Self-Management Skills: The Definitive Guide for Success and Happiness

Do you want to create lasting success and live a more fulfilling life? Then you shouldn’t underestimate how important it is to develop your self-management skills. Because without the tools to manage yourself, you will never feel truly fulfilled. 

Here is why:

The main reason why most people give up on their dreams is because of internal conflicts. 

Your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings affect how you act and behave. Consequently, this impacts the course of your life and the future you create. 

In other words, your mentality impacts your level of success and happiness. 

But your mind also affects the everyday quality of your life. And to avoid living a life of quiet desperation, then working on your inner game should be a part of your life.

Failing to do so has disastrous consequences.

In this article, we dive deeper into why that is. And you will also learn the best ways to improve your self-management skills. That way, you can enjoy life and your successes to the fullest.

Let’s dive in!

What is Self-Management

Self-management is the ability to manage yourself and take full responsibility for your life. That includes stuff like regulating your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. 

Google gives us the following definition:

The first point to note from this definition is that self-management is also about well-being. As mentioned in the intro, having a strong mentality already improves well-being on its own.

But another form of well-being is taking care of yourself. Think about the simple stuff like taking a nurturing shower, getting quality sleep, and spending time on self-reflection.

Self-care positively impacts your ability to manage yourself. It also makes you feel good about yourself, which speeds up your learning curve while developing self-management skills.

What is also interesting is the example in the definition. 

What you can take from this part is that self-management also comes down to knowledge and awareness. More specifically, self-knowledge and self-awareness.

You must understand before you can manage.

For better self-management, you need to improve your self-awareness. And this is a process that takes some time and effort.

Unsurprisingly, having patience will benefit you when improving your self-management skills. Getting upset because you don’t see immediate change is one of the greatest mistakes you can make.

Why is Self-Management Important

You are reading this because you want to live a better and more meaningful life. And if you want to have long-lasting success in that, self-management skills are a necessity.

So can’t you achieve success without it?

Yes, you can. But not developing this skill comes at a price.

In the book, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy, Raj reveals the foundation for happiness. And though money is great to have, it is not the main ingredient for a good life. 

Worse yet, if money is your prime motivation, you set yourself up for suffering.

And unfortunately, we have far too many examples to see why this is true.

How many wealthy individuals end up miserable and become addicts? There are many such stories in Hollywood alone. Though wealth buys you many things, it won’t solve your inner struggles.

On the surface, having fame and wealth sounds cool. But without a strong mentality, it has disastrous consequences.

Are you not convinced yet?

Let’s take a look at one of the happiest people on earth: Buddhists. Though lacking masses of wealth, they feel more fulfilled about their life than most wealthy individuals.

And the simple reason is that they have mastered their mind. And in my observation, these are the two core components to that:

• Self-management: they develop mastery over their minds and actions
• Self-less service: their focus is on service, not themselves

It doesn’t mean that you should abandon your desire to achieve monetary success to become a monk in a monastery.

But no matter what your goals are, I hope you understand the importance of developing self-management skills. 

Self-management improves the relationships with yourself and others. Both of those are components for living your best life.

So are you ready to set yourself up for lasting success and joy?

Best Guides to Improve Self-Management

There are many self-management skills that you can learn and improve. And I’ve written a couple of guides that dive deeper into the core topics.

Here is a list of the best guides for each of the main topics:

• 7 Steps to control your thoughts
• Changing self-limiting beliefs
• Why mindset is everything

List of Important Self-Management Skills

The topic of self-management is quite an extensive one with many more branches. The best way to go about this is by deciding which skills are most beneficial to you right now.

With clear goals, it becomes easier to pick the right self-management skills to prioritize. And if you’re not sure, then start by gaining more self-awareness.

• Self-awareness: is the foundation for improving all other self-management skills. Every form of change begins with awareness.
• Self-reflection: is one of the best tools to gain self-awareness. And this simple habit comes with many benefits.
• Stress-management: though short-term stress can benefit you, not managing chronic stress can cause many problems, like depression.
• Self-control: refers to the ability to manage your behavior in the appearance of temptation and impulses. With self-control, you can delay short-term gratification for better benefits over the long term.
• Responsibility: gives you more freedom and control. Though you don’t control everything that happens to you, you always choose your response.
• Self-motivation: is the ability to take action, even when you don’t feel like it. And the amount of action you take is a key factor for the success you will achieve.
• Resilience: determines how fast you can get back up after a beatdown. Since life always throws unexpected challenges, this is a great skill to have.
• Attention: is a scarce commodity due to an increasing number of distractions and temptations. Developing the ability to pay undivided attention is a valuable skill.
• Patience: is as scarce as attention in the 21st century. Developing your relationship with time increases the amount of joy in the process and improves your chances for success.
• Adaptability: is how fast you can adapt to the changes around you. Covid-19 shows how important this skill is for a better quality of life.
• Reliability: means that you do what you say you’re going to do. Focus on consistently delivering on your promises as best as you can. 
• Kindness: improves your relationship with others and the one with yourself too. Being kind to others improves how you feel about yourself.
• Compassion: is one step beyond kindness because it takes more effort. Also, with higher levels of compassion, unimportant struggles get less of your attention.
• Well-being: is a popular yet undervalued topic. Taking time out of your day to take care of yourself is key for sustainable success.

Tips to Better Manage Yourself

The list of self-management skills may cause you to feel overwhelmed by choice. The thing to remember is that you shouldn’t focus on everything at once.

So where do you start?

The following tips help you with that question.

Tip 1: Have a Personal Vision

Life has many more options to offer than one could master. And instead of trying to develop everything, focus on developing the skills that benefit you the most.

This is where a personal vision comes into play.

With a clear direction for your life, it becomes easier to decide what skills you need. Gaining clarity reduces your options and the overwhelming feelings that come with it.

But what if you don’t know what you should do? 

No problem. It’s okay to not know what to do with your life. It may take a long time to develop a personal vision for what you want your life to be. 

What’s more important is that you set a clear direction for yourself. You can always change (and almost everyone will) at a later stage. Set a BIG goal for a desire that you’ve got.

Tip 2: Create a Plan of Action

Most people have a dream or desire. Some of the most popular ones are traveling, buying or building the perfect house, and having more freedom. 

But without a plan to get there, you will never arrive.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail

– Benjamin Franklin

You need a plan for developing your self-management skills if you want to achieve success with it. It becomes your map that you can refer to when you get stuck.

Keep in mind that your plan may change over time, like your vision and goals. Have a plan but stay flexible with it through time. 

Tip 3: Focus on Your Locus of Control

A cause of frustration for the majority of people are things that they can’t control. The nature of those frustrations often shows up in the form of complaints and finger-pointing behavior.

The problem is that your future rarely improves with this.

A better approach is to focus on what you can control. What can you do differently instead? Where can you shift your attention to that would make a difference?

When you change these questions, you shift your focus.

And when you focus on what you can control, you also feel in control. That’s how you experience mental freedom. And it’s how you ignite your creativity.

Next time you feel upset with something you can’t control, ask yourself better questions.

Tip 4: Live by Your Values

Having a set of values helps you to make decisions and stay consistent. Of course, that raises the first question: what are your values?

Or perhaps even, what are values? 

Values are your most important priorities in life. For example, if you value trust, you make being trustworthy one of your top priorities. 

In other words, these are the rules you live by.

Though “rules” may sound restricting and boring, quite the opposite is true. Because in reality, the values you set for yourself give you more freedom.

The reason is that many of the decisions become much easier to make. Values automatically filter out the options that don’t match them. And this is especially helpful in times when you face temptations with disastrous long-term consequences.

Learn more about how to identify your values.

Tip 5: Think Before You Speak

Self-management is an important tool when engaging with other people. And even more so when the emotional intensity is high in heated situations.

Especially during those moments, you want to think before you speak.

And when you speak, you want to weigh the words you choose. The more you develop your self-management skills, the more mastery you get over your emotions. And the easier it becomes to weigh your words at the moment.

Though it sounds easy, this stuff is quite challenging.

So here is an extra tip, which comes from one of my favorite books: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey even dedicates a full chapter to this tip:

Seek to understand, before being understood.

When you keep that in mind, you automatically think before you speak. Though still easier said than done, you can only develop this further through practice.

Tip 6: Become Interesting, Instead of Interested

The next tip is one of the best self-management tips I’ve come across for social interactions. And especially if you’re an introvert, this tip may help you to overcome social anxiety.

When you worry about what to say to someone or how to be interesting, you experience anxiety. But when you change the script and try to be interested instead, everything changes.

Not only is it much easier to ask questions, but people also love talking about themselves. 

The only trap to watch out for is becoming like an interviewer. It freaks people out when you rapid-fire one question after the other. Give people some time to ask you questions too. And when they do, avoid answering with a simple yes or no.

Besides that, this tip is pure gold for managing yourself through social gatherings.

Tip 7: Take Care of Yourself

The final tip is to take care of yourself. Both physically and mentally. And also both in the long-term and the short-term. 

Physical examples are taking a shower, making your hair, shaving, and more. And every once in a while, treat yourself by taking a massage or going to the sauna.

Mental examples are self-reflection, meditation, or journaling. And in the long term, make sure to have clarity on your goals and vision once in a while.

These simple actions help you to better manage yourself. 

When you take care of yourself, it shows that you value yourself. And that boosts your self-esteem, success, and happiness.

Best Books on Self-Management

If you want to improve your self-management skills even further, I highly recommend these books:

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
2. Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker
3. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Each of these books provides a ton of value. And I read these books at least once a year because of it. In addition, check out the most life-changing books and the best books about emotional intelligence.

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