How to Build a Better You

How to Build a Better You

Comparison is the thief of joy. Whenever you so much as hammer a nail in a wall and take a step back to admire your handy work, there’s always an inconsiderate neighbour not two doors away taking photos of their new self-constructed five-story treehouse. Complete with a cinema. And a sauna. I forget who said it, but the old adage that the only person you have to out-do is who you were yesterday is so, so, so true. Doesn’t stop you wishing that the treehouse sauna would spring a leak and real-life Ned Flanders will be left with nothing but a pile of soppy planks of wood, but that’s OK. Self-enlightenment and self-improvement is a path that can take you in many directions – for example, check out mediumchat for new ways of thinking.

How to Build a Better You

Anyway, let’s look at some of the steps you can take to build a better you.

• Get better at what you’re already good at

This is called levelling up, and it’s pretty self-explanatory. Take my friend, for example, who has been playing a range of instruments for as long as he’s been able to stand unaided and mutter “a one, a two, a one two three four”. You’d say he can play violin. You’d say he can play piano. You’d say he can play guitar. He even plays drums, and he owns a couple of brass instruments although I’ve never seen him do much more than take them out of their cases to show off how shiny they are. To my surprise, he recently took piano lessons, despite having been playing for longer than I’ve even known what a piano is. The difference is phenomenal. He has levelled up, and then some. Where before he could play pretty much everything you hear on the radio by ear, now he is playing such complex music that you want to call up your parents and scream “Where was my piano for my third birthday, huh!? I’m useless at everything and it’s all your fault!”. Or something.

• Forget little goals

Start small, they say. Build on your successes. Put one foot in front of the other. And so on. You’ll also notice that the same people who offer such advice are the kinds of layabouts whose greatest achievements to date include little more than changing their gas and electric provider seven years ago to save some pocket change on their bill. And my, don’t they go on about it. Now, yes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. But that’s the point, when it was finally built, it was ROME. Decide what you want your Rome to be. Set an audacious goal. Why not?

• Surround yourself with people you can model

Someone has already done the thing you want to do. Even entrepreneurs like Elon Musk had to begin by trekking around the world, more or less begging hat in hand, asking permission to buy a large rocket that he could take apart and analyse. And now look. He’s building the space taxi that’ll take us all to Mars one day. Don’t go around copycatting, of course, but know that whatever you want to achieve, there’s the slow way, or the humble student way.

Guest Article. Contains a sponsored link.