Very few of us even want to think or really talk about self-improvement for happiness. In a professional environment, we do talk about personal growth or career growth. Is professional or career growth enough to be happy? Self-growth or self-improvement is the key to a happier life.
Self-Improvement and Self-Growth
Why Attitude in Life is Important?
Though we humans are anatomically the same, it is our unseen mind that projects a unique reality for each one of us. To understand uniqueness and unity at the same time we may have to understand our own thinking. Does everyone think the same way?
Our emotions and thoughts influence the way we interact with others and the world around us. They shape our attitude which determines how we perceive and interact.
Our Attitude plays an important role in our happiness. You may have across this famous quote:
Attitude determines the altitude of life
- Some of us believe that “I am perfect”. It is the world around me that includes the people around me that need to change as they take away my happiness. Is it actually possible for someone to make us happy or unhappy?
- Some philosophical ones say we are all happy because it is our inherent nature. What is the need for any change? In practice, however, they can get easily overwhelmed by the challenges life throws at them.
- There are many of us who do not mind limiting ourselves with respect to the environment, people, thinking, etc so that we can remain in our comfort zone. Being in the comfort zone is to be happy and moving out of the comfort zone is unhappiness. However, limiting ourselves by suppressing our thoughts does not work in the long run.
- Some of us are looking for the novelty of experiences to be happy. They may like to live life like a roller coaster with ups and downs.
- Yet there are some who have some inkling that can be happier but do not know how.
Each one of these attitudes is useful for the person who chooses it.
Attitude for Happiness
However, if there is a desire to be happier, something more may be needed to be done. If the desire is sprouting, one should realize that it is a natural human desire. Instead of curbing it, we need to find ways to nourish it.
The best way to nourish this innate desire to be happier is to learn about ourselves. It is easier to be lazy than effortful. Learning does need some effort. How many of us are actually putting in any effort to be happier?
The first thing we need is an attitude of learning about the self so that we can be happier. Does learning make a difference in our lives? This is a good quote for reflection.
Attitude Of Learning
Among all species on Earth, Man reigns supreme. Is it not due to our ability to learn? From the perspective of science, we have a bigger brain compared to our size compared to other species. This is supposed to give us the edge as a species. The physical characteristics of the brain do not help us much if we do not use it for learning.
- The attitude of learning is one of openness and willingness to explore, experiment, and take risks.
- It involves a mindset of curiosity and an eagerness to discover new things and to grow and develop knowledge and skills.
- It is important to approach learning with a positive attitude, as it will motivate and encourage a person to learn and strive for success.
Man & Beast
Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man & beast.
Reflecting on the power of education/ knowledge opens Pandora’s Box for self-improvement.
Learning as an attitude for Life
In fact, change and the Self are the only constants in life. Because the Self is the unchanging constant in our lives, we experience changes. We need to keep learning to cope with the changes around us and remain happy.
Unless we experience ourselves as the changeless Self that is happy all the time, we will continue to seek to learn and get more of whatever we want. Once we understand this learning becomes a natural way of thinking for us or a choiceless choice. Until then, it may be a chore or a burden.
Major Sources of Our Learning
Some of the ways we learn in life are
- Learning through our experiences
- Learning through institutions
- Self-Learning for Personal Growth
- Learning about Self for Self-Growth
The ways we learn are similar for all of us. What we learn depends on the opportunities for learning. However what we do with those opportunities and how much we learn depends on our attitude toward learning.
Experiential Learning – Coping with our unique Life
Experiential learning happens all the time. Experience happens whether we think about it or not. What we take from the experience is our subconscious learning. The subconscious learning shapes our emotions, thinking, and Attitude toward everything we do. It is a very deep and subtle form of learning but very powerful.
Experiential Learning is our primary, most potent source of learning, and the only lasting source of learning.
Our experiential impressions come to us with our birth, the environment, and the people in our lives.
- Evolutionary: We have been learning and growing as a species. There has been biological evolution of mankind.
- Environment: To cope with our environment, we have to learn as and when the need arises. We develop several skills to help us survive and sustain our lives. We learn from the place where we live, our families, and our surroundings.
- Traditions: Traditions are passed on from generation to generation. These become our habits or a way of life.
- Desires: Through our desires and opportunities we seek more experiences, learn from our experiences, and in our view make an effort to be happier. All our efforts will ultimately lead to some experiential learning, creating new desires.
Learning from Institutions – Skills, Knowledge for Comforts of Life
Our education systems endeavor to teach us skills and knowledge, that can sustain, help grow the economy, and in the process help improve the quality of our lives.
Work Skills
- We like to lead a good life with material comforts. To acquire and maintain the material comforts of life, we need to harness natural resources effectively and efficiently. The quest for material comforts entails the development of skills to sustain the material comforts of life.
- Schools, Colleges, and universities give us the education we need to develop work skills and be ready for life. They also impart other skills like basic literacy skills to communicate.
Values & Beliefs – Cultural & Moral
We also need a fabric that holds us together as a community. Our common values bring us closer to each other. Our cultural values sustain the communities that we live in. Cultural values and stories shape many of our beliefs. Values and Beliefs shape our thinking and to that extent our attitudes in life.
- Through our families, communities, and education systems, we learn to live in a society. If we migrate or our jobs demand, we have to learn about other cultures to integrate with our new environments.
- We also learn through social institutions, religious institutions, political institutions, and various other organizations.
Self-Learning for Personal Growth
Things keep changing socially, culturally, politically, and economically. These are the external changes that we experience in life. We may seek economic freedom, freedom of speech, expression, or political freedom. All these are signs of seeking growth.
We, humans, also crave inner peace and freedom. These are the inner changes we may seek. They are subtle in nature and each one carves out his own journey as these subtle changes take place.
Learning to change our habits /behaviors
Learning & Self Training helps in becoming better individuals. Many times we can see an aspect of our self-growth by observing/analyzing our “predictable responses” to certain stimuli & our habits. With the ability to change our habits, we become more productive in material terms and closer to our inner self leading to increased peace and happiness.
Learning about Freedom to Choose
In the animal world, the reaction of the animals is predictable in response to a particular stimulus. Human beings can react in vastly different manners to the same stimulus. depending on how well they have learned to use the time between stimulus and response and their inner growth.
It has been said that 10% of life is what happens to you (stimulus) and 90% is how you react (response).
As our self-awareness grows, we learn to use the time between stimulus and response to make better choices. This gives us a higher degree of control over our lives, giving us a sense of freedom of choice.
Learning about Self, Food for Spiritual Growth
As we grow from within, we start recognizing the interdependence of our existence and the seeming connectedness of our existence.
Scope of Self-Growth – Beast to God
- Human beings can behave in a beastly or godly manner.
- This depends on the level of self-growth.
- We can take the beast to be equivalent to zero and god to be infinity.
- Saintly people would fall in between the two. From this perspective, there is unlimited potential for self-growth.
Period for Self-Growth – Life as a Project between Birth & Death
- We have a finite time for our self-growth.
- Whether it is one life principle of reincarnation, There is a finite period between birth and death for self-growth.
- As such Life becomes a project for self-growth starting with birth and ending with death.
Learning about the resources of Life
- When Birth & Death are like the start and end points of this project of life.
- Our conditioned self is the Manager of our life.
- Body, Mind, Intellect, and self-awareness are the resources available to the self to lead life.
Seeking the source of the universe or self
- Whether we venture into outer space or the realms of space within, we seek to know the reality of all existence.
- We may recognize the universe as the true Self that is the supreme commander of life.
- When we look within, we recognize ourselves as our ego or conditioned self or Manager of Life and above all some greater force that we do not understand.
- These greater forces nudge us to seek more happiness and more growth.
Seeking to understand one’s life journey
- We believe in cause and effect. Many times as we are not in a position to explain the causes of events in our lives, we start accepting the continuum of life. The scriptural learning of reincarnation of the self to continue its journey towards the true Self.
- A program with a series of projects called life. The program continues life after life until the self realizes the True self. This is God’s Realization or becoming one with God.
Focus on Mental Clarity for Personal Growth
Experiential learning is the most potent form of learning. Next, comes mental clarity. In today’s information age, we know so much about the world through the information we are able to get. Many of us are even learning online.
Most of the learning gets evaporated, especially the one that relies more on memory. Anything committed to memory needs repetition for retention. Experiences and therefore experiential learning stays much longer with the least effort. Mental clarity lies in between experiential learning and learning based on memory. More the clarity, the more it feels like experiential learning.
Developing mental clarity on the topic of your interest will help a long way in deriving the benefits of your efforts in learning and personal growth.