Hello again. As mentioned earlier, I’m going to strive for posts of a reasonable length. Speaking of striving, I thought today would be a good day to touch on this, because it is a topic that I’ve chewed on more frequently over the past couple of years.
As a caveat, I realize that this is a very personal topic, and in no way is this coming with negativity or judgement because I am in no position to judge. Trust me. I’ve come to break down self improvement in a very bite-size way, and I’ve broken this down into 3 main questions:
- What could I work on improving?
- How can I make this change starting today?
- How do I make this change a long-term thing?
Question 1: What could I improve on?
Sometimes, the thing we need to improve on, or want to improve on, jumps out at us. I want to learn to play the trombone. I want to eat healthier. I want to be skilled at math. etc etc. The list could go on forever, and the scope of our ambitions sometimes far outpaces our commitment, which is problem 1 in making lasting changes. I admittedly struggle with underscoping or overscoping this, but it’s been massively helpful to me to take a moment and consider the scope of improvement I’m considering. Can I run a marathon if I give myself a month if I’m a couch potato? No. Can I run 5k? Probably not. Can I start using couch to 5k? Yes, yes I can. As I go through this process, I then try to ask, “why this?” “will I like myself more for making this change?”, “will I be happier?” and “will this make me a better person?”.
Question 2: How can I make this change starting today?
I think this ties back into the first question in making bite-size change. If we break down bigger goals into smaller tasks, it becomes manageable and fun. I can start playing with this rails framework and debug it when it breaks, in my quest to learn to code. I can reduce the amount of meat I eat in my quest to be more sustainable. It becomes a game, where I can challenge myself.
When one of the staff at the boot camp suggested starting a blog to chronicle our experience, I was quite skeptical and concerned that this would ultimately be an effort in publicized vanity. However, it was an immediate change that I could make and as it turns out, it’s been a surprisingly good tool for reviewing our learnings, introspection and reflection.
Question 3: How can I make this change long-term?
To me, this is truly where the challenge lies. Managing 1 and 2 helps, but we still face the inevitable desire to go back to familiar ways. My number one step in this is to make something a habit. By making small changes but doing them consistently, I think it gets engrained a lot better into our lives than to make sudden large changes, implemented periodically. I think this is a huge part in why the boot camp model is such a great way to learn skills. By doing things persistently and continuously for a period of time, we can learn so much and it becomes a part of our lives that we learn to embrace. It’s engaging. It’s exciting. It’s fun.
On a side note, I’ve found that this approach in general has actually really changed my life over over the past couple years. I went from barely active to 10k runner. I went from eating garbage-esque food to whole grains and beans. I went from being uncomfortable with dressing in anything remotely feminine at work, to having confidence and pride in being a woman and how I look. I went from being passenger to a driver. I actually like waking up now. I am seriously excited about what we’re learning, and who I’m going to be after this boot camp.
diving into development 