A mentally healthy person with a developed willpower, for a long time making efforts, is able to change himself: get rid of bad habits, normalize the daily routine, increase working capacity, soften negative character traits and increase self-confidence.
Such work on self is called self-education. To determine, how to educate yourself, it is important to analyze your own personality and understand what needs correction in it, and then start searching for effective methods.
What is self-education: the definition
ABOUT self-study heard by many people; it assumes that a person will independently begin to study a particular direction, make plans, every day will carry out something that will increase the amount of his knowledge and experience, and will do everything possible to maintain motivation.
As a result, after a few years of hard work, a clear positive result will be seen. Unless, of course, learning will not be abandoned after some time.
Self-education in character resembles self-study: in order to change oneself for the better, one needs to apply efforts every day for months or even years, make plans, maintain motivation. In a short time to change something in yourself is almost impossible.
Self-education is a process of working on oneself, aimed at developing one’s personality and changing individual traits for the better.
Wherein to change radically with self-education is difficult, but it is possible to correct some negative characteristics, increase efficiency and self-confidence.
The problem is that human identity is largely due to genesdetermining the characteristics of the brain.
Each of us has minor mutations in the genes. For example, several such mutations can affect the mechanism of the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, causing it to react worse to the work of the limbic system.
As a result, people who have similar features (there are many such people), will have weak will, because they will not be able to abandon momentary pleasures for the sake of something more important, because their prefrontal cortex does not suppress the limbic system as well as necessary.
No exercise, self-education can change this. Is that some can help specific tricks.
And the more such mutations will be, the less chance that a person will succeed in trying to change his life for the better by standard methods.
Also self-education almost useless, if we are talking about people suffering from mental illness, such as depression, neurosis, anxiety disorder.
It is necessary to engage in self-education after the diseases are defeated, otherwise attempts to demand from oneself what cannot be done at the proper level, since there are no resourcesonly aggravate the disease.
Self-education should not be considered as a treatment for mental disorders.
Methods
The main methods of self-education:
- Self-conviction. This method helps people maintain their own motivation, strengthen the desire to perform important tasks. To do this, you need to convince yourself of the need to do certain things. For example, in order to force yourself to continue attending courses, it is important to paint in paints the benefits that you will receive after completing your studies. Remember how interesting it is for you to study the chosen direction, look through the pleasant moments connected with it in your memoirs. This is important to do regularly if you feel that you are losing motivation.
- Self-commitment. Give yourself the obligations associated with these or other tasks, and do everything possible not to abandon them.
Remind yourself of the benefits you get if you can get to the end.
- Self suggestion. Avoid automatic negative thoughts about yourself, your abilities and ideas, such as "I am a loser", "I will not succeed," "I will ruin everything" and similar ones. Try to remind yourself over and over again about your own importance, that without failure it is impossible to succeed and this is normal, praise yourself more often in your head and deliberately utter positive attitudes: “I will succeed”, “I will cope with this”.
- Self criticism. It is important to learn to adequately assess the results of their own work, to highlight the positive and negative sides. This will accelerate the process of personal development and improve the quality of results. Frequently analyze what you are doing, but do not go into self-incrimination, do not belittle yourself.
- Self coercion. Often motivation appears in the process of performing activities, and not before. As a result, in order to have the desire, you must force yourself to do the tasks, even if it is extremely difficult to do.
- Self punishment If you didn’t accomplish anything important that you had to, or are still pulling with fulfillment, self-punishment can be useful: for example, you can forbid yourself something important and pleasant for some time or seriously limit. At the same time, time can be freed up for performing important tasks.
- Empathy. Communication is an extremely important element of education, but without developed empathy, it becomes less complete. More often analyze the actions of others, imagine yourself in their place, try to feel their emotions as your own.
Opportunities for self-education are open to mentally healthy people. They will be able to achieve good results if they work on themselves daily for a long time.
It is important not only purposefully perform important tasks, but also read art books, films, analyze the actions of heroes and compare them with their own lives, to draw conclusions.
Examples
Examples of self-education from real life:
- A.V. Suvorov. The legendary Russian commander, who had never been defeated on the battlefield, was a weak, painful boy in his childhood, and his father assumed that his son’s life would not be connected with military affairs. At the same time, Alexander himself from an early age was actively interested in everything related to the war, read thematic books, which were quite a few in the library, later began to temper and engage in physical activity, which gave him the opportunity to start a military career.
- Demosthenes. Before the start of hard training, this well-known ancient Greek speaker had a lot of serious problems: his voice was weak, his breathing was not enough for long speeches, he could not express his thoughts with dignity and beauty.
Persistent long-term training helped Demosthenes cope with difficulties.
- Nick Vujcic. This is a modern Christian speaker, born without legs and arms, who wrote several books and became world famous. His childhood was extremely difficult, he thought about suicide, but was able to find himself in oratory and, through long training sessions, learned to make good use of a single tiny limb (partial foot).
In fiction, in films, TV shows, cartoons, there are many images of heroes who educated themselves, persistently overcome difficulties and succeed: for example, every superhero created by Marvel went through a difficult path, learned to cope with difficulties, educated himself in one way or another.
How to make a program?
One of the foundations of self-education is planning. It helps to allocate resources more wisely, to be rational in approaching each lesson and, in general, to lead a more conscious life.
Having a clear plan can spur motivation and keep you from committing rash actions.
Self-education plans can be divided into:
- Long term. They affect a more significant period of time: months, years, even decades. At the same time, they are more vague than short-term, and this is their problem: it is difficult to consistently move towards a long-term goal, if you still feel that there is still a lot of time, because you can put everything off and do something less useful.
- Short term. They cover short periods of time: for example, daily plans, weekly, monthly. They are more specific, set clear objectives and, in general, may be more useful than long-term ones, especially for people with not very strong will.
For best results it is worth making both long-term and short-term plans.
When planning, it is important to be in a state of mental stability, to make it easier to concentrate.
Before making a plan you need to define goals for yourself.
To make the plan more harmonious, it is important to read materials related to certain difficulties, dependencies that you want to cope with. So you will understand what methods you need to use to have a positive result.
For example, if you want to quit smoking, it is important to read articles with the recommendations of psychologists on how to cope with this addiction, and on the basis of the information received, compile a program.
If necessary, items can be extended: for example, to make footnotes, sub-items in which you write the essence of the methods you will use, and examples of using these methods that are closely related to your real life (for example, in the program to combat cigarette addiction you can mention that you will break to talk with non-smoking colleagues and walk in the fresh air, and not smoke).
When you first started the process of self-education, you need to make plans daily to learn to keep yourself in check and get used to the new rules. Later, you can make plans for longer periods.
Do not forget to praise yourself. You can make a notebook and write information about success in it: for example, you can tell that you started to smell better after giving up cigarettes and now enjoy wonderful aromas that you have not noticed before.
Rereading these records can help you maintain motivation in difficult moments.
Psychology tips
Answers to common questions:
- How to re-educate yourself for the better? Analyze your personality and determine with what negative and positive characteristics you want to work first. Think about how you can change, read the materials and recommendations and start drawing up a plan of action.
For the development to take place as quickly as possible (but still not rapidly), more often leave the comfort zone. It is useful to read high-quality art books and analyze them.
- How to raise a rod? Imagine an image of yourself with an inner core in your head. What personal qualities does your image have? What is he capable of? What achievements are needed to be able to say that the core is present? Spend some time on the analysis, and then it will be clearer which direction to take. After you start making long-term and short-term plans, determine the goals.
In order to become more flexible and better cope with difficulties, it is important to be in situations where you need to solve a large number of tasks and cope with the load, to leave the comfort zone as often as possible. In this case, your brain will work differently with time, and you will become a stronger person. - How to cultivate a personality? Every person is a person. Personality is a combination of habits, worldview, individual experience, knowledge, behavior and other features, and these characteristics do not have to be purely positive. Therefore, people are personalities, even if they do not make a dizzying career, do not work for days and do not engage in self-development 24/7.
Determine for yourself exactly what qualities you want to soften and which ones to reveal, and work in this direction. And do not forget that you are already a person.
In order to become more flexible and better cope with difficulties, it is important to be in situations where you need to solve a large number of tasks and cope with the load, to leave the comfort zone as often as possible. In this case, your brain will work differently with time, and you will become a stronger person.Every person who decides to engage in self-education, the help of a qualified psychologist may be helpful. He will help you choose a program and give recommendations.
How to be? Self-education:
