Studying Yourself

You can make a lot of interesting personal growth gains by studying yourself and your own responses instead of trying to follow someone else’s behavioral prescriptions. Studying yourself is especially useful in the areas of health and productivity habits. What actually creates good results for you? Quite often you’ll find that what works best for you in real life won’t be found in any book or seminar. You can learn ideas from others to inspire your own experimentation, but you may get the best gains by assembling your own unique collection of behaviors and practices. When doing self-experimentation, it’s important to protect your self-esteem from your behavioral results. Look at your behaviors and their effects separately, and honestly assess their impacts and results. Don’t wrap your self-esteem into the effects of your behaviors because problem behaviors can be changed. Beating yourself up for having a problematic behavior will only slow you down. Let the behavior be the problem you want to work on; don’t weave it into your self-image. As I mentioned previously, I’ve been engaging in a detailed self-study of my diet for the past 7.5 weeks. I’m raising my awareness about what I’m actually eating and how different meals affect me. Based on what I’m learning, I’m making lots of micro-adjustments and doing small tweaks to optimize my eating habits. The main part of this is food logging, which involves...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Health Lifestyle Productivity Source Type: blogs