When Julia thinks about self-improvement, she usually pictures turning herself into a gym rat, deleting Instagram, more strategically accelerating her career, or getting rid of all the food in her house that has more than five ingredients on the labels.
She’s not alone. When we think of self-improvement, we often think of dramatic or obvious changes. But quieter, less visible changes are often more accessible to us.
Julia doesn’t always have the energy for grand gestures, but she does want to grow and become a better version of herself. Overhauling all her habits isn’t realistic right now, but quieter shifts are. You might feel the same.
Here are five changes that may only be noticeable to you but can, over time, have a dramatic impact on your well-being and success.
1. Be Kinder to the You of Today
We’re often frustrated with who we are today. We want to reach new levels or regain abilities we’ve lost. If you’re ambitious, there’s always a gap between what you want to do and what you can do.
Most people wait to be kind to themselves until after they improve. But the person doing the improving needs kindness now.
The flawed you of today is who will do the work to become the stronger, wiser you of tomorrow.
So be kind to the person you are today.
This attitude is what sets the foundation for the other self-improvement tips here. It’s also a strategy itself. If you simply spoke more kindly to yourself while striving to grow, you’d likely improve more.
2. Look Back at Your Work
When we’re done with a task, especially if it was emotionally weighty or tiring, we just want to be done with it. Once a project is submitted, it’s out of sight, out of mind, and we move on to the next thing.
Instead of putting it behind you, reflect on your process to improve it.
AI can be helpful for this. Imagine you wrote a report with five versions, each involving back-and-forth emails with your client. If privacy allows, you could have AI look at the differences between revisions, or even the email exchanges, and summarize the patterns in the changes.
Over time, by doing this across several projects, you might see patterns emerge that could help you streamline your process, cut down the back-and-forth, or better utilize the process of revision to make a good impression on the client (through your receptiveness and professionalism).
When doing this, be aware that AI can overfit (focusing too narrowly on your project details instead of broader patterns), so its suggestions may describe what happened rather than predict what will work next time.
3. Use the Exploit-Explore Principle Somewhere in Your Life
Imagine your day as a maze. You know a route to get from the start to the finish, because it’s the one you take every day, but you don’t know if that’s the best route because you haven’t explored every possibility.
This is where the exploit-explore principle comes in. It’s not optimal to always do what we’ve always done, but nor is it best to always try something new. As a guideline, repeat your current best process roughly 80% of the time and explore a new way the rest of the time. Sometimes you’ll find a better way.
Apply this principle somewhere in your life. For example, once a week, Julia might try a different way to wind down from work than she usually does.
4. Reconsider Your Loudest “Should”
What we tell ourselves the most, we often question the least.
Your loudest “should” might not be essential, or even helpful.
We all have beliefs about how we could be more successful. “I should wake up at 6 am.” “I should do a Masters.” “I should start a podcast.” These beliefs get louder through repetition, from us telling ourselves or from social messages we’re internalizing. Eventually they become unquestioned truths. We see them as requirements rather than options.
But repetition isn’t wisdom.
Ask yourself: If my loudest “should” weren’t true, how would I succeed another way?
5. Improve How You Handle Curve Balls
Let’s return to Julia. When she thinks of self-improvement, everything that comes to mind involves being proactive, setting goals and achieving them. When we don’t have that in us, an alternative is to reactively self-improve.
Imagine she gets a text with a code to confirm a purchase on a German website. She’s not German or shopping for Berlin bus tickets. She realizes her credit card has been compromised. She immediately feels a stress reaction, considers all the hassle she is about to go through and feels aggrieved that a dishonest person has created work for her when she already had a full to-do list.
But she catches herself. She’s working on quietly improving her reactivity. She doesn’t want to give the situation any more energy than it needs, so she dials her reaction down. She calls her credit card company. There isn’t much waiting. They send her a new card. She waits to see if an auto payment still goes through without her updating the company with her new card number, and it does. She’s happy she didn’t let the dishonest person take anything more from her by having a larger reaction.
Over time, reacting more calmly adds up. It reduces stress and, more and more, becomes your default response.
Subtle, Internal Changes Count as Self-Improvement
The most powerful changes aren’t always the most visible. Changes in self-talk, reactions, and learning from completed work compound like all habit changes do. You can use awareness and reflection to guide these shifts. They won’t feel as dramatic (or taxing) as a new diet or earning a new certificate, but they’ll help you become a better version of yourself. When energy is limited, these strategies remain accessible.
