Two definitions of self I have seen are:
1. Your consciousness of your own identity, and
2. A person considered as a unique individual "one's own self".
The very word self in self improvement means that there must, by definition, be as many meanings to self improvement as there are people. It is a simple, inescapable fact.
There is no wrong or right in the field of self improvement. What works for one person may not work for another. Improvement to one individual may mean being able to eat every day of the week instead of on only 5. To another, it could mean achieving a higher salary; another, rediscovering their spirituality after spending years working flat out to be rich. What is self improvement to one may actually appear as self decline to another.
Such is the richness and variety of life that the poor person who only ate 5 days a week, may be very happy, smile much of the time, and have a supreme spiritual existence on a higher plane than the person seeking a higher salary. In that poor person's grasp is the spirituality that the rich person is now seeking. They may one day by like ships passing in the night in the search for self improvement. Or like people in adjacent elevators, one going down, the other going up.
None of that really matters. What really does matter is how the individual sees his or her self, and what they would perceive as improvement to that self. Next will come the decision to improve. Self improvement cannot come without a decision to do so. Then will come the selection of self improvement techniques to use. Maybe just one technique, but more likely a range of techniques. It could even be that to use one self improvement technique, the user would first benefit from the use of another. For example, relaxation techniques may be needed as a preparation for exploring spirituality.
Self improvement is not a rigid and blinkered science. There are many ingredients that can be blended to produce a large variety of self improvement dishes. You choose, you do, you benefit.
Some routes to self improvement are not techniques at all, they are random occurrences. How many people regard illness as a route to self improvement? I was fortunate enough to suffer from a crippling arthritic disease, ankylosing spondylitis, when I was in my late teens. By my mid 20's I could hardly walk. By 27 I was needing 2 walking sticks just to shuffle along. "Fortunate enough"? A typing error? No. I know for sure I am a better person for having gone through all that. Not that I would recommend it as a route to self improvement. If, however, you ever face a painful or life threatening illness, you too may twist the event inside out and use it to improve yourself.
Similar occurrences happen with other bad events in your life. Loss of job, loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a natural disaster destroying all your possessions; you never know what may come along to alter the course of your life. At each junction, you must be the one to decide. It is your life, your world, and your universe.
Maybe to some the first decision to make on the route to self improvement is to decide to decide. To consciously make decisions that will benefit and improve you is a vital step. If you are more aware of your decisions, you are more in control of your life. Each decision affects your world and your universe. If you allow events to just wash over you, drowning both your conscious and unconscious thoughts, then self improvement is unlikely to follow in quite the way you hope.
I am including in this website some articles by different authors, whose opinions do not necessarily reflect my own. But it is important that you have the full range to choose from. Hopefully, you will not just choose from them but be inspired to develop your own. After all, you are you, you are self, you are unique.
Answered by
Madhurima
, an ibibo Master,
at
6:14 PM on October 01, 2008
