Are you someone who’s motivated to be the best version of yourself?
Have you had an annoying friend tell you to “Be The Best Version of Yourself’.
This is often used as a vague and sometime insincere saying that actually offers little to no actual comfort or advice as to how to go about living yoru best life.
Everyone (myself included) wants to be the best version of themself. But wanting to, and actually doing it are two very different things (as I’ve learned the hard way a few times myself). And I’m not always the best version of myself (by far), but I see my true potential when I am the best version of myself and that gives me goals and motivation to work towards in the future.
So, how do you be actually be the best version of yourself?
In this article we’ll explore some tips and trick from experts on both personal and professional growth. As a ‘high-level’ breakdown of what’s to come, here’s an overview of what we found from experts about becoming your best self.
In order to become the best version of yourself, first you must learn to develop a high level of self-awareness in order to look at yourself objectively.
Then identify your personal strengths, weaknesses, and internal motivations.
Finally, you can start to leverage your strengths to overcome your weaknesses in an effort to reach new heights that you never thought were possible.
That sounds simple, right?
Let’s Dive In.
19 Tips You Can Start Today to Bring Out the Best Version of Yourself
When it comes to personal development, most people know what it is, some people think about it, but few people actually try to continuously improve themselves.
As an example, and in my experience, everyone want to start at the gym “tomorrow“, nobody wants to start today !
The Bigger Picture Perspective and Getting ‘Real’ About Being Your Best-Self
Change takes time, and growth takes time. Plus, changing patterns, habits, and mindsets is not an undertaking for the faint of heart. But those who are determined to raise to new heights will not only endure but eventually thrive in the face of life’s challenges.
It took Warren Buffet 56 years to make his first $1 Billion dollars. Then, only 2 more years after that to double is net worth and make his next $1 Billion dollars.
This is the exact same mindset you’ll need to be adopt in order to develop into your best self. Becoming your best self is a continuing process that takes years to perfect. The key to becoming your best self is slow and continuous growth.
1. Set Goals For Yourself
Setting goals for your-self might sound cliche’ but having goals set for yoruself is actually more critical than you might think.
Setting goals is a proven and time tested method of getting what you want out of life.
Expert clinical psychologists from positivepsychology.com agree that setting goals is linked with higher levels of motivation, self-esteem, self-confidence, and autonomy.
Other research has previously established a strong connection between goal-setting and both personal and professional success.
I’ve personally struggled to set goals in the past, so here’s a personal tip that you could try. If you’re struggling to set personal goals, try a multi-step process.
Start by free-writing down your goals in any old messy order. Doodles, sketches, lists, dreams, goals, priorities. Once you get your brainstorming session out on paper then you can go back with a clean set of paper to organize and prioritize.
I usually go through 3-4 different iterations before organizing a clear set of goals and priorities.
If you feel like you’re not in control of your life, then you need to make things happen, and not just let things happen.
Once you’ve written your goals down you can re-organize and prioritize them and break your goals down into smaller sub-goals.
Create a plan and set realistic goals and also sub-goals (smaller steps) that you can take to get get to the bigger goals.
This is your roadmap to getting what you want out of life.
You can start small and set daily goals, weekly goals or monthly goals that you can check in on to see how you’re progressing.
Achieving smaller goals will give you confidence to set bigger goals in the future.
2. Get Rid of Unnecessary Distractions In Your Life
Distractions come in all shapes, sizes, and genders
Distractions are a part of life, and in order to be your best self and live up to your true potential as a human being it will require the ability to see above, and ignore distractions in your life.
There’s friends who want to dump their problems onto you, social media wormholes, Netflix, kids, beer, when it comes to achieving goals, distractions are everywhere.
If you lead a fairly social life, you will likely have to make so sacrifices to your social schedule or at the very least tighten your boundaries with certain friends.
It is important to prioritize downtime and social time, but it is also essential to know when you are procrastinating on your goals and when you need to sacrifice social time for personal time.
You may have to get rid of things that constantly distract you from your ultimate goal.
Prioritize yourself and make sure you have time to do the things you want to do.
Constant distractions can derail you and make you inefficient, which can hinder your self-development process. Sometimes by years or decades for those who are unaware of their distractions. This is why radical self awareness is so important.
3. Dream Big
Don’t let what other people think, affect you. Most great minds have big dreams and lofty goals.
Don’t let other people’s opinions affect yoru dreams and goals. Stop worrying over what other people think about you.
Dream big, and don’t be shy of pursuing your goals. Constantly manifest yourself as your best version.
The more you think about your dreams, the closer you will get to them. Eventually, with a continuing effort, you will be able to work towards and reach your goals.
4. Keep Pushing Yourself Forward
If you want to be your best self, you’ll often find the need to motivate yourself even when you’re feeling down. True professionals go to work everyday to pursue their goals.
Michael Jordan once scored near 40 points in order to get a win while he was sick with the flu. His relentless pursuit of greatness lead him to push forward through impossible odds on his way to achieving his goals.
You will fall on your face, but we all learned to walk that way. You have to get back up after falling. Learning to be your best self is no different.
Keep pushing forward, and don’t forget to keep yourself motivated every step of the way.
Celebrate the small wins!
5. Trust In Yourself
You can dream big and set as many goals as you want, but if you don’t have enough faith in yourself, you will never achieve any of them.
Just know that you will hit roadblocks on your way to hitting your goals. You need to figure out ways around them. Trust yourself to keep moving forward and figure things out. Don’t get stuck wondering if you can make the jump. Leap and find out.
Nobody around you understands what you are capable of better than you do. You are the only one who can make things happen for yourself.
If you fail to trust yourself, you will restrict yourself from moving forward and becoming the best version of yourself.
6. Give Yourself A Break
Give yourself some credit. Setting goals is an accomplishment in itself.
Most people don’t even set goals.
Criticizing yourself can be a great way to improve the things you do. It’s a small part of being radically self-aware. BUT, make sure you don’t take this critical behavior too far.
Don’t get down on yourself.
Be kind to yourself and cut yourself some slack if things get tough. If you’re trying, reflect, and try again.
In the process of becoming your best self, you will face failures that will bring you down. However, it would be best if you remembered that you won’t always succeed at first.
The wisest thing to do in such situations is to let it go. Do not beat yourself up if you fail; try to move forward and do better the next time!
7. Manage Your Time
How you spend your time is crucial to becoming the best version of yourself.
Do you spend your time and money at the bar or waste time doing things that are unlikely to benefit you? You need to make sure your time management skills are on point.
This took me personally, a while to get a grasp on. Spend your time doing things that contribute to your personal development and your goals.
To become your best self, you need to prioritize specific tasks over trivial ones. Unfortunately this does mean short term sacrifice.
You might have a lot on your plate but try to understand what’s important and do what’s best for your long term goals.
8. Challenge Yourself In New Situations
The only way you will improve as a person and become your best self is to challenge yourself constantly.
You need to do things that are out of your comfort zone to push yourself ahead.
You cannot live inside a bubble forever! Covid or not. You must try new things and see how you do in situations you are not familiar with.
This will help you broaden your horizons and contribute to your development towards your goals.
Try not to restrict yourself by putting up too many boundaries. Be more open to adventure and try things you previously didn’t!
This will inspire new solutions to problems you may be facing.
9. Be Patient And See The Bigger Picture
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Growth takes time. Goals take time to achieve. And becoming your best self doesn’t happen overnight.
Don’t get frustrated, you must see the bigger picture.
Becoming your best self is not a 2-week crash course. Everyone is different, and we all require time to improve. You cannot put a time limit on personal development and expect to be a whole different person in a matter of days.
Give yourself time and try to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Be realistic about your goals and their timeline. The time-frame for self-improvement is slowly everyday for life.
10. Understand Your Strengths and Weaknesses & Implement
Up to this point, all the action steps we’ve laid out are all geared towards becoming self aware of yourself, your goals, your surroundings, your mindset, and your expectations.
But in order to implement all of this you also need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses. You can start by listing out your strengths and weaknesses yourself, but ultimately you can’t only rely on yourself to judge yourself.
In order to accurately understand your strengths and weaknesses ask a friend or relative that REALLY knows you to list out yoru strengths and weaknesses. An outside perspective from a close friend or family member will likely be more accurate than your own bias perspective of yourself.
Once you have a deep understanding for your strengths and weaknesses try to focus more on using your strengths than on overcoming yoru weaknesses.
11. Recognize Behavioral Fractal Patterns –
Fractal patterns are seemingly complex, but ultimately simple in their construction. They follow the laws of science always moving in the path of least resistance.
Recognizing fractal patterns is the beginning to understanding more about the universe, more about yourself, and more about your own internal universe.
By understanding fractals in behavior patterns, you’re almost guaranteed to have some critical ‘life epiphanies’ that you’ll wish you understood years ago (I know I did).
Once you get good at identifying fractals (it takes some practice) you’ll start to recognize fractal patterns all over the place. In your life, in other peoples lives, in advertising, in nature, and in future technology.
12. Have a More Positive Attitude –
If the goal of life is to be happy, then why not spend more time giving off positive vibes.
Experts agree that positivity is linked to physical, mental, and financial benefits, so why not try to be more positive?
Being a better version of yourself could just be something simple like a slight change in your posture, saying hi to a stranger, letting someone into a line of traffic, or writing down a list of things you’re grateful for.
[Here’s A Complete Guide With 22 In Depth Examples Of How To Give Off A More Positive Vibe.]
13. Identify Your Subconscious & Unconscious Programming –
What do you want out of life? Are you hitting your goals? Are you genuinely happy with your life? Are you stuck?
I’m somewhere in-between, but by increasing my understanding of my unconscious mind, I feel that I’m definitely making progress in my own self-improvement.
By recognizing unconscious thoughts and patterns it will give you the ability to learn more about yourself than you knew you could, and have more control over your life.
14a. Don’t Hide Behind Your Phone –
Is the best version of yourself stuck behind a phone screen?
The technology explosion of the internet, cell phones, and social media has been a giant social experiment over the last 10-15 years.
The effects of cell phone addition on a massive scale has yet to be understood. We’re only now starting to understand the possible results of a society that prefers texting over ‘real-time’ conversations.
Ultimately, if there is a solution it starts with awareness. If you’re not even aware there is a problem, then you have no chance of understanding or correcting behavior that may ultimately be counterproductive to your long term health and our society’s long term success.
The bottom line is, be conscious of your phone use. As humans, we need, and have evolved to thrive off human connections. We’re social creatures, even the most introverted of us (like me).
14b. Use Social Media Consciously –
Be aware of the intent of political media, ads, and stop buying things you don’t need.
Being conscious of your social media use is as critical as being self-aware of how much alcohol you drink. Social media can be as addicting as many drugs and we need to be aware of that.
Social media is not all bad, just like having a beer after work isn’t bad. But 2 hours of social media a day is not good for your mental health, just like drinking a six pack everyday isn’t good for health.
Like any addictive substance, awareness and moderation is the key.
As long as you’re conscious to pitfalls of social media, like getting sucked into political debates in Youtube comments, thinking Instagram photos are real life, or infinity scrolling, as long as you avoid these pitfalls then you’re on your way to being a more conscious social media user.
[Check Out Our Full Guide With 38 Tips To Use Social Media More Consciously]
15. Read Body Language –
In today’s technology driven world filled with e-mails, texts, social media, and zoom calls, it’s really easy to mis-communicate.
Communication and ‘reading in-between the lines’ is becoming a lost art.
By better understanding non-verbal cues, you can better understand how you communicate, and better understand what your body language is sub-consciously saying about you.
Also, when you have a heightened level of conscious self-awareness, it makes it easier to relate to others, and read other peoples vibes. And by truly understanding other peoples vibes, you’ll be able to create a deeper level of connection and common understanding for reality and truth with one another.
[Here’s Our Full Guide On Reading Body Language]
16. Learn How To Apologize –
You’re a human, I’m a human, and humans make mistakes. It’s how you react to your mistakes that defines you.
Ultimately, apologizing should come naturally. You shouldn’t have to overthink it. When you’re apologizing just mean what you say, and have empathy for whoever you’re apologizing to, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
Sometimes, whether we’re spending too much time in the YouTube comments, or too much time in the office, we forget to act with genuine empathy and compassion towards our fellow human beings. A simple but heartfelt honest apology can go along way towards self-awareness.
[Here’s Our Complete Guide On What To (and not to) Do When Apologizing]
17. Give Yoga A Chance –
I don’t want to sound ‘trendy’ or ‘hokey’ but honestly yoga is one of the best tools there is on the journey of developing into the best version of yourself.
First written about in the ancient Vedas Texts, yoga is one of the most relevant and useful practices that have been handed over from one generation to the next.
Yoga contains powerful techniques that can enhance every single area of your life. Based on my experiences, you naturally puts you in a better mood.
If done sincerely, you will begin to notice significant changes within a few weeks. For prolonged and sustained effects, you should keep practicing yoga every day of your life.
[Here’s My Experience With Yoga – From Skeptic To Beleiver]
18. Try To Increase Your ‘Level of Consciousness’ –
Increasing awareness is important for both personal and professional growth over time.
While most people think they are self aware, studies have shown only 10-15% of people actually are.
Chances are, if you’re not actively practicing self-awareness techniques, then it’s unlikely you’re as self-aware as you think you may be. AND you’re definitely not as consciously self-aware as you could be.
By taking full emotional responsibility and exercising your brain, as well as your body you’re setting yourself up for ‘higher levels of consciousness, and personal growth, which can then lead to further growth in all areas of your life.
[Here’s a Deep Dive Article Which Goes Into detail About How To Increase your Level of Consciousness]
19. Try Widening Your Perspective –
Don’t be scared to step out of your comfort zone, make positive changes, and seek out new experiences.
Widening your perspective will give you valuable insight, increase your ability to understand the reality around you, and give you a better understanding for truth.
[Boost Your Understanding For Truth – Guide To Widening Your Perspective]
4 Biggest Hurdles To Personal Improvement
1. Having Self-Confidence is Difficult
Find your strengths and focus on developing strengths in order to build confidence. Unfortunately, having low confidence can often make finding your true strengths a struggle. Ask a close family member for their perspective on your strengths.
Albert Einstein once said something like —
“If a fish measures its self worth by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole lie thinking it’s stupid.”
Others peoples strengths may not be your strengths. Find your strengths and work to build confidence in them.
2. You Fear Change
If you find change difficult, it is essential for your own happiness to understand that change is ultimately inevitable.
Might as well embrace change, rather than fearing it, right? Go with the flow.
With change comes growth. With growth comes personal evolution. Nobody wants to live with the mindset of their 18 year old self forever.
3. Thoughts of Giving Up
Struggling is part of growth. “No Struggle No Progress” as the saying goes.
But with struggle comes frustration, and with frustration comes inevitable thoughts of quitting.
Take breaks, just don’t give up.
Sometimes personal evolution requires taking a step back and re-thinking your approach.
It’s all good. it’s all part of “”the process”” of growing into your best self. Olympic athletes don’t win gold on their first day of training.
4. Difficulty In Identifying Your Strengths
Some people are lucks and identifying strengths is easy. If this is you, you’re lucky. Most people (including myself) find identifying strengths a bit more difficult.
This is pretty common, as looking at yourself objectively with no bias’s is inherently difficult. One of the best ways to narrow down your best personal strengths is to ask close friends and family. It’s always easier to see strengths and weaknesses of other people than yourself.
You might be surprised at the number of strengths your family and friends can effortlessly point out.
What Living Up To Your “Best Self” Looks and Feels Like
Being the best version of yourself takes time and effort, and definitely conscious self-discipline.
8 Tips on What Living Up To Your Best Self Looks and feels Like.
- Identifying and understanding your flaws and gladly accepting them.
- Always being your best supporter.
- Not shying away from your strengths and talents; instead, amplifying them.
- Making yourself your number one priority.
- Living a content life (low stress / low anxiety)
- Appreciating others even for small things.
- Respecting other individuals for what they are.
- Constantly lifting yourself up (and those around you).
That is the beauty of living up to your best potential as a human—there is no one-size-fits-all, and your desire to be better never reaches its apex.
You’re a constant evolution, which keeps life interesting as you grow and evolve. It’s a marathon not a race, so don’t get frustrated if your evolution into your best self is slow.
Final Thoughts On Being Your Best Self
Pursuing the best version of yourself makes life worth living. Stay in-tune with your inner self continue to gain a deeper understanding for who you are, and what you want out of life.
Understand what makes you happy and do the things necessary to help your personally evolve. These tips are good suggestions, but taking action is the key. Get started identifying your strengths and writing down your goals today.
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