We will often lie to ourselves about the progress we are making on goals that are important to us.
For example:
If our goal is to lose weight, we might say that we are eating healthier, but in reality our eating habits have changed very little.
If we are trying to lower our stress, we might say we are trying to be more mindful, but in reality we are still overworking ourselves and not spending time on self care.
Why these little lies matter!
They prevent us from becoming self aware. How we feel and emotion is important and they do have significance however when we use 'feel good' statements to track our progress we end up lying to ourselves about what we are actually doing. We can use tools to evaluate and work on self improvement
Tools for improving self awareness
If you are serious about working on self improvement then the first steps is to know in black and white terms where you stand. You need self awareness before you can work on self improvement.
Things that can help, journaling
If creating a workout habit is your goal. Recording your workout sessions can help you track progress over time. Eg if you're weights training you can record your weights lifted each time and then check to see if you are progressing each week. The same goes for food journaling. If we record everything we ate daily we can easily reflect on whether we are progressing well or not by reflecting on our journey and seeing in black and white terms if we have been on track with nutrition.
Have an annual review
An annual review of how you are going in areas of your life that are important to you are a great way if reflecting on the progress we have made. In this process it can be great to reflect on the goals you have set yourself and the actions you have taken or not taken toward them.
Evaluate your habits
Record for a week how much time you spend being productive versus un productive eg social media use, distractions, leisure time etc... This helps to honestly reflect on areas of our lives that may be taking away from our goals.
A call for self awareness
If you aren't aware of what you're actually doing or how you are going, then it is very hard to change your life with any degree of consistency. Trying to change habits without self-awareness is like shooting arrows into the night's sky. You can't expect to hit the bullseye if you're not sure where the target is located.
