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.
