The 7 Pillars Of Self-Improvement

A checklist for starting your journey of personal growth.

In any field, there are a few ideas that are the key to understanding everything else. Biology makes little sense without evolution. Physics without symmetries and conservation laws is baffling. All mathematics can be built out of sets.

Self-improvement isn’t usually regarded as an intellectual field. It’s mostly an assortment of various gurus and pundits’ suggestions on how you ought to be more successful, happier or wise. Thus it might seem like self-improvement doesn’t really have core ideas at all — just opinions.

However, I think there are some common themes to the art of living better. These ideas are pervasive, coming up again and again. Even in the writing of people who take a stand against them, their prevalence still requires that they are acknowledged.

The 7 Pillars of Self-Improvement

1. Habits

Nearly all forms of self-improvement first require that you change your behavior. Unless the improvement you’re after is purely mental, you’re going to have to actually do something first.

Habits, then, form a central idea in behavior change. Being able to make certain behaviors automatic (or at least, more…