Improving Yourself

If you are here for the puppy picture, look then leave, liking this article on your way out! If you are here to read about self-improvement, here we go.

You may or may not have heard, but there has been a global pandemic kicking about recently that has changed the way in we go about our daily lives. The downsides are well documented, so let’s leave those alone. However, I don’t think I am the only one who has found the changes to the structure of life, have provided a significantly more positive quality of life.

?This isn’t a recruitment plug to come at work for us, but instead talking about one of the specific positives that have come out of the pandemic, whilst working from home, Self-improvement

?I have always enjoyed reading / listening to books, getting a new perspective on things, whether that be motivation, empathy, emotional intelligence, confidence or any other form of self-improvement. The problem was, I just didn’t do it very often.

?Balancing my professional life, which is hectic at best, with being a Dad and a Husband, meant that I felt stretched. Monday to Friday felt like a conveyor belt of wake up, tube, work, tube, dinner, bed and repeat. I was envious of a good friend and colleague of mine, Rory, who without children to distract him in the evening, was motoring through books and could see him developing in front of my eyes. There weren’t enough hours in the day it felt and my brain was fried by the time I got to bed so the last thing I wanted to read about was self-improvement.

?I have since realized, all of this was just a stack of excuses I was telling myself. Rory didn’t read more than me because he didn’t have children. He read than more because he made it a priority and I didn’t.

?Enter the pandemic. I remember leaving the office with a single notebook and a pen, saying, see you in a week or two. Silly boy.

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A couple of months later in June 2020, we got a puppy (did you even do lock down if you didn’t get a puppy?) and so ensued a new routine, of trudging around in the dark before and after work, getting the dog some exercise. I will be honest, I didn’t enjoy or take much from those first few months of walking the dog. I just replaced the tube with ‘trudging’ in my conveyor belt.

?Lets be honest, it wasn’t a conveyor belt, I had just framed it negatively. I lead a very fortunate life and I am grateful for that. I had just removed 3 hours a day of commuting (that’s generous, TFL / Met Line!), so I was getting more time at home, I was still working, I got to see more of the kids and annoy my wife.

?I knew I need to make some changes. So started with a really small step that made a massive difference. I started a journey of self-improvement, by reading a belting book by James Smiths, Not A Diet Book. Shout out to Rory for the recommendation. A great read / listen, which introduced me to the phrase ‘NEAT up 24/7’ and reshaped the way I thought about exercise. Listen to the book and you will see what I mean.

So instead of making my dog walks shorter and moaning about them, I made them longer. Twice as long. I banged in my headphones for each walk and committed to taking the opportunity in those walks, to develop myself and I now improve for 3-4 hours a day, listening to books and podcasts. It also helped that I shifted some timber doing 16,000+ steps a day.

I think it is worth highlighting here, is that self-improvement doesn’t need to be deep, heavy boring academic books. It can be anything to help change or improve your mindset. Sometimes, improvement takes the form of listening to a comedian’s podcast for an hour and elevating my mood. It really depends on what I feel I need at that specific time. But it is so important to do what you WANT to do, not what you feel you SHOULD do. I actually listened to an 18 hour book (Graham Hancock) that was incredibly boring, as I told myself I would be flaky if I didn’t finish what I started. That is ridiculous.

You don’t need to stick with a book, if its crap, then delete it and get something else. You don’t like a podcast guest, tin it. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean you don’t stick at anything, just keep moving and find something that you do like and learn from it.

Give it a go, get out of bed at the same time as ?you would when you were commuting, get out of the house and just start walking, look at the horizon and listen to something that makes you just that little bit better at life. Your alternative is to sit inside, spend ￡100 a week on Deliveroo and watch endless hours of Tik Tok, numbing your mind (yes, I am talking about you Hon Kei)

I still have a long way to go, but improvement is not about a huge audacious goal. It’s about small and consistent improvements.

Here are the books and podcasts that I have really enjoyed:-

·????????Not a Diet Book - James Smith

·????????Happy Sexy Millionaire – Steven Bartlett

·????????The Four Agreements – Miguel Ruiz (stick with it past the first chapter, it gets better)

·????????Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

·????????Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink

·????????Zero Negativity – Ant Middleton

·????????The High Performance Podcast (particularly good episodes so far are Gareth Southgate, Eddie Jones and Clive Woodward)

·????????2 Bears 1 Cave (Podcast)

·????????How I built This (Podcast)