Personal Self-Assessment Everyday Can Make You Better Than Yesterday
How personal self-assessment made me better each day and helped me remove stress, anxiety, self-doubt, and other insecurities.
I am sure many of you would have assessed yourselves at some point in your lives (as in your actions, words, interactions with others) and some of you would not have even realized the purpose of that assessment. But you either wanted to improve yourself or become a better version of yourself for the next time you're in a situation like that. That is natural and many people who are better at assessing themselves have been through that, not knowing what or why they are assessing themselves for. It is because first, we don’t have a goal in mind to achieve from that assessment, and second, our brain is giving us thoughts and ideas and we simply think about the ones that suit us best at that moment.
Well, let me tell you, self-assessment is a process and it cant be mastered all at once. Time needs to be put in and thoughts need to be organized to become better at it. When you start doing that you will realize why it is so important and what it has freed you off in the long run!
I'll give you a background first on where I stood before having personal self-assessments of myself and what changes I made to achieve the results I desired after practicing personal self-assessment sessions with myself.
I’ll simply put it this way “Personal self-assessment is key to improving yourself.”
There was a time in my life when I was dwelling upon things that didn’t matter. Of course, I did not realize that at that moment but now I do because I know those things or thoughts didn’t matter at all. I was thinking too much about how I acted in particular situations, how people acted towards me, and relating those things and their outcomes with the future.
The thing is, I had put too much extra baggage in my mind that prevented me to think about what was important and what mattered in the long run. It took away the mental clarity I thought I had at that time.
Obsessing over irrelevant issues made me lose time and drained my mental energy. Lost time can never come back and that is what happened, I lost time that should have been spent with my loved ones and to enjoy myself, get new experiences, travel, etc.
Too much can be done with your time if you creatively think about how you want to spend it. After all, we're humans and we make mistakes but always remember it is never too late to start doing something!
The major thing you need to realize first is that there is no point in thinking about the past. What is gone is irrelevant and now the future depends on your actions. To act you must first determine how you want to move forward in life. To move forward, you need to make the right choices according to what you think is right for you and not what everybody else suggests you should do.
What I mean here is that you have to judge for yourself and do what matters to you the most and not others, because everybody thinks in their right mind that they’re right and you have to see for yourself what you think is important. Of course, taking into consideration good advice from others is critically important to making yourself better.
Think of it this way, the more you assess yourself the more you will become better at judging your actions and their outcomes.
This great idea of self-assessment was introduced to me by my older cousin. He said, “You should conduct a personal self-assessment of yourself after literally every situation.” This doesn’t mean you go into a thinking spiral and start thinking negatively adding regret to your mind, instead think about how you could have better conducted yourself, how you could have said or done things better than you did. He specifically also told me to think about it once only and save it in my brain’s memory card instead of thinking about it all the time. Then when the situation arises try to implement the ideas I had thought of while assessing myself.
Well, I acted upon his advice and I can tell you it has made me a better person today.
So I started personal self-assessments of my actions, my words, and those situations I was into. What I achieved was:
- Removal of stress
- Reduced anxiety
- Confidence instead of self-doubt
- Elimination of insecurities
These are just some of the things that I would like to highlight. Besides these, personal self-assessments have helped me gain mental clarity, focus, concentration, and happiness! It has also helped me make better decisions giving me the results I wish to see.
Removal of stress.
When you don't know what to say or how to conduct yourself in situations you become stressed. At least that was the case with me. Self-assessing myself after different encounters or situations I thought about ways on how to perform better eventually leading to less stress when encountering those situations again.
You are making a plan for yourself and when you plan out you make yourself ready to deal with those encounters in a more effective way. For example, If you are going out and meeting new people for the first time, or at a family event, and you accidentally say or do something that you realize later you could have carried yourself better, you can think about ways of how you could have done it right.
First of all, think about what you said or did and the results it gave you.
Then think of ways you could have better handled yourself.
Then try to assume what outcomes it could have generated.
Next, apply those ideas in similar situations.
This way you will have experimented with those ideas giving you different outcomes for sure.
Then from experience, you can judge what to say and do which will yield better results.
Next time you will be less stressed in those situations and your actions would become better thus removing all the stress from your life.
Reduced anxiety.
When you constantly analyze ways to become better you do things more efficiently thus preparing yourself for what is ahead. This way you take the right steps to deal with the situation at hand thus reducing anxiety in general.
For example, you can analyze a situation in which you were facing anxiety, worries, or other tensed-up thoughts. One area where I faced that at some point in my life was when I went to social gatherings. Social anxiety used to take over my life. Later after those interactions, I used to assess my behavior. If I was quiet, I used to tell myself to say a few words next time in a gathering.
So when next time in those gatherings I initiated conversations, spoke my mind out and did not worry about what others might think. I realized that slowly my anxiety was being reduced.
Anxiety issues are different for everybody. You are your best judge. You can look for ways on how to reduce your anxiety by looking at yourself and think, what else can I do to reduce it.
Some ways anxiety could be reduced are by exercising, reducing or eliminating negative self-talk, have a proper sleep routine, and eventually meditation. What helped me the most out of all these was a routine and going to bed early and waking up early. On Sundays, I usually give myself a treat by waking up late!
Confidence instead of self-doubt.
When I self-assessed myself I realized one major thing. I need to keep myself happy and concentrate on what is important to me. By doing this I knew what I wanted thus making me more confident rather than doubting myself for every action I took.
For example, if I like working towards my goals such as expanding my online business, and like to stay in on weekends, I am happy with that. I've had many people tell me that I should go out to parties every other night even during weeknights as that will make me love life more! Well, I like going out to unwind myself but not every other night! I like to focus on my goals too. If I get the results I want then that will surely make me happy!
There was a time when I used to self doubt myself, that maybe I should go out every other night as told to me by a couple of friends. That got me confused. So, as a result, I couldn't focus properly. Well after personally self-assessing myself I became confident in my decisions and actions thus moving me far away from the thoughts of self-doubt as I realized what keeps me happy and I knew that I am working towards a practical goal!
As I said you are the best judge of your situation. Keeping in mind ethics compassion and principles you can make better decisions for yourself rather than allowing someone to force you into deciding what’s best for them instead of you.
Elimination of insecurities.
So basically when you apply the process of self-assessment you are constantly looking for ways to improve yourself. When you are so busy trying to improve yourself, you get more involved in getting to know yourself better. This way you get rid of all kinds of insecurities.
An empty mind is a devil’s workshop. So try to be busy and have a routine. Keeping yourself involved in stuff around will make you happy and give you a sense of achievement. This way you will get rid of unwanted and irrelevant thoughts.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this technique has greatly helped me. Nobody is perfect and every day is an opportunity to improve yourself to a certain threshold. So appreciating your efforts in doing that will keep you motivated and achieve even far better results.
Everything takes time and patience, and you just gotta have faith and be optimistic!
Thank you for reading this article and I hope it helps you significantly!
