Strategies to Improve Self-Management skills

 

To improve your self-management skills, you have to actively focus on ways you can direct, test, and enhance your daily activities. How to work smarter and not harder.

 Here are a few ways you can improve your self-management skills:

Self-Evaluation/Self-reflection- 

Assess your strengths to determine what you’re best at, and focus on ways to use your abilities in these areas. Understanding your strengths helps you manage your career and steer your life path in a way that is most beneficial.

Evaluate the progress you’ve made toward your goals by tracking your accomplishments to see if you’ve met them. Don’t be too hard on yourself and always acknowledge your successes, reward and praise yourself for your efforts and achievements.

Ask someone closest to you for help to assess your behaviour, and to get a well-rounded appraisal. you may not like what you hear, the truth hurts. So when you seek others' opinions, try to be calm and neutral, don’t go all defensive about what they say of your character rather use the feedback to improve and build your self-awareness. 

While self-evaluation is about appraising yourself, your strength, your experience and your performance to better improve your life.  Self-reflection is used to gain insight into your action, behaviour and values.

Self-reflection is key to self-awareness. It enables you to be aware of yourself and to look objectively at your thoughts, emotions, actions, and feelings. It can be a time to reflect on your mistakes and areas of improvement. 

It can also be time to acknowledge personal accomplishments and celebrate progress. Remember, if you don’t reflect on your past, you will have a harder time understanding where you are going.

Self-reflection will give you the time to step back and try to view things with an impartial eye. Avoid bottling up or repressing your feelings, but look for healthy ways to deal with what you are feeling, it will help you respond more effectively to your emotions. Things don’t always work out as planned, but with self-reflection, we can seek feedback, ask for help and get things back on track.

Self-motivation/Initiative

Self-motivation is the ability to start and finish a task or activity without external inducement. When you’re self-motivated, you plan for potential tasks because you’re driven by a desire to succeed and not by outside factors. 

Self-motivation is the side of self-management that pushes you forward to take initiative and succeed with your projects and activities. Self-motivation is one of the most powerful forces that drive people to do things and to achieve success in business and personal life. 

Initiative is the ability to plan, take action and make decisions without being told what to do. You can show initiative by thinking for yourself, planning and taking action when needed. It means using your head and having the drive to achieve something. Initiative requires self-belief because you need resilience and motivation to solve problems or do things without being reminded or asked.

Self-confidence/Self-Control  

To be self-confident means to like and respect yourself and believe in your own abilities and strengths. People that are self-confident have a positive mindset and can face their fears head-on.

Self-confident people are some of the most successful people in life and business, they trust and believe in their skills and abilities and have a sense of control

Self-control is the ability to remain stable when in difficult situations. When you lose self-control, you delegate control of your emotions to others. Self-control allows you to take charge of your thoughts, behaviour and impulses. Your ability to manage and control your needs, desires, actions, and emotions is vital to achieving success in life and business. Self-control is also about discipline and restraint, if you are disciplined you will control the controllable's in life. Being disciplined goes a long way to enhancing every aspect of your life, including your health and wellness.

Take care of your health and wellness. 

When your health falls apart, every other aspect of your life follows suit. It’s important to keep both the mind and the body healthy. Engage in physical activity like exercise. Regular exercise keeps you physically fit and is also great for the mind. It relaxes the mind and helps your brain to recharge and improves your ability to focus. You also have to observe personal hygiene and eat nutritious meals that will nourish your body,   

You should have adequate sleep, at least seven to nine hours of sleep every night. Getting better sleep will help your mind become more alert, focused, and balanced.  

You should learn to relax and take your mind off your stress, Have fun, laugh as often as your can and rest as regularly as possible, Take holidays and go on vacations, engage in a hobby and take time to do things you love the most. All these will help to improve your physical and mental health.

Your physical health. The essence of good sleep and regular exercise is to bring stress under control. If you’re unable to manage your emotions, you are likely not in control of your stress level. Uncontrolled stress can lead to serious health problems like weight loss and high blood pressure, which can suppress the immune system and increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Uncontrolled stress can speed up the ageing process. 

When you exercise and do activities, your brain releases endorphins known as serotonin, which helps you feel good and fight negative emotions.

 Living a healthy lifestyle and eating a balanced diet is crucial to your overall health and will give you mental power and body energy 

Your mental health. Uncontrolled emotions and stress also affect your mental health and render you vulnerable to anxiety and depression. If you cannot understand, take control or manage your emotions, it will affect your self-confidence and your ability to form strong relationships. You become isolated and filled with negative thoughts that will eventually affect your mental health. Your emotional and social well-being also how you handle stress and relate to others, affect how you think, act and feel.

To stay mentally healthy, think positively, learn how to cope with stresses if life, connect with others, believe in yourself, be physically active, and get enough sleep. Above all, learn and put into practice all the self-management skills.

Learning it's a continuous process, it goes beyond formal education. If learning should end with the completion of a degree, you could not cope with today’s fast-changing and evolving world.

Keep learning to keep up with new ideas that will enable you to take proactive actions. Challenge yourself, move out of your comfort zones, and learn how to improve yourself to get the best out of life.

The importance of Self-Management

Logically self-awareness comes before self-management. When you are aware of your thoughts and emotions, you will probably act consciously and make informed decisions.
Self-management builds upon self-awareness, you can only act on your emotion if you are aware of its existence. Being aware and in charge of your emotions during difficult situations, it will help you be calm under pressure and act positively and proactively rather than buckle under challenges.
Self-awareness is important, but I choose to write more on the concept of self-management because it is what you do with your emotional awareness that makes the difference in life. The awareness of your emotions aids you to consciously choose what you will or will not do.

To achieve your goals, be responsible and successful in life, you need to cultivate the art of self-management skills.

Self-management skills will help you manage your activities, enables you to hold yourself accountable for your work and words. Without self-management, many of us may lose sight of our goals or cannot prioritize our activities. self-management skills are a crucial and necessary set of skills to build a productive and efficient lifestyle in professional and personal relationships.

 What Are Self-Management Skills?

Self-management skills are those abilities that help you to control your feelings, emotions, and actions. They play a major role in your personal and work life because those abilities aid you to become more productive and proactive in decision making. With Self-management skills, you can improve on how your communication with others, plan your time more effectively, handle responsibility efficiently and make better choices that will improve both your personal and professional life.

Self-management skills

Accountability/Responsibility skill

Accountability is the act of being responsible for your thoughts and actions. When you say yes, you should mean it and work in a committed way to deliver what you have accepted to do.

Accountability and responsibility are similar but they don’t mean the same thing. If you say to yourself that you are accountable, it means you’re answerable to your actions and decisions.
Being responsible means doing what is expected of you and accepting whatever mistakes that come from your action. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake, it is meant to teach you a valuable lesson, accept it, learn from it and moved forward. When you take responsibility for a task, it means you’re in charge and have to determine the best way to proceed.
Taking responsibility for your actions is a bold step towards true self-management.

Goal setting skill

Goal setting is the ability to determine what you want to achieve in a clear and well-defined manner. Goal setting helps you to decide on what’s important and how to create action plans that will align your goals with your values. This skill is necessary because it enables you to manage your time, actions. physical space, energy and mental capabilities towards achieving success in the future.

Self-management will only go as far as your personal goals allow it. Set long-term and short-term goals and plan your day-to-day to revolve around activities that can help you achieve these goals.

Time management skill

Time is a finite resource that can never be recovered once used. It’s important you learn how to use it wisely. Because time is valuable you have to learn how to distinguish between Urgent and Important things in your life..

Effective time management skills allow you to prioritize tasks, avoid distractions and maintain focus. Managing your time is an essential part of managing yourself. Find effective methods that help you manage your time, streamline your daily activities and effort efficiently. Learn to say no to unreasonable request or activities.

Focus your time, energy and abilities on a single activity. Don’t clutter your life with so many tasks at the same time. Complete each task fully before moving on to another.

Proper planning and time management are the keys to getting the most out of your day.

Good time management helps you to set and prioritize your goals, it also enables you to balance your work and leisure time.

Organizational Skill

Organisational skill means planning your time and the things you have to do. Creating a schedule of what is most important and what is not. It’s also about being prepared and having ready the things you need when you need them to implement a plan or complete a task.

To become an organized person, you have to pay attention to details, be an active listener, set a goal and work consistently towards the achievement of your goal.

Organizational skills are valuable and important for success, especially in the business world.

Stress management skill

At times stress can overwhelm you and override your best intentions, it is hard to think clearly or make a rational decision. When you are overstressed, your ability to think clearly and accurately becomes compromised.

With stress management skill you can stay emotionally calm, to control impulsive feelings and behaviours, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow through on commitments, and focus on your goals and make choices that allow you progress forward in the workplace and in your relationships. you need to learn how to overcome stress in order to remain emotionally balanced.

Managing stress helps you self-manage your emotions and maintain a healthy lifestyle. To relieve stress, use humour and laughter, they are natural antidotes to stress. They lessen your burdens and help you keep things in perspective. Laughter brings your nervous system into balance and calms you down. Stress can make you lose control of your emotions and rob you of the ability to act thoughtfully and reasonably.

Stress management skills are among the most important in self-management skills. It is impossible to find a completely stress-free work and life environment, stress situations are everywhere. Learn to manage pressures and to cope with problems when they pop up in life and not allow them to overwhelm you,

Unmanaged stress can increase your blood pressure and affect your health and wellness. To improve your emotional intelligence you must learn how to manage stress.

Communication skill and conflict management skill

No man is an island. Your ability to exist, to grow and to live harmoniously with others depends on your capability to communicate effectively with them. This means being able to articulate what you have in mind concisely. People are not mind readers, nor can they guess what’s in your mind based on your behaviour. Tell them exactly what you need or expected of them. Good communication foster a stronger relationship. Effective communication will save you a lot of misunderstanding that can lead to conflict.

Disagreements are certain to arise in every human relationship from time to time. People don’t have the same values, needs, opinions, and expectations at all times. Conflict management skill helps you resolve such disagreements in healthy and constructive ways that will build trust and strengthen your relationship. When conflict is resolved amicably, it creates stronger bonds in relationships. Learn to see conflict as an opportunity to get closer to others.

When conflicts arise try to maintain a sense of calm so you can think clearly and objectively. Do not give people, places or situations the power to knock you off your emotional footing.

 

Self-management skills will help set your heart, thought and action in the right direction and other things in your life will follow suit.