We all make mistakes, we all have faults. There is a powerful practice when you hear a statement like this. You personalize the statement. So the opening sentence becomes "I make mistakes, I have faults". You don't want to dwell on this, but do allow it to ruminate long enough to have thoughts. What are your thoughts? One common thought might be "So what, what can I do about my faults?".
First, yes you have power to overcome faults, you have the power to change who you are and according to your own definition improve who you are. Every person, no matter their background, race, religion, gender, age, or education has this amazing power to change and improve.
Second, you don't want to start by beating yourself up, that does not serve you well. Yes you have faults, so does everyone else. Allow the thought to surface feelings, but don't judge yourself by those feelings. You have faults, those faults surface feelings, you observe the feelings like you are outside your body looking down, so far so good.
Third, you don't want to dwell on the totality of your faults. You likely have multiple faults, like everyone else. To be useful or productive you want to narrow down your list to a single fault you would like to do something about. Think about the previous paragraph, did one of the faults cause a particularly strong negative reaction? If so, that might be a good place to start. You need to fight the urge to fix everything at once, that simply never works.
Now you are ready for a simple four step process. Your faults, as you consider them without judgment, provide unique learning opportunities. There is a critical pattern implicit in all improvement activities; Aware, Learn, Do, Become.
Through your mindful self-awareness you learn of things you would like to improve. You can discern little faults like “I tend to overeat at parties” and larger faults like “I become dishonest under pressure”.
You choose something to improve on and learn more about it. What causes that fault, what are triggers, what are potential solutions or ways to improve, what has worked for others, is this something I need outside help to overcome?
You then choose one or two activities/actions to do and implement them.
By doing the activities you begin to change who you are – you become a better person who has overcome or at least improved on a fault. Celebrate. Take a little break. And repeat.
You notice this is not a strategy, tip, or technique that helps you gloss over your faults or get away with something. There is no joy, no growth, no profound change in those things. This is a relatively simple process to change who you are over time. Taking time is OK, in fact working on one thing at a time and even occasionally taking a break from trying to improve is OK. Your journey is life long, so is this process in bringing joy and satisfaction to your life - no matter your outward circumstances.
In conclusion change is constant and inevitable. If you never change, meaning profound change of who you are, you become an obstacle for external changes to overcome. Would you like to be the captain of your own boat with power to change course, direction, speed, and destination? Or would you rather be a tree when the stream exceeds its banks flowing constantly against the tree and inevitably washing it away as a powerless and unchanging obstacle? Your ability to constantly change (improve) who you are, and improve your skills, is the only power you have to not only adapt to the rivers of change but to thrive and remain in charge of your freedom and direction in life.
I hope you find this post useful. My intent is to provide thoughts, perspectives, and tools to help you be successful, adaptive, and resilient in the face of constant change. Please let me know of your success, or struggle, with the process. All my best.
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