The Path of Self Improvement

 In continuation to my last article and my deductions from the book ‘Get Better at Getting Better’ by Sh. Chandramouli Venkatesan, I am reminded of a statement given by Late Sh. G D Birla to the students and teachers of Birla Public School, Pilani, where he spoke about the importance of moving forward continuously, or else other people would take over. The statement truly conveys the need of continuous learning and growth to be able to stay relevant in today’s highly competitive scenarios.

Human Beings by nature are capable of understanding and appreciating evolution. Everyone wants to become better; nobody wants to remain the same. It is only when even after putting in efforts, we do not see enough improvements that we give up and eventually stagnate. Thinking about why our efforts might not reap the required results, I am compelled to draw your attention towards our learning techniques. We are usually more inclined to know the answers rather than finding the path to reach to that answer. And more often than not, we make the mistake of teaching the same to our children. The young inquisitive minds rely on the advice given by parents and teachers or various training sessions, documentaries, books, workshops, seminars etc they are exposed to, for developing their problem-solving mechanism. But the applicability of those learnings in real life situations remain a distant dream as mostly ideal situations are discussed in these theoretical learning techniques. It thus becomes imperative that family members, parents, teachers and the education system give a lot of importance to instill in children, the need to know the method of finding the answer rather than the answer itself. And this is why we should emphasize on self - learning and self – improvement.

Talking about ‘self – learning’, I do not imply learning without any support from external agencies, rather it means developing a deliberate strategy towards getting better, which is different from just working hard. This strategy should be about identifying one’s strengths and weaknesses and working in both areas, thus striving to initially develop the capability to succeed and then subsequently improving it. This mantra will help children become competent in finding solutions to any unknown problems they might face in future, by applying the knowledge they gain today.

The purpose of getting better is being able to reap better results with the same amount of effort.

 It is a transition towards being able to respond to the future better, without which it becomes difficult to succeed. The author of the book, Sh. Venkatesan states an example of two very well-known cricketers, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, who kept getting better at their game and became as we know them today, while many others with the same amount of potential could not become as popular, owing to a slower pace of getting better.

Most of us complain that we work as hard as our peers, but do not achieve the desired results. This may be true and what we really need to do in such cases is determine what areas to get better in and how. The answer to ‘what’ part of this question may be found in the deliberate strategy for getting better, as mentioned earlier. For the ‘how’ part, the author of the book talks about these simple yet highly effective methods:

1.     Getting better by yourself: As the name suggests, this is a technique of improving without any external help. Let me try explaining this with an example. We usually see children work very hard before examinations. And most students focus only on scoring high marks. Now, if children change their objective to learning new things each day and gaining knowledge instead of just marks, it will not only make their concepts clearer but also reform their approach towards exams and learning in general. Although peer pressure is important, but what is more important is a competition with self. The intent of competing with self before competing with others will help them aim at getting better. Once a person starts to want to get better, they will set expectations from oneself and that will be the beginning of improving by self. This method might sound difficult and impractical and therefore the following techniques would be of help:

 

A.    The Review Process: The purpose of reviewing is to go from answers to method of finding the answers. For an effective reviewing, after each day, each exam, each activity, each project, one should ask, ‘What could I have done to arrive at a better outcome?’ The answer to this question will lead to a review and thus set grounds for improvement in the method each time.

 

B.     The Reflection Process: The process of reflection should not be confused with review. Reflection aims at discovering the core capability issues that need to be improved. Reflection is looking for patterns over various situations to identify and then tackle the weaknesses that come up repeatedly. The question you ask yourself here is, ‘Why could I not get the better outcome the first time itself’. What one needs to be careful of while reflection is the tendency to externalize the problem as opposed to accepting one’s own shortcomings. Thus reflection will be helpful only if done with honesty, humility and openness.

 

2.     Getting better by leveraging others: This method involves making use of all external resources available. To understand this method better, listing the participants in a child’s external environment is primary. A child’s external environment consists of parents, teachers, friends, family members, books, trainings, curricular and extra - curricular activities etc. In my own experience, these external resources are often very important to accelerate the get better journey but sadly we do not use these well enough. The best way for a child to leverage people around him, especially elders, is by taking their instructions. The willingness to seek and follow elder’s advice and being receptive to constructive criticism, is the way to go. But here again, the willingness should not be of seeking answers, rather the methods to reach the answers.

We often try and inculcate the habit of reading in children. But to be able to leverage the books and / or training programs etc, the child should be able to see the applicability of those learnings in real life. Thus reading good books will only help if the child goes a step further from just knowing the content to embedding it and then implement it in real life.

Another way of leveraging the external environment is by observing others, be it parents, teachers or peers, and learning from them. This is a way of learning from other people’s mistakes and getting better based on what they have or have not done.

 

3.     Getting better by making others better: It is said, teaching is a lifelong process of learning. This next method of getting better involves learning by helping others learn. When talking about children, the applicability of this method seems possible in two ways. One, by helping peers and the other, by helping elders. If children, who are good in a particular subject or topic or sport, help other children who aren’t as good but are inclined towards learning more, this will not only help the weaker child, but also help the good child become better. This healthy exchange of ideas will help them get a wider perspective of things and thus encourage a more holistic learning. 

Similarly, if children show curiosity in knowing the answer to ‘how’ about things they learn, it will force parents and teachers to find out answers to those ‘how’ to be able to answer the child. This will help all the parties involved, grow. But as adults, what we need to be careful about is not dismissing their questions and thus help building a high quality eco system.

 

4.     Make and implement a get better plan: The inferences drawn from the above listed methods should now be used to formulate a get better plan. The plan is nothing but a systematic representation of the conclusions drawn from the review and reflection processes, listing them in order of priority and time. Thus, the things which have high recurrence and high importance should be addressed first followed by things of high priority and low recurrence. For e.g., for a basketball player, inter – house matches in his school have a higher recurrence than inter school tournament. Thus, laying more emphasis on improving during the inter house matches will lead to a more continuous growth. Although, I am in no way trying invalidate the more rigorous training and practice required before a bigger match or annual examinations, which are events of high importance and low recurrence.

To conclude I would say, getting better is a continuous process and fundamental to growth. One-time results do not ensure progress. The capability of producing those results every time is what will ensure long term success. Let us take an example to understand this better. Three friends A, B and C felt hungry past midnight and decided to search for a restaurant. After driving for about an hour, they found a place. After eating, A says, in future instead of wasting time roaming, I will directly come to this restaurant. B says, this restaurant is opposite railway station. So, there is a good chance that joints near railway stations remain open at this time. Next time, I will locate the nearest railway station to find a place to eat. C says, this restaurant was near the railway station. The same would probably apply to other transport hubs like bus stop and airport. So, next time, I shall locate the nearest transport hub and find an eating joint there.(Example from the book referred herein)

As we see, in the above example, all three put equal amount of effort, but the degrees of improvement differ. The key to testing the efficiency of your get better plan is the degree of enhancement of results with a less than proportional increase in efforts. Further, making a ‘get better’ plan will be a futile exercise without its effective implementation. As the author of the book also says, for losing weight and getting fitter, going to a dietician and making a diet plan is not enough. No results will be seen unless one implements the plan. This is what will make a sustainable difference.

Although the book has been written based on the lives of working professionals and I’ve tried to apply it to student life, it actually is universally applicable to people from all walks of life. We as parents and teachers should therefore try to implement these methods in our daily lives, thus leading our children by example.