Do Better Be Better | #01 #inspiration #personalgrowth

Foreign hi, I'm Dr. Natalie and today's concept is do better be better, which is like a funny way my cousins taught me to say it, but honestly, it's about improving who you are every day. This is an interesting topic because we are not static as human beings. We can constantly grow and evolve and improve. I think one people need to be more realistic about how much you can improve. I think I've read somewhere that we underestimate how much we can improve over 10 years, but we overestimate how much we can improve over one year. So it's about finding like what's actually reasonable and accountable for you, like how you are going to actually be able to do it and have good systems to measure and track and motivate, encourage, appreciate, reward, get feedback, get the criticism, do it all over again. So everyone needs to have their own system for how they are improving in their life. And the reason I call it do better be better is because you can't do better until you know better. So firstly forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know back when you didn't know it, right? You have to, once you know something now it is the responsibility is on you to use that information to do better. So for me, I have a lot of pressure on myself. Once I've learned that there's a new better way to do something, I can't just go back to the old way. Every time I try and do it, I'll be upset with myself or frustrated. It's like why would we do this when we know there's a better way, right? And I do that with myself. So I think that's the attitude I take. Once I know better, I can do better, then the pressure is on me to actually live up to that and to do better. I was reading a story about was it a cycling team and their new coach told them we're only going to try and improve by 1%. That's it. That's what's going to make a life changing, like rewards and success for us. And of course that doesn't sound normal, but a lot of sports coaches actually use that attitude. If you only improve slightly at something, but you actually improve at it, I when you compound the results over time you improve massively. So for me, what is key here is learning yourself and how you improve, know how you learn. Are you an audio person? Are you a visual person? Do you need to read? Do you need to talk about it? Do you need to watch YouTube? Do you need to go to a conference or a meeting. Do you need to ask a mentor questions? Find how you learn new information, right, and make that information easily accessible to yourself. Don't have your social media full of rubbish. Let's be honest, a lot of all of us have a lot of rubbish in our social media. Try and keep your rubbish down to 20%. Yeah? Sometimes you want to scroll and look at, I don't know, cats or fancy cars or celebrities. Keep it to 20%. The rest you now need to divide between your loved ones who bring you joy, but also useful stuff you can learn. You can learn by laughing. There is so much entertaining, useful stuff on social media these days. So I'm not saying just be bored and read textbooks, but learn how you learn. Make it easy to learn. Subscribe to newsletters. Really? As an adult in this day and age, if you don't have an email address, please get one. Subscribe to free newsletters. You get constant flow of information every day for free. And it's useful and it's cutting edge because other people are literally spending all their time and energy to write these newsletters and stay competitive and stay up to date in the market. So, so look at your sectors in life, whether it's for work or your personal life. What are the areas you're trying to improve? Find who are the gurus in that area? Subscribe to their newsletters. Every company has a newsletter. Every celebrity has a newsletter. Every movement, every voice, every area. There's so many newsletters, easy information, free webinars, access to their so many benefits and perks and lives on social media. Make information your friend, make it easy for information to find you useful information and then see what works for you. How are you going to learn these things? Make sure you're making the time, the effort to learn, to listen, to grow. And what do we do after we've learned? We experiment. We actually do it. Don't just spend your life reading newsletters, please. That's not what I'm telling you. Learn these things and then practice them in your life. How can I immediately apply what I've learned into my particular context? In my business, in my professional life, in my personal life, in my health? How can I use this new information immediately? The moment you start practicing it, it will be. But you start to improve. That's how. Once you know better, you can do better. Once you're doing better, you will be better. The way human beings learn, you have to get to the point where it's unconscious learning. You have to first know what you don't know. That is the first stage, you have to understand that there's a lot about life you don't know. Humility, remember? And then you need to figure out what are the bits that you do need to know. Then you get into the conscious part of learning. You're actively trying to practice this new habit, this new skill. I'm going to the gym, I'm eating healthier, I'm reading books, I'm attending conferences. I am smiling more, I am pausing before I react emotionally. All over my family and friends. I am deep breathing, I am sleeping better. Whatever you're trying to consciously learn, you need to put in effort. Whether you're setting alarms in your phone. You have the book right next to your bed, you pack your gym clothes the night before. Before you have someone remind you, we're supposed to go for a walk after work today. How you need to put in a system that pushes you to actively learn this thing. Once you're learning it, it starts to become a part of you. You start to do it naturally. I'm always drinking water. People laugh at me on social media. Dr. Natalie is always saying, drink your water. Yeah, but I don't need to remind myself every day now. Drink water. There's always water around me. It's just part of who I am now. I'll notice if there's no water around me. Once you know better and you start to implement it in your life, it starts to become a part of who you are. And it gets to a point where it's unconscious. That's when it's just who you are. You don't even need to put in effort. You've reprogrammed your mind and your body, and now that is who you are. You've changed as a person. The version of you who didn't know how to drink water three months ago is no longer alive. You are this new person who is just a person who drinks water all the time. You know, it just happens. But you have to go through this stages. So anything you're trying to learn, anything is possible. Firstly, that's the growth mindset we've talked about. If you have the attitude, you believe you can learn anything. You just need to put in some conscious effort. You can learn it and then it will become a part of you and then it's easy. You don't need to spend time or effort on it. Willpower is a finite resource. You only get so much willpower per day. It's like hours in the day. When you wake up for the day, your energy level is given your Willpower is given as you use it. As the day goes by, it finishes. When it's finished, it's finished. You can't create more because it's 7pm and now you have difficult decisions to make. So don't make your life harder. Do one habit at a time, one new thing. Once you get used to it, it doesn't take any more effort. It becomes unconscious. That's now when you can add the next one. Don't try and change 20 things in your life at the same time. You will fail and then you'll be upset and then you won't want to do anything. So learn how you learn. Make sure you're implementing these things in your life and then you have to track it. Only things that get measured improve is the truth. This is why people who are trying to lose weight are constantly weighing themselves. Yes, it's stressful, but it helps. This is why companies have KPIs, this is why we have targets and goals. Because you have to know what you're actually trying to achieve. Whenever I'm doing financial literacy trainings and I'm like, okay, so what's your revenue like every day? Some days it's busy, some days it's not so busy. What does that mean? Are you making 10,000 per day? Are you making 100 per day? What is a busy day? How do you quantify it? Use data, track these things. If you know, every Wednesday I make 20,000, every Thursday I make 50,000. Now you have information. So a busy day is the Thursday, not the Wednesday. This is how you have to track everything in your life. I used to do lives every Friday, I think, for like a year, to encourage people to reflect on their week. How was your week? What were the wins? What went well? What went badly? What did you learn? What were the challenges? If you do that every single Friday, you will see how your life completely changes. Because you are starting to be aware. You are measuring your life. If every week you see I got in a fight in this meeting and the project didn't move forward every single week, four, five, six weeks in a row, maybe you need to know, take some time to assess this problem and fix it. But if you're not tracking it and you're not measuring it, your memory is just going to be. Sometimes that meeting doesn't really go well. Actually, that project, what's the plan for it? If things become vague, you're not going to have the results you want. At the end of the year, when you look at the year, what did you achieve? Oh, now see that project, you didn't achieve anything because you were not tracking it as you go. You're going to track something in your health. When I started trying to improve my sleep, I tracked exactly how many hours I sleep every night. I had to get an app for it and measure it and then review it every week. Why didn't I sleep on time this week? Why did I have to get up at this time this week? How do I continue to improve this area of my life? You can do this across every area if you are conscious about it, if you put in some effort about it. And that's how you become better. You measure these things, you encourage yourself. Because I'm not saying just be hard on yourself, get feedback, get apps, have a journal and a diary and you're ticking and a calendar and it's just pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. Yes, you do need some pressure. Pressure is helpful, but you also need to be motivated. You need to reward yourself. This week I went to the gym three times. What is my reward to myself? Do I get to buy something? Do I get to go somewhere? Do I get to have a nice long bath? What is your reward? Plan it in. All the books about habits will teach you that triggers the action and the reward. James Clear's book Atomic Habits is great. Charles Duhigg's book is a bit more technical, but it's also very useful if you want a more scientific approach. But my point is you have to motivate yourself. If it's constant harassing yourself with shame and punishment, it will not work. Sometimes it's useful to have a carrot and a stick. If I don't go to the gym three times this week, then on the weekend I can't go for my friend's birthday. That's my punishment to myself so that next week I'm more motivated. If that works for you, go for it. It doesn't. You need to use a reward. Try that. Try but make sure you're tracking this things and as you're doing them you will start to see. The beauty is once you do this once or twice or something in your life, you realize it's possible. And then you gain momentum. Then you know that you can do anything. You just have to be organized about it. You just have to put in some time, put in some effort. All my new habits that I started this year for my New Year's resolutions, I had to write down, I had to push myself, I had to put alarms, I had to put reminders. I have to use an app, I have to Write it down. I have to put post its on my mirrors for the first three months of the year. That's how I'm living stress, push pressure, record myself, encourage myself. Okay, today I forgot. Okay, this week I didn't go to the gym. Okay, this time I slept for four hours. Not good. What can I do? How do I improve this every week? And then I try harder again the next week. And then with time you start to realize you're doing these things. You don't need to put yourself under pressure. You don't need to check it and track it as much anymore. As long as I check every six months. Yeah, yeah, it's still good. It's still good. It's still a part of me. That's how you start to do better and be better. Because the more pieces of the view you're trying to build for yourself, you have to put each piece in one at a time. Build those blocks. The more you put in and they get secure. They're not taking your conscious effort, attention, willpower, energy, time, resources. That's a part of you now. You're getting there, you're moving forward. You've got the fundamentals, you've got the concept. That's why I say what's important is the process, because it's applicable to anything. Whether you're trying to learn a new skill for work, you're trying to learn something for your relationships in your life, whether you're trying to do something technical, whether it's for your health, it's the process for yourself that you need to learn how to do. The balance between your attitude, between your efforts, between how you're journaling or writing it down or keeping track of it, and to see how you encourage yourself, motivate yourself, share your good news so that you keep doing it. Because consistency is key for everything. You're not going to be that version of you you're trying to be unless you're consistent in so many of the small things that that version of you does all the time. But it's doable, it's achievable. I encourage you to experiment, to try, figure it out, Find the way that works for you. Is it bullet journaling? Is it using your phone? Is it an alarm? Is it a reminder from someone in your life? Is it an accountability buddy? Is it, I'm going to share on my status this week, you guys, this is my plan. I'm only going to eat this or I'm only going to do this or I've removed this from my life. Find what works for you. Once you figure out your process, anything is possible. As Heraclitus says, no man can step in the same river twice because the river not the same, and neither is the man. You know. If you read the same book once a year, you are not the same person. You might be reading the same book, but it will mean a different thing to you each time. I had to experiment that to actually believe it. But the whole point of that is with a river that's constantly flowing and moving and changing, and you as a person that's constantly moving and changing, even if you went to the same spot every year, you would be different, the river would be different. So think about your life like that. The world is constantly moving and changing. You are constantly moving and changing. Whether you are doing it proactively or passively, that is up to you. So I encourage you to be proactive about these things. Put these things in place in your life, and then it is easier for you to start to achieve the things you want to achieve. No one can dictate that for you. And it's totally in your power. It's totally possible. And I believe in you. So once you know better, you can do better. Once you do better, you are better.