Why I Will Never Stop Trying To Better Myself

Hello!

My sincere apologies for not blogging much lately. I have had a much needed holiday in Portugal with my lovely family. It was really great to have a complete change of environment and people to test this challenge out on. I wasn’t really sure how it had gone, until yesterday. I was on the sofa having a cuddle with my mum and she turned to me and said ‘You’ve been really lovely this Christmas.’ And it was then I knew I’d done what I’d set out to do.

Here’s a bit of context: Whilst I get on enormously well with my family, I do also have a bit of a temper, and I tend to get into arguments with my mum very easily. Nine times out of ten I am completely in the wrong. Nine times out of ten it’s just me taking my mood out on her. Sometimes I can be really unreasonable and it can create a really sour atmosphere for all present. When you throw stuff like packing, travelling, and airports in it can be a recipe for disaster. In general, when my mum gets stressed I get grumpy, which makes her more stressed and me more grumpy. It’s a vicious cycle.

This holiday, it was virtually argument free. There were a couple of times when I snapped unreasonably, and I was called out on it. In the past I would have just had a sulk and walked off. This time I was very quick to apologise. There were also many occasions where I could have snapped, but I took a pause to say to myself ‘is this really worth getting annoyed over?’ And I simply moved past it.

It was really great.

I also made more effort to be actively nice to people. I sent out some Christmas messages to a load of my friends, I tried to pay more compliments to my family (something I now wish I had done more of – I can tell my mum really appreciated it!) and I tried to be a good house guest to my Aunt and Uncle. I found that doing nice things can be quite addictive really, especially when you get good responses!

Now I was in no means perfectly behaved. I don’t think I’ve managed to go a single day this month without doing one of the things I was supposed to not be doing. I also look back and wish I had taken more opportunities to be actively nice. However, I think I have achieved what I set out to achieve – I am changing for the better.

Really, that’s what this entire challenge project has been about.

And here are some thoughts on…

Why I will Never Stop Trying to Better Myself

It is so easy to brush off your own behaviour with phrases like this:

‘That’s just me’  ‘You do you and I’ll do me’ ‘I am who I am’

Or phrases like ‘That’s not how I do things’ are used to get out of doing something you probably should have done.

While it’s really important to be true to yourself, I find a lot of the above phrases are not too far away from one of the phrases I most detest in the world:

‘If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.’

All my hatred for this phrase is pretty much summed up in this fantastic article titled If I Can't Accept You at Your Worst, Then Maybe You Should Stop Being So Horrible.

Because the thing is, while some things about your identity may be fixed and not in your control (sexuality for example) for the most part you get to choose who you are.

I had a conversation with a friend once that involved him using ‘I’m just not as organised as you’ as an excuse for some pretty lazy behaviour. Another way of phrasing it could be ‘I’m just a lazy person.’

Now I could be wrong here, but this is what I believe about personality: Only a part of it is genetic. Most of it is to do with environment and social conditioning. And you know what, it can be hard to change that conditioning, but I really believe it is completely doable. I didn’t come out of the womb an organised individual. Somewhere along the line, I made the choice to be organised. Or rather, I made a series of choices that lead to me becoming an organised person.

And really, I think that’s the trick to it. Small decisions. It could seem a little daunting to turn around and say to yourself ‘I am going to be a more organised person.’ But it’s quite reasonable to turn to yourself and say ‘I am going to get up half an hour earlier every day’ ‘I am going to make my lunch for the next day every evening.’ ‘I am going to do my homework as soon as I get home today.’ Put all these little choices into action, and hey presto, you have become an organised person.

I’m not trying to say it’s easy. I know it’s not. It’s hard. But what I am saying is it is your choice. It is your decision. No matter what has happened in your life to make you the way you are – the way you go forward from this point is still your choice.

Having this realisation has been really empowering to me.

Every time I was rude, aggressive, or patronising in the past, that was my choice. I’d like to think most of the time I didn’t mean to hurt people, but still, it was my choice to take that risk. And it’s my choice now to stop. And yeah, accepting that responsibility: that feels powerful.

The truth is I will never be perfect. I will make mistakes. I will no doubt be rude, aggressive and patronising again in the future. But I really hope that I will never again brush off that kind of behaviour as ‘just a part of me.’ Because I now realise that for the most part I choose what is and isn’t a part of me. I hope in the future that I will be able to own my mistakes, apologise for them, forgive myself, and then work towards making sure they don’t happen again. While I will never be perfect, I will always aim for perfection. I will always aim for better. I will always have that ‘shoot for the moon and you might land among the stars’ mentality. Because…. Well because, why on earth not?

So, in a way, I will never be truly content with who I am. I will always be striving for more. But that very part of my nature, that desire to always be moving forward in positive ways, that choice that I have made makes me proud of who I choose to be. It makes me happy. It really does.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If (like me) you have something about your personality that you don’t like, or you see traits in others that you wished you had in you – go for it. Make those choices. Make those changes. Empower yourself. It might be hard, but I promise it is worth it. 

Stage One: Hyper Awareness

Hello!

Week one of this challenge is almost over, and it's been a tough one! I've been trying to cut down on all of those nasty habits I spoke about: blaming, interrupting, whining, bitching, moaning, gossiping, controlling, criticising, judging, and preaching.

Now of course, I haven't been able to go completely cold turkey. Giving up sugar was hard, but controllable. Changing your habits in the way you think and speak and behave is completely different. I'm essentially trying to cut down on something that is part of my current personality. I believe that it's doable, but it works differently from cutting down on something external. I think it goes in stages, and the first stage is awareness.

I've heard the phrase 'awareness is half the battle' quite a lot before, and I like to think that's true. I may not have been able to cut this stuff out immediately, but I feel very aware of when I am doing it, and therefore I am certainly doing it less, and also am able to admit when I have slipped up. 

Now part of the challenge this week has been my environment. I am currently in a show, and so am spending a lot of time in a dressing room with the other girls. It's a very high stress environment and so bitching, moaning and gossiping is kind of a given. And when reflecting on it this week, I don't think that's entirely a bad thing. When things go wrong, it's good to have a network of friends you can go to to have a good rant. And it's nice to be able to share stories with people. What I found interesting this week was defining the difference between getting things off your chest and using each other for support, and then being needlessly negative or mean.

Some examples: My friend and I were swapping stories about ex boyfriends, and obviously not all these stories painted our exes in the best light. And I thought to myself, 'am I breaking my own rules? Is this bitching and gossiping?' Eventually I came to the conclusion that it wasn't. I think bitching and gossiping only really applies when you're talking about people who currently feature in both of your lives, and you do it with an intent to mock/shame/belittle said person in the eyes of the person you are talking to. But sharing stories about people from your past is different. You're really talking more about yourself, and something you have been through. There's no 'shit stirring' element to it.

Later on, when we were talking about the behavior of someone we all know, I thought 'this is bitching and gossiping', because we were fueling and encouraging each other's dislike for the individual in question. I don't think we were wrong in the way we felt, but it made me think, should we waste our time talking about this person? It was only making us feel angry. Sometimes I removed myself from these kind of conversations, other times I was not so honorable, but every time I was super aware of what I was doing. Again, I realized it's quite complicated and hard to draw the line. It's only natural to talk about the people in your lives. The main thing I was trying not to do was 'fuel the fire'. When people tell you some gossip, of course you are going to have a reaction and opinion, but then what I have often caught myself doing is adding fuel to the fire by offering more gossip on top, and that's when it can become a bit of a spiral. 

As well as being aware of myself and my own behavior, I am becoming increasingly aware of other people's too. I realized that again, interrupting is a bit of a grey area. Listening to my friends talk, I saw that interrupting and talking over each other is something we all do all the time. It's the way we naturally converse. Waiting for a proper gap was actually quite hard. And I realised that again it all depends on context. Interrupting each other in normal conversation is, well, very normal. But it's when you use interruption as a tool to silence or put down someone that it becomes a problem, and something I would like to avoid. In proper arguments and debates it's easy to get caught up in your passion, but it's important to really listen to what the other person is saying, even if you don't agree.

So I think I'm starting to get somewhere with this. What's important to acknowledge and remind myself of is that it's only my behavior that I am trying to change. If other people want to bitch and gossip and moan then that's absolutely fine. I will not judge them for it, partly because that's on my list of things not to do, but also because I am in no position to judge. I know that those things do not make you a bad person, and I know they only come from a place of frustration and people need a place to vent that. And so I won't judge, and I certainly won't preach! All I want to do is ensure that I am not adding to any anger or negativity. I want my contribution to the environment to be a positive one, and if that means sometimes I have to just be silent and let things go by, then that's fine.

Twenty Four days to try and crack this thing.