How To Create the Best Version of Yourself
10 steps to help you find a livelong process for joy and success.
If you don’t love what you are doing but are fully satisfied with living a life of mediocrity, stop reading this post. Skim Instagram or Facebook instead.
This post is for those who fall and stumble every day, but still get up the next day and try again.
It’s for those who see failure as an experience on their path to creating something they cannot yet see but are willing to believe in.
“Most people do not really want freedom because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
— Sigmund Freud”
Let’s get started.
Step 1: Identify your values
It’s impossible to become the best version of yourself if you don’t know your values.
Ask yourself:
If I knew I would fail, what would I pursue anyway?
Why did I wake up this morning?
Maybe it’s to be the best parent, the best husband or wife, or the best leader.
What’s your purpose, and in what ways are you pursuing it right now?
My own existence is a reflection of my awareness. I can’t change what I am if I´m not yet aware of it.
Start by identifying what brings meaning into your life. You are the only one who knows what brings you value and makes life worth living. Be brutally honest regarding this point and make sure that your values are aligned with your actions.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
If you had more than enough money to pay your bills and live comfortably, what would a life worth living look like to you?
Are you pursuing the life of others or what society is telling you?
In my work as a nurse, I have seen many people die. What all these people have in common is the regrets on their deathbed.
The things they regret the most are the complete opposite of what they have been chasing for their entire life.
See yourself lying on your deathbed. Are you in peace with the choices you made?
Step 2: Stop setting goals and start identifying your fears
If your goals don’t make you a little afraid, you are not showing up in the world as the best version of yourself.
Knowing that I have a 100% chance of success removes the necessary amount of healthy fear that works as the driving force in my life. It’s what gives me the necessary attention. It boosts my focus and forces me to be present.
I am not talking about the cribbling type of fear, insecurities, or the fear-based driven self-image.
When I see myself having only a 60% chance of success — instead of a 100%, that’s where the sweet spot lies.
That kind of fear is, for example, what’s driving me to write these words.
Goals are excellent, but fear motivates me to pursue new goals. I always ask myself if my goals scare me. Like writing the first English article in my life ever. Right here on Medium.
I never write anything if I don’t feel a little bit of fear or like an imposter, for starters.
I have no idea how it will be received, and English is not my native language. It scares the shit out of me! And that’s a good thing. So that’s my way of knowing that I am on the right track to becoming the best version of myself. To face my fears, I have to burn off that fog and actually start taking risks.
Safe has never produced the best version of me.
So whatever your field is, whatever you are currently trying to get ahead in, don’t play it safe. Think about the last time you were really proud of something you accomplished. What is it that you are really proud of? Is it the result? Or is it the experience you had engaging with your fears?
“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”
— Judy Blume
Step 3: Control your mind and your reactions
What I repeat daily, what I spend most of my time thinking about, forms my personality.
A study of 2,250 people found that most people are mentally checked-out, almost half of their conscious time.
According to renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, we are not focused on the outside world or what we are doing 46.9% of the time.
A wandering mind can not focus, observe or analyze.You are burning gas and getting nowhere. Not only do people feel unhappy when they spend their time mind wandering, but they are also missing out on valuable time poorly spent.
My wandering mind is constantly getting in the way of the best version of myself, If I permit it. Taking control over my mind and emotions is probably one of the best investments I have ever made.
Suppose I wish to be at the top of my game. In that case, I have to make it my prime focus to understand and manage my unconscious mind by mastering the conscious thoughts and behavior I experience.
There is no way around this one.
Mindfulness training is not just hype. It’s the only way forward.
When you learn to control your mind and your reactions- you open up to the possibilities to create the best version of yourself.
Step 4: Focus on systems and the process
Goals are pointers to the direction I wish to go, but they are not the same as systems and habits. Every time I find myself obsessing about the goal, it serves as a reminder to move my focus back to where it should be — on the system and the process. It’s easy to give in to daydreaming about what it will feel like when I reach a specific goal or people read my article. That’s my ego talking and killing the best version of myself. I won’t support that in any shape or form.
When feeling my English looks like shit, I want to quit — I focus on the system and the process. I stay on track, and I put in the hours. I control my mind.
Take your previous goal. If you had to make it bigger, but this time only focus on the system, how would it change? Now make it even bigger. 10 times bigger. 100 times. Stay with the system and the process!
Did the system or the process change?
How does it make you feel?
Run a systems check every day — are you still on track, or are you daydreaming about grandiose goals?
You will never control the outcome by focusing on the goal.
Step 5: Show up, make time and do the work
Most people don’t have a problem with motivation; they have a problem getting started. Therefore, they don’t show up.
I can´t deliver work if I don’t show up and start doing the work. It’s straightforward, and it’s nearly impossible for most people initially. Your mind will find thousands of excuses to quit or change focus. So does mine, and it sucks, but stay right on course! Don’t trade comfort for meaning; it will break your spirit.
I have programmed myself to know that excuses will make any chance of a meaningful life disappear.
Commit to showing up; create space in your calendar for growth.
Make time to create the best version of yourself every day.
If you don’t prioritize and plan your time, someone else will do it for you!
Step 6: Perfect is the killer of all great things
I have seen so many people ruin something great in pursuit of perfection. In relationships, in their work, in personal development, you name it. Perfect is the enemy of good enough!
Never strive for perfection; strive to be consistent, give the best you have, And then repeat. Kill them with your habits.
The leatherback turtle travels 16,000 km (10,000 miles) or more each year, crossing the entire Pacific Ocean to pursue jellyfish.
No one can stop a consistent behavior; 1% better every day will make you 100% better after 3 months.
“Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it.”
— Salvador Dali
Perfection is creating stress, and your wellbeing is in great danger. Check what’s driving you to strive for perfection. Is it fear? Is it insecurity? If you don’t kill perfection — perfection will kill you and your dreams.
Step 7: Who are you competing against?
I only compare myself to yesterday’s version of me. I couldn’t care less what other people are doing, their performance or their achievements.
I question myself every day:
Is this the best version of you? Right now, in this particular situation?
I ask my children every second month:
How can I be the best father? How can I meet your needs?
I invite you to ask yourself:
What small but powerful decisions could I make today to start creating the best version of myself?
Will you choose to be more present? More flexible? More positive? Healthier? Happier?
“If you plan on being anything less than you’re capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”
— Abraham Maslow
Steps to get started:
- Write down one change that I want to make today.
2. Why did I wake up this morning?
3. In what way are my actions contributing to creating the best version of myself?
Extra: Read Viktor Frankl’s book “Man in search of meaning.”
Step 8: Baby steps are vital in creating the best version of yourself
Ten years ago, I had a shoulder injury that resulted in me not being able to do one push-up. For the first two months, I gave up. I didn’t even try. Then I decided to do one push-up in the morning end one in the evening. After four weeks, I was doing 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening.
That is a total of 7300 push-ups per year if I would have continued. I never did continue. Instead, I did 30 in the morning and 30 in the evening. This I have done for the last 10 years.
That’s 21900 push-ups per year with minimal effort. Time spend? One minute in the morning and one minute in the evening. Were? On the floor next to my bed.
Never underestimate the quality of always behaving or performing consistently. Taking baby steps.
Becoming the best version of yourself is nothing you create overnight.
Start making baby steps to become what you envision.
Practice patience and stay present in every step.
Confidence comes from trying and not from failing. Babysteps will quickly make you build trust and give you more courage.
There is no lifehack to the better version of oneself. It’s not a destination. It’s a journey. The goal is not to arrive. It´s to learn.
Step 9: Time is not your enemy
Western society often promotes being busy at all times and at all costs. As a result, people consider time a relentless and cruel force, a robber, and a killer of sorts.
This resistance against time seems to make most people rush without ever getting anywhere. We live by the calendar, and time runs our lives until the day we die.
Early on in life, most of us were told that we better be on time or bad stuff will happen.
I used to be late turning in my papers in school. More than once, my grades got lowered.
When I was in my twenties and didn’t pay my bills on time, I got stuck with a penalty.
The fear of arriving late to work and being out of a job always scared me.
As a result, I quickly concluded that time was my enemy.
Later in life, I found out that there is no permanence in victory over time.
If you think about it, time is life. And time is always running and waits for no one.
So don’t count the hours; count the experience.
“The trouble is, you think you have time.”
- Jack Kornfield
Every moment spent working on your skills, whatever it may be, is taking you one step closer to a better version of yourself.
Time has a low impact on your success.
Always choose deliberate practices instead of time or repetition.
Step 10: Stop wasting your learning opportunities pretending to know things you don’t know
You’ll never learn anything if you pretend to know things you don’t know. You are setting yourself up for failure, mostly because you give your learning opportunities away to a false self-image. It will take all of your focus to uphold a false self-image, leaving you stuck with a poor version of yourself.
If you get sidetracked, ponder on this for a while…
According to Google’s advanced algorithms, nearly 130 million books have been published in modern history.
Or
Garry Winogrand made over 1 million pictures with his 35mm Leica camera, creating an encyclopedic portrait of America from the late 1950s to the early 1980s in the process…
… and this was decades before digital technology transformed how we make and see pictures.
Get busy learning, stay humble and share your knowledge with others.
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Daniel J. Boorstin
Thank you for taking the time to read my first article here at Medium.
If you like it, please share — if you are in the arena here writing and hustling, I appreciate your feedback.
Keep creating yourself.
