Insights on Improvement Part.2

The Stone Age didn’t end because people ran out of stones. It ended because people kept learning and improving. The desire to improve oneself is in the DNA of all successful people. Getting better has been a personal passion with me for many years. Part of that involves striving to perform better day by day, but the desire for improvement has also prompted me to study others who share this passion. That has helped me to learn some important things when it comes to improvement, which I want to pass along to you.

Be sure, if you haven't already, to read Part One to learn the first two insights on Improvement.

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3. Improvement Is Not Satisfied with “Quick Fixes”

We live in a society with destination disease. Too many people want to do enough to “arrive,” and then they want to retire. My friend Kevin Myers says it this way: “Everyone is looking for a quick fix, but what they really need is fitness. People who look for fixes stop doing what’s right when pressure is relieved. People who pursue fitness do what they should no matter what.” That’s true. Losers don’t lose because they focus on losing. They lose because they focus on just getting by.

Improvement doesn’t come to people who fixate on quick fixes. It comes to the slow but steady people who keep working at getting better. If you have a quick fix mindset, then you need to shift it to continuous improvement. That means doing two things:

Accept the Fact that Improvement Is a Never-Ending Battle

I believe all of us can identify with the poet Carl Sandberg, who said, “There is an eagle in me that wants to soar and a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.” The key to success is following the impulse to soar more than the desire to wallow. And that is a never-ending struggle—at least it has been for me. I believe any successful person would be honest in saying, “I got to the top the hard way—fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way.”

Author and leadership expert Fred Smith, who mentored me for many years, said that something in human nature tends to make us want to find a plateau and stay there where it’s comfortable. What he was describing was the temptation to disengage from the battle for improvement. Fred said, “Of course, all of us need to plateau for a time. We climb and then plateau for assimilation. But once we’ve assimilated what we’ve learned, we climb again. It’s unfortunate when we’ve done our last climb. When we have made our last climb, we are old, whether forty or eighty.”

If you are just beginning your improvement journey, don’t be discouraged. Your starting point doesn’t matter. Everyone who has gotten to where he is, started where he was. What matters is where you end up. And you get there by continuing to fight the improvement battle. As you do, make this your motto:

I’m not where I’m supposed to be,

I’m not what I want to be,

But I’m not what I used to be.

I haven’t learned how to arrive;

I’ve just learned how to keep on going.

If you can live those words, you will eventually be successful.

Accept the Fact That Improvement Is a Result of Small Steps

People today are looking for a secret to success. They want a magic bullet, an easy answer, a single thing that will catapult them to fortune or fame. Success generally doesn’t work that way. As Andrew Wood observed, “Success in most things comes not from some gigantic stroke of fate, but from simple, incremental progress.” That’s pretty boring, isn’t it? It may not be exciting, but it is true. Small differences over time create a big difference! Improvement is achieved in inches, not giant leaps.

In my early years, I would see and hear a successful person and say to myself, “I will never be able to achieve that.” And I would become discouraged. Why? Because I saw the giant gap between that person and me. The difference between where I was and where that person was appeared to be insurmountable. But what I didn’t realize back then was that the progress these people had made and the gains they had won had come through small steps—small victories of will, little denials of self, faithfulness in very little things. Most people were unaware of their hidden steps. Like me, they saw only their accumulation in the results.

Writer and artist Elbert Hubbard observed, “The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it—so fine that we are often on the line and we do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success?” That’s why we need to dedicate ourselves to small steps of improvement. Who knows if the next small step will provide the breakthrough we’ve been seeking?

4. Improvement Is a Daily Commitment

David D. Glass, the president and chief executive officer of Walmart, was once asked why he admired Sam Walton, the founder of the organization. His answer was, “There’s never been a day in his life, since I’ve known him, that he didn’t improve in some way.” What an accomplishment! That shows a great commitment to continuous improvement.

Fairly early in my development on the personal growth journey, I heard something from Earl Nightingale that changed my life. He said, “If you study a subject every day for one hour a day, five days a week, in five years you will become an expert in that area.” That was when I made the commitment to improve in the area of leadership a daily one.

Some things simply have to be done every day. You know the old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”? Well, eating seven apples all at once isn’t going to give you the same benefit. If you want to improve, intentional growth needs to be a habit. A habit is something I do continually, not once in a while. Motivation may get you going, but the positive habits you develop and practice consistently are what keep you improving.

As I have worked to improve on a day-by-day basis, two words have helped me to stay on track. The first is intention. Every morning as I start my day, I intend to learn something that day. This develops a mind-set in me to look for things that will help me improve.

The other word is contemplation. Time alone is an essential for self-improvement. When I spend time thinking about my challenges, experiences, and observations, it allows me to gain perspective. I can evaluate any losses and I can learn from them. Contemplation time by myself also gives me time to do positive self-talk. Motivational humorist Al Walker stated, “The most important words we will ever utter are those words we say to ourselves, about ourselves, when we are by ourselves.” During these “conversations” we can beat ourselves up and make ourselves feel really small, or we can learn and build ourselves up so that we become better.

If you want to spend some time each day to try to improve yourself, you might want to begin by asking yourself three questions at the end of the day, as I do. They are:

·What did I learn today? What spoke both to my heart and my head?

·How did I grow today? What touched my heart and affected my actions?

·What will I do differently? Unless I can state specifically what I plan to do differently, I won’t learn anything.

One of the things I don’t do is compare myself to others during that time. There’s a reason for that. My desire is to not become superior to anybody else. I only want to be superior to my former self. Intention and contemplation assist me in doing that.

 

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If you missed part one of "insights on Improvement", you can read it here.