14 Key Self Improvement Skills

It can be helpful to take a high level perspective on self improvement, looking broadly at all the important skills. This can help identify areas you may be weak in, and serve as a mental checklist to help you focus. While this is not an exhaustive list of elements important to personal development, these are some of the most important.


1. Continuous Learning: Take responsibility for your own lifelong personal development, knowing that it's the secret to success in all areas of life, and your most valuable asset. Your knowledge and experience is personal wealth you can never lose.


2. Positivity: Find the positive aspect in everything, accepting what cannot be changed, and acting on what can, towards a positive result. Don't let circumstances drive your state of being, let your state of being drive your results. Smile and use humor to help drive a positive attitude and share it with others.


3. Personal Excellence: Strive to do your best in everything you do. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Not only to achieve superior results, but so that if you fail you can remain positive rather than wishing you had tried harder. Look to be creative in your personal excellence rather than follow the safest, lowest risk path.

4. Honesty: Maintain honesty and integrity in all that you do. Trust and respect by others is hard earned, yet can be permanently lost over the smallest lie. Decide that honesty is one of your core values, and stick to it at all costs.

5. Know Yourself: You are a unique individual with your own strengths and weaknesses, all others have these also. The difference with a successful person is they have learned to leverage their strengths, and to identify their weaknesses so they can improve those areas through learning and practice. Accept yourself as you are without comparison to others, if you look you will find much about yourself to be proud of and thankful for.

6. Appreciate the Moment: Seek happiness in the present moment, even in the simple things around you such as nature, a good conversation, or a good meal. Excessive contemplation on the past or future steals this appreciation from you. Some techniques to support this is getting out in nature, and meditation.

7. Communicate Well: Learning to communicate well with others is an essential skill, which includes speaking, writing, listening well, and body language. Nearly everyone can still find areas to grow with these skills, and should receive constant attention. Becoming a good listener is one of the top areas of improvement you should seek, become truly interested in other people and it will work wonders.

8. Embrace Mistakes: Mistakes are a prerequisite to personal development; you must choose either courage and success, or safety and being average. Mistakes are a learning opportunity so long as you are not repeating your mistakes, if you have learned from a failure then pat yourself on the back. Carry this to other's mistakes also, forgive them with this understanding in mind.

9. Embrace Change: Change is a constant part of life, and integral to personal development and success. Become excited about change, and look to it with a positive attitude. Be a leader by being the initiator of positive change. If you fear change, then you fear personal development, as self improvement is about changing yourself.

10. Increase Your Value: Know that personal development is not a selfish activity; rather it increases your value to others, ranging from relationships, business, and career. Too many people focus on changing others, which rarely works as well as changing yourself. Make a difference externally by changing yourself internally.

11. Be Giving: Seek to be giving, compassionate, loving, yet humble, knowing you receive what you give out. This is a secret to finding happiness in life.

12. Balance: Seek balance in all areas of life, considering family, relationships, career, business, health, leisure, and spirituality.

13. Gratitude: Be thankful for the gift and opportunity of life. If you have a spiritual belief, pursue the core tenets of the teachings and make them part of who you are.

14. Find Your Excitement: Find things in life that excite you, and act on them. Embracing things which excite and motivate you will move you more quickly into success and happiness, and attract the things you need to get there. This attitude will support and integrate with all the above tenets.

Anger Management Techniques

Anger is one of the most common and destructive emotions and it afflicts our mind almost every day. We need to empower ourselves with anger management techniques so as to solve our problem of anger. Anger management techniques are easy to apply especially when anger gets over us and our physical wellbeing. It is important to know anger management techniques to help us cope with situations everyday.

What is anger? Anger is a natural human emotion and it is an adaptive nature which empowers us to "ward off" any attacks or threats to our well being.

However, it sometimes can cause us to focus on the bad qualities of an animate or inanimate object, make it unattractive and increase our desires to perform negative actions on it. But the truth is, anger is not a problem but the mismanagement of anger. Mismanaged anger and rage cause us to face conflicts and difficulties in our personal and professional relationships. Thus, we must know anger management techniques in order to cope better with it.

Anger management techniques are simple to apply but we must first recognize the anger within our mind and acknowledge that it is harmful to both our selves and others. The idea of being tolerant and patient is central in anger management techniques because it is when we lose our tolerance and patience that we begin to feel angry.

In addition, anger management techniques are really just practical methods that can be applied in our daily lives to help us reduce our anger and finally to prevent it from arising at all. They can help us because excessive anger can cause health problems, family issues, drug or alcohol abuse, financial despair, extreme fear or stress, and spiritual void. Domestic abuse, road rage, workplace violence, divorce, and addiction are just a few examples of what happens when anger is mismanaged.

To get started with applying anger management techniques, you need to admit that your anger is out-of-control is essential to tackling the problem of anger. This requires honesty, courage, and tremendous inner strength. And also requires help from others.

When in a situation that needs you to apply anger management techniques, be consciously determined to be calm and communicate and express slowly what you are feeling. Look at the positive side and try to look at the situation from another point of view. Try to relax at the same time and just think about something good to distract yourself from the overwhelming feeling of anger. In addition, you can regulate your breathing to become slow and relaxed to allow you to think and react better in the situation.

Remember that anger management techniques help you to control your anger to the best of your physical well being, social functioning and relationships! Uncontrolled anger only results in added troubles to your life and controlling your anger is a choice you can make! It is no disgrace to admit we have a problem and seek outside help.

How to Overcome Anxiety

Anxiety is simply a feeling of worry; nervousness or an intense apprehension of real or imagined danger. Or it could be a strong wish to do something, especially if the wish is unhealthy strong, like being anxious to do the right thing, in other words, there is lack of confidence in self.
Why do you have this feeling of anxiety? Anxiety is a symptom of the presence of doubt, and when there is doubt, fear grips in. When fear grips in, anxiety comes in. All these; doubt, fear, and anxiety are manifestations of a negative mental attitude, attracting more negative things to happen. The more intense the anxiety, the more the thing that you feared of, will likely to happen. Why? Because of the Law of Attraction; the more you think and feel about it, the more you will get it.

So the best thing to overcome anxiety is to overcome your negative mental attitude. Have you noticed that when there is something that you do not like to happen, will more likely to happen? An example of this is when you were in school, when the teacher calls randomly for somebody to present in front of the class; you do not want to present because you are not prepared, or you are not confident to present; what do you feel? You feel anxious, anxious that you might be called. And the more anxious you become, the more likely that you will be called. And if you were very anxious, then definitely, you were called. In the Law of Attraction, the process starts with having a thought of what you want, then this thought transform into desire to have what you want. Desire is an emotion, powerful enough to lead you to action until you get what you what. Anxiety is already an emotion, a powerful feeling that will lead you to your dominant negative thought-that something you feared of.

How then do you overcome your negative mental attitude? To overcome a negative mental attitude is to have a positive mental attitude. You can not overcome a negative mental attitude with a negative mental attitude. Let me give you an example: As I browsed the Google keyword, I noticed that a lot of people searched the Google about anxiety, about 4 million searches in one month, compared to happiness at about a million in a month. Both of these group of people who searched for anxiety and happiness, are more likely to be suffering from anxiety or depression. If you are happy, why would you search for happiness on the internet, anyway? The difference between these groups of people is their approach, or how they managed their anxiety. 4 million tried to manage their anxiety by learning more about anxiety. What do get, they end up feeding their thoughts more about anxiety, stories of people with anxiety, and so on. They end up attracting more negative forces to them and become more anxious. On the other hand, those people who tried to battle their anxiety by cultivating their thoughts with happy thoughts; happy moments; stories about happiness; and surrounding themselves with happy people; are more likely to succeed in overcoming their anxiety.


Anxiety is a mental state of mind where negative thoughts are dominant, creating doubts and fears. To overcome anxiety is to gain mastery over your thoughts; to change your mental attitude to a positive mentality. And one of the best ways to have a positive mental attitude is to nourish your mind with happy thoughts, happy moments, and associate yourself with happy people.

Can Money Buy You Happiness?

Who needs money in his everyday life? We encounter the need for money almost everywhere, from shopping to eating at stalls and even to the basic needs. We feel contented if these needs are satisfiably met, however, if not, this can cause worry which leads to unhappy lifestyle. It is somehow true what our parents used to teach us that money can't buy happiness because it cannot be literally bought. Of course it cannot. Nevertheless, everyday we are being bought with money from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep. If you don't have such resources, how then can you survive and will you be happy with it?

Morally speaking, money can't buy happiness because of the implications towards us that our happiness should not depend on material things. But reality check, it is true that money can buy happiness and psychological studies has proven the theory.

A poll survey conducted by Adweek tackled affirmations from different age brackets in the society that tells us that money is equated to happiness. The older one gets the greater is his linkage of happiness with money due to the burden of mortgages, college funds and midlife responsibilities.

Although it depends on your own the definition of money and happiness. Imagine that you wake up to go to school and ask your Mom to give you allowance, then she says "No!". Does it make you happy to hear that from her? On a larger scale, why do people go to lottery stalls to take their chances of winning? The hope to alleviate their lives, if they are happy with their present situation then why should they go to the lottery to take their chances? All of us are working to provide for our needs and it is frustrating to think that you wake up in the morning with no food in the table.

There is no need for a study to know that wealthy people can afford more merry-makings because their money allows them to afford such activities.

Rich people are happier according to study than that of low income family. It is the satisfaction on life that makes the difference. If you were to compare their outlook in life. Rich people tend to be ambitious, optimistic and goal oriented while poor people are struggling to inconsistent depression and self pity. This are indications which happiness requires positive behaviour and rich people seem to posses some of it, according toUniversity of Michigan's health and retirement study.

A study conducted by David G. Blanchflow and Andrew Oswald analyzde the impact of social flow and economic status of American today showing a decline from 34% to 30% of unhappy individuals who took the survey. The study is to prove the thoery if in anyhow the happines weighed in with money. Significantly understood thatmoeny is not about the cash but the assets and liabilities one has. Who cannot be happier if you have a large house to live in, a full stomach and once in a while to enjoy outdoor recreation. You cannot possibly obtain these simple pleasures if your money earned is just consumed by your food and for paying your utilities..

We are living in a day to day basis for survival and we are affected materially so as to say that money indeed has that influence in this material world. Almost what you have from your head to toe requires a minimum amount of money, from toddler to college years and considering a degree takes most of your investment. If you graduate in college, you are much more equipped in life. You began to have confidence way beyond than those who were not able to finish any degree. For this, we must take account of the importance of money in fulfilling that dream that somehow has brought your life changes and makes it a lot happier.

Medically speaking, doctors have observations that rich people tend to have better health than low income families, this means that rich people live healthier lifestyles. What money can offer is convenience. The fact is, there is a relative influence with regards to how we react when monetary flow in our lives tend to increase or decrease.

With regards to marriage break ups and statistics, the inability to compensate the need to raise a family is one of primary reasons that might influences the smooth flow of relationships. Broken marriages leads to unhappy life and for what reason? Simple, money does matter.



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