remain humble because the good won’t last. But know that the good will come again.

“Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”
Bruce Lee

Face the good and bad with positivity and love.

3. Peservere

If you persist, you will succeed.

Never stop trying. Never stop doing. Never stop fighting. Keep charging forward. Accept that failure is part of the process. Learning to fail better is progress.

“Defeat is not declared when you fall down, it is declared when you can’t get up.”
Manoj Arora

Where others will give up, keep doing. You will succeed where others fail.

4. Have faith in your personality

We have different ways of thinking, different ways of saying the same thing, different styles of approaching the problem.

Don’t worry that everyone is doing the same thing as you. Let your personality shine. You don’t need to make a big fuss to get the attention. Know that people see you for who you are. Be authentic.

What you do will appeal to different people. Your life experience and knowledge is different from others. These will shape your personality and style. Your personality will resonate with some people, but not all. Don’t try to please everyone.

Be authentic.

Be who you are and the people who resonate with what you do will buy what you do.

5. Live each day as if it were your last

Cherish the moment. Live in the now.

Forget yesterday. Don’t worry about tomorrow.

What matters is what you do right here, right now. Give your best shot in whatever you are doing at this very moment. You won’t have the chance to repeat it again in the same circumstances.

“Whatever you do, give it your best shot.”
Mrs Chiang, my primary school teacher

Do your best in whatever you do so you won’t have regrets. Do what you really want to do so you won’t have regrets.

6. Master your emotions

Stay level-headed. Don’t rush. Don’t be arrogant.

Don’t let your emotions control your actions. Master your emotions and take action rationally.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus Aurelius

Accept that the emotions that you feel. Allow yourself to immerse in that feeling. Then move on without clinging onto the emotion, be it positive or negative.

Detach your actions from your emotions.

7. Laugh at the world

Everything will pass, be it good or bad.

Enjoy the good. Accept the bad. Stay happy no matter what happens. The good will go away, so enjoy it while you can. Face the bad, it will pass with time.

The most important thing is to stay happy through it all. Know that good and bad is a cycle. Don’t let yourself be affected by what you can’t control.

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
Bruce Lee

Just as there can’t be light without darkness, we need the bad to learn to truly appreciate the good. Laugh at the bad. Laugh at the good.

8. Make yourself more valuable

Increase your value every day. Measure your worth against yourself. Become better than you were in the previous day.

Push yourself to reach your goals. Aim for the star, so even if you fail, you hit the moon. Keep getting better. Even if you succeed, you can still be better.

“I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
Elon Musk

Don’t compete with others. Compete with yourself. Strive to become better than you were yesterday.

9. Take action now

All is worthless without action. Banish procrastination. Do what must be done. Act now. Fail now. It is better than not taking action at all.

“A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of his life.”
Charles Darwin

Action overcomes fear and doubt. It moves you forward. Failure teaches you to grow better and stronger. Acting and failing is still progress because you know what doesn’t work and you learn from it. Just do it.

Don’t spend too much time thinking. Act now.

10. Seek guidance

When you improve, you will realise you know less that you thought you did. It is inevitable that you will need to seek advice from someone more knowledgeable.

“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
Aristotle

When you know you are not good enough, find someone who has the knowledge and is willing to share. Never stop improving. Find someone better and seek guidance from them.

Likewise, dispense advice to those who seek knowledge from you.