13 Tips to Help You Do Better | Self Improvement

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on 13 Ways We Can Do Better. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Now, before we get started, please click that subscribe and the bell right next to it to be notified. Every time we put out a new video, we often hear people say that we need to do better as a society. But what does that actually mean? Well, everybody has their own definition of what that means, but I've put together 13 things I think we actually could do better. The mnemonic to remember these 13 things is changes, frames. We're reframing things instead of going through the current framework that we're using. We do need to change the first one. C stands for. For compassion and empathy. Instead of being so judgy all the time, we really need to have more compassion and empathy for one another. We need to hear what other people are saying and understand that they are interpreting the world from their perspective based on the experiences that they've had. We don't have to agree with them, but having compassion for them, validating how they're feeling in the moment, and having compassion and empathy with ourself is also important. Recognizing how we're feeling instead of ignoring how we're feeling or being angry with how we're feeling and struggling with that, having compassion with ourselves and saying, you know what? I'm tired today. And I'm tired because it's been an exhausting week. I am going to be compassionate with myself. I'm not going to say I shouldn't feel this way or I should still do this. I'm going to be compassionate with myself. H stands for honesty and authenticity with assertive communication. And I know that's a big one. Authenticity is being your true self, being honest with yourself and others about your needs, your wants, your thoughts. So honesty and authenticity are kind of the same thing. And doing it with assertive communication. Currently in our society, I often see and hear a lot of aggressive communication. People. People that are condemning others for their thoughts, wants, needs and beliefs. People who are telling others how they should think, what they should do. Assertive communication says, I hear what you think, I hear what you're wanting to do, and this is what I think, and this is what I want to do. My thoughts, wants and needs are not any more or less important than your thoughts, wants and needs. How wonderful would that be if we could actually do that? Number three, acceptance of change or openness. Being open to changes in the way we address things, being open to changes in each other, being open to other ideas. It doesn't mean we have to adopt them, but at least being willing to hear them. Being tolerant of other people's ideas and thoughts can go a long way. Number four is simply being nice. Be nice to yourself, but also be nice to others. Random acts of kindness go a long way. They increase your own oxytocin, they increase oxytocin and a sense of feel good in others. But it's also just a nice thing to do. Think about, if you do something nice for somebody, how does that impact their day and what do they do from there? Said the other way. If somebody does something nice for you, do you take it and be like, well, fine, and then you're nasty to everybody else the rest of the day? Or if somebody does something nice for you, does it actually have a ripple effect and you do something nice for somebody else? And it could be something very simple like just smiling and acknowledging somebody. How far does that go? If we're just nice instead of always looking like we're angry with the world, we actually say good morning or goodbye or how you doing? And we actually mean it. G stands for gratitude. As a society, we are so focused on what everybody else has and what we don't have, and we've rarely take time to focus on what we do have. What are we grateful for right now? What is it that we want in our rich and meaningful lives that we already have? Yes, there are things that could be better, no doubt, but there are also things in your life that are probably going at least okay right now. E stands for encouragement. And again, encouraging others, but also yourself. What is it that you can do to be your best cheerleader? What is it that you can do to encourage those around you? If you build up those around you, they're going to build you up too. If you tear down those around you, they're going to tear you down too. So how can you encourage others to be the best version of themselves? Self care. It's another one that seems so obvious, but we ignore so much. Self care means noticing your thoughts, wants and needs and attending to them. Taking time off when you need to, setting boundaries if something is stressing you out, figuring out how to address it or avoid it, you know, turn it off if it's on the, on the television, for example, you know, what is it that you can do to nurture yourself to heal your HPA axis, your stress response system so your body can actually go back to optimal functioning? Do you need to unplug on the weekends? Do you need to spend more time outside what is it that you would like to do in your rich and meaningful life that would make you feel happy and help improve your health and, you know, your well being that you're not doing right now? And I think most of us have a pretty long list of things that we'd like to do that we always say we'll get around to. But we get so caught up in the distractions of the day. Self care is important. If you're worn down, you ain't going to be good to anybody else. F stands for forgiveness of yourself and others. This is another thing that we don't do very well. We berate ourselves when we make mistakes. We hold on to guilt, we hold on to self anger. We also hold on to resentment a lot. Anger is a response to a threat. Anger is a very natural emotion. When we have it, it's our body saying, hey, there may be a threat here or there may be a problem here, okay? That's your body saying there may be a problem. Get up and do something about it. When we hold on to anger, when we hold on to resentment, when we stew in it, when we nurture drains our energy. Think about marinating meat. If you take meat and you marinate it in hot sauce for four days, guess what? It's going to take on? The flavor of that hot sauce. If you marinate meat in a sweet sauce or ginger or something, it's going to take on the flavor of that. So if you are marinating your soul, your spirit, your thoughts in anger and resentment and negativity, guess what? What is that going to do to the your flavor, what you bring to the world, what people taste when they experience you. Probably not what you want. Forgiveness can help you present yourself and in a way that you want other people to experience you and in a way you want to experience yourself. Do you want to look in the mirror and always be angry with yourself or feeling guilty about something? Forgiving yourself goes a long way. Forgiveness means saying, I am no longer going to hold a grudge or give energy to whatever it is that happened. Whatever I did wrong or didn't do or this other person did wrong or didn't do, it's happened, it's over. It's unfortunate. I don't like it. I'm going to learn from it so it doesn't happen again. I'm going to use my energy to learn, but I'm not going to continue to tie up my energy being angry about it, responsibility, oh my gosh, no excuses, and stopping the blame game. One of my first, mentors had a saying that when you point at somebody else, you've got three fingers pointing back at you. What part did you have in it? Yes, the other person or persons probably had a part in it too. But what part did you have in it? What part could you control and what part was out of your control? Stop making excuses for behaviors, for things that you do. Acknowledge them, learn from them, address them. If they're good behaviors, then nurture them. Take responsibility for the good stuff too, but stop blaming others and saying, you made me do this. They may have done something that triggered anger or anxiety, but you chose your behaviors. Just saying, apologize when you've done wrong, apologize. And that kind of goes along with taking responsibility. You take responsibility for something and then you say if you did something wrong, say I'm sorry. And sometimes that means apologizing to yourself, saying, you know self, I am sorry I've been so horrible to you lately. Apologize and mean it. That means saying, I recognize I did wrong, I apologize for it. Please forgive me and I will do better. I will quit creating a threat. Imagine how that goes. Oftentimes we see people who apologize or we think people who are APO who apologize might be weak. But think about how much courage it takes to apologize, to admit when you're wrong. What kind of a model does that set for others? If you're showing that you have the courage to say, yeah, I screwed up and this is how I'm going to make it better. M stands for mindfulness. We live in a society of autopilot. Turn off that autopilot. Live mindfully. That means living in the moment, noticing what's happening non judgmentally right now. What are my thoughts, wants, feelings, needs, what's going on around me. Noticing and living in the moment. Otherwise you miss the moment. If you're living in the future or in the past, you miss what's going on right now. So being mindful E stands for educate yourself. And this kind of goes along with acceptance and openness to change. But educate yourself about what's going on. Life is changing, the world is changing. It's always changing. So educate yourself about possibilities. What else could be going on? You see a story or you hear about something. Okay, great. Educate yourself. Are you getting the whole story or are there other potential things to consider? Listen to other people. Educate yourself about the other perspectives in order to get a fuller understanding of what's going on. How would it feel? How might things change if we did a better job of educating oursel about other people's perspectives? So we could have more empathy, so we could have more compassion. And finally synergize. This doesn't have to be a world of competition. We all have different skills, tools and abilities. Instead of being angry because you don't have this skill, be grateful for the skills that you do have. And then work with people who have skills that complement yours. Just because you're not good at something doesn't mean that you and this other person that, that you need need to be jealous of this other person. It means that you probably have skills they don't. So, so use. Instead of trying to learn their stuff, use your strengths to work together and create something that's, you know, even more beneficial. It's a whole lot more time efficient. If everybody focuses on what they do best and we work together, we synergize to create the whole. There is a lot in this and I encourage you to think about taking one of these things each week. Or I mean, I know there's 13, but one of these things each month even and over 2023. Focus on improving these things in your life. So in January, for example, try to be more compassionate and empathetic with yourself as well as with the people in your life. See how that changes things, see what it does for you. And then in February, work on honesty and authenticity and assertive communication. By the end of 2023, look back and think. Based on the changes that I've made, am I doing better? Am I a better version of myself now than I was 12 months ago? And how has it impacted my immediate universe, the people and and things that are right around me because of my changes? Has it had a ripple effect? My guess is the answer is going to be yes. Help us continue our mission of making practical tools available to everyone. Support the channel at doc snipes.com donate become a paid member@docsnipes.com YouTube or purchase a super thanks on videos that are particularly helpful. By turning off autopilot, we can become more self aware and more effective at interpreting and responding to situations in the present context. Building each other up instead of tearing each other down. We can improve people's sense of safety and empowerment. So as I said, pick one of the 13 strategies to practice each week or each month until they become habits and then reflect on how those changes impacted your life and whether they helped you do better.