Self Development: 19 No Nonsense, Practical And Easily Actionable Tips
Many people want a better life and turn to self development books hoping to find the secret techniques to having a wonderful personal and financial life. However, there are many people who have never read any self development book but have wonderful lives.Many people forget that most of the basics to living a wonderful life have never changed since the beginning of society. People just fail to realize that following a few basic things in life is the key to a wonderful life.
Here are a few things in your life you just need to improve to have a better life. These are not unsustainable goals but rather common sense tips that everyone will agree are correct and easily implementable.
"Self Development Tips” Summary List:
1. Have A Goal2. Be Realistic
3. Follow A Routine
4. Wake Up Earlier
5. Drink More Water
6. Only Eat When You’re Really Hungry
7. Eat Healthy
8. Walk More
9. One Minute Exercises
10. Improve Your Looks
11. Study More
12. Do Chores
13. BeClean
14. Avoid Vices
15. Save Money
16. Earn More
17. Setup A Business
18. Make Actual Friends
19. Take Care Of Your Family
Final Words
”Self Development Tips” Details:
1. Have A Goal
I have never read any self improvement book or listened to a famous person doing an inspirational speech that didn’t advice about setting a goal for one’s life. I wholeheartedly agree with all of them.
Not having a goal in life is like a headless horse fast racing to a destination it doesn’t know or didn’t select. Knowing one’s goal early in life helps you better select actions that would improve your chances in succeeding in life.
For example, as a young student, knowing that you want to be an engineer one day would help you take your math and science lessons more seriously instead of concentrating on athletics lessons which someone with a goal to be an athlete would do.
Regrettably, there are just so many things we can do in life before age takes over and we settle with what we’ve got. So, before you give in to age, make sure that the current position you are in life is your goal or is going towards your goal.
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2. Be Realistic
Many self development coaches and successful people like to say that: “Nothing Is Impossible”. What they fail to mention is that it takes an incredible degree of Luck to succeed in life.
Although we can say that you can achieve almost anything in life, there are real world obstacles that would prevent you from doing so. For example, aspiring to be the number one basketball player in the world is unrealistic for someone who is short in stature.
A more realistic sport for someone who is short would be table games like Chess. There are also sports where a short person doesn’t have to contend with their disadvantage of being short. These are sports such as Diving, Skating and Shooting.
Also, setting unrealistic self development goals can leave you depressed. For example, trying to lose weight permanently in mere months is largely unrealistic. It usually takes years of trail and error methods before you can permanently maintain an ideal weight.
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3. Follow A Routine
Do you know why human society improved so much? Because companies established routines that their workers and consumers follow. From the standard time to go and leave work, to when the buses and trains arrive and depart, there is a routine that is followed.
A worker has a routine to follow at work. They go to work and leave work at a certain time. They usually eat one hour lunches. They have coffee and even smoking breaks for a couple of minutes after they have finished a set number of workload.
But many people rarely establish a routine in their personal life. For example, a person normally has three to four hours of free time including a one hour dinner. So, what do they do with their free time?
They spend it all usually entertaining themselves by watching television, surfing the internet or playing videogames. They could have established a routine where they set aside one hour of their time writing or studying which improves their financial opportunities.
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4. Wake Up Earlier
You should wake up as early as you can. In time, your body would adjust itself to you waking up earlier and earlier. There are many self development coaches who proudly teach that you should wake up at five in the morning or even earlier.
And I can see their point. My mother wakes up at five in the morning and even earlier and by the time I’ve awakened, she has already done so much like doing the laundry, cleaning the house, cooking and so on.
She’s already retired but if she ever wanted to work an eight hour job, she would have plenty of time to do so. This is the power of waking up early which many industrious people possess. They don’t waste time doing things later when they can do it much earlier.
This goes hand in hand with a sleeping routine. You cannot train your body to wake up early consistently without having a normal sleeping pattern.
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5. Drink More Water
You are continuously inundated by media advertising to drink more and more flavored drinks when water is something you should be continuously drinking more. Just to prove the point, if you were stranded in the desert, what would you rather drink, water or a soda drink?
As you can see, the answer is obvious. A soda drink might be more tasty but it is water that you need. In fact, if your body lacks water, your mood would be sour. Self development means improving one’s outlook in life which is related to one’s mood.
So, if you don’t drink water that much, your outlook in life will be not as good as the person who drink a lot of water. Lack of water also negatively affects your sleep pattern which not only affects your mood but your health as well.
Also, haven’t you noticed how refreshed you feel after drinking water? Frequently drinking water has the effect of frequently making you feel refreshed which livens up your day.
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6. Only Eat When You’re Really Hungry
We have been conditioned to eat three sets of meals a days: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. We even have snacks inbetween these meals. We even have snacks when we’re watching television, a game in a playing field, in a movie theater and so on.
As a result a lot of people today are overweight and even obese which not only affects their mood but also their health. A person who is overweight usually has a heart or even blood sickness.
Heart and blood medicines are expensive and can add a lot to one’s financial stress. Self Development includes improving your financial condition, so you are not really developing yourself if you are not taking action to improve your finances by being healthy.
For example, just eating less not only significantly lessens your food bill but also your medical bill as well. This is because eating less can lower your weight which lessens your heart rate problem and even cause your diabetes to remiss.
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7. Eat Healthy
Besides eating less, you should also eat healthy. For example, eating plenty of vegetables instead of plenty of meat has for decades been known to be one of the best ways to improve one’s health.
A healthy person has little to no medical bills. So, you develop your finances by just the act of being healthy. This is so basic but many people forget this especially with fast foods and ready to eat meals being the norm these days.
But you don’t have to ditch your junk food altogether in an instant. You can slowly change your diet habits like eating fruits instead of eating junk foods for snacks and breakfast. You can also slowly decrease the sugar you use in your coffee or tea or ditch sugar altogether.
As you can see, by just using these two food health tips alone, you can drastically improve your health and even your finances as well. You not only are healthier but you have less medical bills and food bills.
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8. Walk More
Exercising is a sure way to get healthy, but not everyone has the time, money and even the will to do it. This is because exercising can be time consuming, expensive and is frankly, not exciting for most of us.
But staying active to a certain degree can be a good substitute for exercise. For example, hard labor can beat out the best workout routines in gyms. Also, you actually get paid for hard labor unlike working out in a gym.
But not many do hard labor as a job. However, people walk to and from work. People even walk at work and even while at home. It’s a natural exercise that fits well with everyone’s daily activities.
You can improve your health by simply walking more. For example, instead of leaving the bus at your bus stop, you can leave the bus one bus stop earlier and walk the rest of the way. Soon, you’ll realize that you can leave several bus stops before your bus stop and just walk.
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9. One Minute Exercises
Let’s face it, for most of us, exercising can be very boring. Also, most of us don’t have 30 minutes each day to spend exercising as many health professional recommend. But you won’t be bored with one minute exercises right?
There are 24 hours in a day of which we use eight to sleep. This leaves us with 16 hours. Now, imagine doing one minute exercises every half an hour. Your total exercise time would then be 32 minutes.
You could walk, do calisthenics, push ups or other exercises in one minute. This especially applies if you’re doing power exercises like deadlifts and leg presses where you need long rests between repetitions.
If you’re working in an office, you could stop for one minute to do exercises while sitting in your office chair. Some exercises that you could do would be ankle rotations, arm stretches, calf muscle toning, clenches, crunches, leg lifts and rotating at the waist.
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10. Improve Your Looks
We all know that it’s the beautiful people who attract the most attention and arguably, the most opportunities as well. This might seem unfair to ugly and even average people, but this is a fact of life.
But there are other things you could do to improve your looks and attract attention without having to resort to expensive plastic surgery. For example, by just choosing a hairstyle that complements your face, you greatly improve your look.
Being clean looking and neat makes you approachable. This is the reason why most sales personnel are clean shaven and neatly dressed. Why is this so? Well, ask yourself this question: Would I approach a person who looks dirty and mean? I guess you get the message.
Self development requires developing your social connections and you cannot do this if you are perceived as a non-personable person. This is not advising you to dress and act like a salesperson but rather, to develop your looks such that you seem personable to others.
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11. Study More
Most self development coaches like to state that you should be a lifelong learner. Most people aspiring to develop their life usually interpret this to applying non-stop for various courses like learning a skill in programming, writing, photography and so on.
But ask these same people who have enrolled in so many courses if they know how to do basic plumbing or how to fix basic car engine problems. Chances are they won’t know how to do these.
In short, you should study first how to handle everyday life before you study courses that might not be helpful or important to you at all in your actual life.
Also, most people stop studying after being employed. They concentrate on their work and not on their self development. But, you are a one man business and sell your skill and time to your company. The more valuable you are as a person, the more your company would value you.
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12. Do Chores
Young children mostly hate doing household chores. Even adults hate doing chores. But chores needs to be done in order to keep a household in good working order. Doing regular chores trains you to be productive and responsible.
Being productive and responsible trains you to be a good employee and could also mean training you to be a good businessperson. But let’s forget being an employee and businessperson first.
Let’s take a look at the psychological effect of completing chores first. If you are unemployed, doing chores would make you feel that you are still productive and is achieving something which helps with your morale.
Also, chores can be turned into successful businesses. There are people who became millionaires by starting out a home cleaning business. There are people who earn good money cleaning cars and driveways. This alone should convince you that doing chores are important.
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13. Be Clean
It has been previously discussed how looking clean and neat makes you a more approachable person which improves your social life. However, being clean and neat also extends to your room, house and even possessions.
People are very judgmental by nature. This is an unfortunate reality in life but is something you cannot avoid. While many people won’t judge you by the car you drive, they would surely come to the conclusion that you’re a messy person if they see your dirty car.
Self development means being meticulous with cleanliness. Being cleanliness oriented positively affects your health, mood, social life and finances. If you are clean, you attract less sicknesses. Your mood would likely improve if you have clean surroundings and possessions. If you look clean including your possessions, more people would be attracted to you including business partners. Also, if you own a restaurant business and it’s clean, you attracts more customers which means more profits.
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14. Avoid Vices
Vices such as smoking and drinking can turn into unhealthy and expensive addictions. Smoking can cause lung cancer while drinking can cause liver disease. Also, these two vices costs a lot of money these days which could be money better spent on more essential needs.
To put it bluntly, self development cannot occur if you are an addict. Being an addict means you are no longer in control of your life which directly conflicts with what self development teaches.
Anything can become a vice and even an addiction if taken to extremes. Some of these are: shopping too much, watching too many movies, playing too many videogames, overeating, working too much and of course, indulging in illegal substances.
Self development means enjoying almost everything in life in moderation and within limits. If you have vices, perhaps it’s time to analyze if you’re already overindulging in them. If you are, then slowly withdraw from them until they no longer control you but instead you control them.
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15. Save Money
Nothing boosts self esteem more than having money in your pockets. Many rich people know this that is why they want to accumulate more. The unwise and usually poor think that looking rich actually boosts their self esteem.
This is why, instead of saving, the unwise usually spend their hard earned money on looking rich instead of actually being rich. Some even go into debt just so they can make it appear to others that they are rich.
Let us assume you put USD 25.00 a week in your bank account which earns just 1% interest. In 40 years, you would have had USD 59,000 in your bank account. Just imagine if you have invested your money in a higher interest bearing investment like term deposits.
This is the power of saving. You earn interest on top of interest. Having more money enables you to have more freedom in your life which is one of the goals of self development. Money is not the source of evil as some people would have you believe, it’s the lack of it that is.
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16. Earn More
Having money in your pocket is a great stress reliever. For the vast majority of people throughout the world, the lack of money is their main problem. For many poor people, earning money comes first above all else, including self development.
This is why before you even think of self development, think first of how to make more money. Having more money allows you more freedom in your life especially what to buy for yourself and your loved ones, including self development books and/or courses.
Ever notice who are the people making inspirational and self development speeches? It’s usually rich people. This is because they have proof that they are living a much better life than yours.
So think first of how you would earn more money because the more money a person has in his bank account, the more reassured they are of their future which leads to them being more happier and having a better outlook on life.
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17. Setup A Business
Owning their own business is exhilarating for many. It doesn’t matter if it’s a part-time or a full-time business. Nothing beats the feeling of being your own boss and having something to call as your own.
Running your own business is tough and requires a lot of hard work, not to mention that your business can fail in an instant. But the thought of being responsible for your own financial destiny is enough to keep business owners from going back to become employees once again.
Being a business owner also teaches a person to become financially literate and business literate. Something most employees never get to learn even though they might have spend decades working for a company.
In short, being a business owner is one of the highest levels of self development. Unless your financial, operational, selling and social skills improve, your business would likely fail. You cannot develop these skills without developing as a person first.
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18. Make Actual Friends
One of the greatest self development skills that you should learn is social skills. Developing this skill not only leads to a much harmonious life but also opens you up to doors of opportunities. In fact, many self development and business coaches give importance to this skill.
Developing social skills means knowing how to use tact and even psychology when dealing with troublesome people. Many self development coaches even teach courses on “How To Influence People.”
Developing social skills also means learning how to control your emotions such that you don’t get triggered if someone says something bad to you or you just strongly disagree with someone’s opinions.
Self Development also means going deeper and making real friends and not just acquaintances. This is actually a life changing skill to learn because personal and business friends can give you essential support in your life especially when you most need it.
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19. Take Care Of Your Family
Self Development won’t be complete without developing a harmonious relationship with your family. Your family is your first and last contact in this world. When you were born, your family is there. As you are growing up and especially when you are in trouble, your family is there.
Lastly, when you are in your twilight years, who would likely be there for you and take care of you? Of course, it’s your family. That is why you shouldn’t underestimate your relationship with your family.
Being a parent also teaches you financial budgeting, responsibility and how to take care of someone which could be your children or their grandparents. This skill would likely be absent in a single person.
By being close to your family, you develop actual social skills that you won’t learn in books or courses. You’ll also learn practical skills like how to take care and teach children which are actual real world jobs. In fact there is a constant demand for child and old people carers.
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Final Words
Many people are interested in self development and are turning to self development coaches for advise. They attend seminars, study courses, read articles and watch YouTube videos not realizing that by just taking small actions in their life, their lives would greatly improve.
These actions are not even hard or complicated either. In fact, almost all people know this but they just need to be reminded. Philosophers and many famous and successful people have been teaching these self development tips for ages.
While self development courses and books are a great help in self development, don’t forget that practical wisdom is also important. Inspirational stories, Famous quotes and similar materials are also helpful in self development.
But all of these are useless unless you put what you’ve learned into practice. In the end, taking your first positive action might just be the thing you need to get your self development journey rolling. So, take your first positive action and don’t stop doing so.
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