I’ve had a lot of personal growth this year, probably more than any other year of my life. This isn’t the first year that I wanted to make progress or tried to do it, but it has been by far the most successful year in that regard. I think I’ve had so much success this year because, in addition to the fact that I’ve read so much more about self-improvement this year than ever before, I’ve been putting the stuff I’ve learned into practice.
When it comes to practical life skills, knowledge without action is useless. Someone who knows little but practices it regularly is better off than someone who knows a lot and never uses it. I benefited a lot from my initial reading of How to Win Friends and Influence People and subsequent implementation of its recommendations. This was last year, well before I had read any of the other self-improvement books on my shelf, so even that little bit of wisdom made my life noticeably better. And when I stopped practicing what I had learned by reading that book, I began to run into the same problems I faced before I read it; revisiting the book and putting its lesson into practice once again made those problems disappear just as before.
The Bible talks about the importance of works in two different chapters in the Book of James. I remembered those passages when I started thinking about what to write in this post and they gave me some direction. I’ve done enough research and picked up enough life hacks to get me through many situations. Fortunately, I’ve also put those things to work so I’m able to navigate those situations better than I could in previous years. I’m a work in progress but, as long as I keep working, there will always be progress.