Category: Improvement

How Do We Improve People’s Lives?

Sometimes it feels as if everyone is struggling these days. In response, if you wanted to improve someone else’s life, what would you do?

Chances are, first and foremost you are worried about your own well-being. You need to pay the mortgage, get the shopping done, score tickets to the game, and so on. And everyone else is doing the same.

It would be nice, though, if other people made your life a little easier. Even something as small as letting you merge in traffic rather than cutting you off. A little bit of slack in one area might mean you have more time or energy to put toward something else, and it all could snowball to great effect.

Well, then, what about the reverse? What can you do, without it being too onerous to you, to improve the life of the people you come into contact with?

Obviously, the people you spend the most time with provide you the greatest opportunity. You might see your family members every day, and your co-workers and friends almost as much. You know about their lives, and you probably have a pretty good idea what would make them better.

But there also people you have minimal contact with. Folks in line at the coffee joint. Fellow commuters on the freeway. Shoppers at the local grocery store. Without knowing as much about them, there are still things you can do.

And of course, you know yourself best of all. What would make your life better? What could someone else do to help you out, even a little bit? Can you do that thing for someone else? Is there something you might even be able to do for yourself, to make your own life better?

Related questions: What are you doing to make the world a better place? What can you do to improve your surroundings? What will you do today to make your tomorrow better?

Can You Change Your Default Happiness?

If you rank your normal level of happiness on a scale of 1 to 10, can you increase that number? Can you change your default happiness?

If you think about the people you know, you can probably divide them into the camp of “happy people” or “unhappy people”. That is, people who naturally tend to be happy, regardless of what is going on around them. Or those who seem grumpy as a default setting.

Sure, everybody goes through roller-coasters of emotion, when good things or bad things happen. And of course, the mood someone has on any particular day is subject to events in their life. However, there are some people that seem to naturally have a smile, while others naturally have a scowl.

And you might even feel this way about yourself. You might think that life is good, or you might feel like you can never catch a break. And, of course, how you feel about yourself may or may not match up with how others see you.

So then the question becomes: can this aspect of your personality change? If life always gets you down, can you exercise some sort of emotional muscle to improve the amount of happiness you experience? If one bad thing after another happens, can a naturally cheerful person become a grump?

If change is possible, then what can we do to make that change happen for the better? What can we do in our everyday life to increase how happy we tend to be?

Related questions: Is happiness the most important purpose in life? Why do we put up with unhappiness? How does technology influence your emotions? What is the right amount of emotion?

New Mistakes Or Old Mistakes?

When you make mistakes, do you find they tend to be ones you’ve made over and over before? Or ones that are brand new?

Share why if you wish.

New Mistakes Or Old Mistakes?
Results

Strengths Or Weaknesses?

When developing your skills, should you concentrate on your strengths to become an expert? Or to shore up your weaknesses so you aren’t bad at anything?

Share why if you wish.

Strengths Or Weaknesses?
Results

How Important Is Accountability?

The actions we take can impact the people around us. How important is it to hold ourselves accountable for the consequences of those actions?

What you do matters. It matters for your own life, and can have ripple effects on the people around you. This is true in your personal life, with your family and loved ones. It is also true in your professional life, as your actions can have consequences on your coworkers, your boss, your company, and others.

In a perfect world, we would be rewarded for the positive actions we take, and punished for the negative ones. At work, we might get a raise if we introduce a best-selling new product. Or we might get fired for messing up and doing damage to our coworkers or the company’s brand.

We can call this system of rewards and punishments “accountability”.

However, the world doesn’t always hold people accountable for their behavior and actions. For instance, the punishment and reward system can work in reverse.

Sometimes people are rewarded despite having made questionable decisions. The company does well, and so everyone gets a Christmas bonus, regardless of performance or merit. Or layoffs at a struggling company might be first hired, first fired, ignoring the positive contributions someone has made.

In addition, it is human nature to accept credit for good outcomes, but to minimize blame for bad ones. If good events happen in my private life, no doubt it is because I am smart and made wise decisions. Bad things are someone else’s fault, or beyond my control.

Does this matter? How important is it to hold yourself accountable for your actions? How important is it to hold others accountable for theirs? Do you think about those — yourself and others — differently?

Related questions: What are we responsible for? How do you judge yourself? How are you underappreciated? What are our responsibilities to others?