Me, Myself, and I

 Alright so, next in my line of values is personal improvement, followed by the improvement of others.  To the best of my understanding, self-improvement has three components.  First, goals, meaning this is what you want to do with yourself and maybe why, though that's kind of covered in values and philosophies.  Second, skills, meaning something you can improve only through practice.  Third, habits, which is something you already have the ability to do, but you need to do it more often, to obtain the benefits of.  The things I'm going to focus on most here are the second two, skills and habits.  

There is a book that lays out how to develop habits in depth, effectively, called Atomic Habits.  It helps break habits down into their four major components: cue, craving, response, and reward.  I talk about habits first because this is where even skills start.  Skills are things you get better at through practice; but what is going to bring you back over and over to practice?  Habits.  Atomic Habits is really good about breaking this stuff down, though, making it very simple to act on.  Take cue, for example.  This is all about visibility.  Make the cues that remind you of your good habits as visible as possible, and hide the things that cue bad habits you want to reduce.  Craving, this is often about making things attractive or unattractive.  You want to find a culture that will help you with this, meaning a group of people you already have something in common with that also does what you are looking to do, and reframe the things that you want to cut out of your life as unattractive.  For example, if you are a smoker, one of the things you can do is reframe how you see smoking, reminding yourself of the carcinogens you inhale, the radioactive material, the ash and dirt that you are filling your body with, to help make it look less attractive.  Finally, there's the reward.  This is all about making good habits satisfying and bad ones not so much.  This is about reward and punishment.  Reward yourself with something when you perform your preferred habit, start a habit tracker to give yourself a sense of satisfaction for continuing on your course.  For the punishments, you can get an accountability partner that will help you feel less than great about missing your habit, or you can go even further and write out a contract, which helps reinforce your choices by creating a symbol of commitment, something others can hold you to, but it also spells out just how you're going to pay up should you fail in your commitment.  

That's' the core, obviously.  Most skills are things you have to practice at to get better with.  However, what really stands out about skills here is something called flow.  This is about the experience, and I found the most useful information regarding this in the book The Rise of Superman.  Flow states are powerful states that bring out the best in a person.  They release all the brain's most powerful neurochemicals.  This helps inform what skills to pursue, as well as get an idea, perhaps, of what God has made you for, what purpose he has for you.  Flow states are complicated, too, like habits, but they have been studies extensively and there are things that one can do to pursue them, as well as use them to reinforce the habits you want to pursue.  Flow is about a balance between boredom and anxiety.  When a thing is too hard, we generate anxiety and soon give up trying.  When a thing is too easy, we get bored and give up soon, too.  When a thing is just barely beyond the levels of our current skill levels and requires serious attention to overcome, that's when flow starts to happen.  The four stages of flow are as follows: struggle, release, flow, and recovery.  The struggle is real and its all about getting better at the skills you use for your flow state.  Release is giving yourself a break before the big event, letting all the pieces fall into place.  The flow is the main attraction, this is where you get hyper-focused and lose track of time and do something amazing.  Recovery is about getting your feet under you again, because flow is hard and draining and takes a lot of resources out of you.  

If you can find a skill that you flow in, then it'll be easier turning practice into a habit.  The flow element supercharges the reward part of the habit cycle.  If you can do it right, then you can find something your good at, something you love, and just get better and better at it.  That's the end goal.