For this third post about exploring my rules, I’m going to talk about the one that has been critical to my success, both with following these rules and with everything else in my life. Rule number three is simple and yields massive results: Improve every day.
I get better at whatever I regularly practice, even if it’s something I’d rather avoid (such as negative thinking, for example). For most of my life, I’ve practiced all sorts of things that have caused me trouble and given me a lot of bad habits. I’ve spent the last few years really working to change that and it’s been a slow, difficult process. However, I have seen progress since I started regularly practicing following my rules and focusing on positive things, so I know I’m on the right track. This progress has increased as I’ve gradually settled into routines and systems that have me working on self-improvement every day.
I don’t have to make monumental leaps in progress. As long as I stick with my system of doing the best I can on any given day at every activity on my list, I’ll see steady improvement and feel satisfied with my efforts. Sometimes I do see noticeable progress from one day to the next, other times it takes much longer, and in some cases I seem to take a few steps back before taking several giant steps forward. But as long as I stick with something long enough, I’ll eventually get good at it and I always see progress along the way.
Improving every day doesn’t require a huge amount of time. Even on my busiest days, I still have time for improving myself and getting better at my hobbies. Just spending a few minutes on those tasks is better than doing nothing because I don’t have as much time as I’d like. I’ve found meditating, praying, and reading to be powerful tools for self-improvement, and I make sure to do them every day; when I don’t have time for much else, those still leave me better off than I’d be without them. Taking time to improve every day has brought me much closer to the place I want to be in life as well as the person I want to be, and I’ll only get closer to both of them as I continue.