Self-improvement is an ever evolving thing. And having this fact in mind it’s fairly hard to recognize the real progress, value the results for what they are. We either tend to over-praise whatever happens, or fall in a entirely different category, where every progress is devalued, neglected.

So, how to know the results? How to recognize the shift for better? How to know the difference in order to label the change without doubt?

It’s pretty hard answering this, isn’t it?

We may be deep into denial of real progress, deliberately devaluating our efforts, or have our head buried in the sand, only thinking that we are making some progress.

Try these 6 ways in order to measure the self-improvement you’ve enrolled into.

1. Evaluate the problems If the thing that was bothering you in the past is still by any chance present today, chances are you are only partially addressing the problems in your life. Self-improvement then, no matter how progressive and intentional, lacks a crucial segment. If you are still having the yesterday worries upon your shoulders, then it is maybe time to change gears, adjust and rethink your self-improvement strategy, and give another try.

2. Be objective on the results by comparing The problem with measuring self-improvement lays deeply in the fact that you don’t have a model to compare yourself up against. Therefore, realizing this, you have only yourself to try and beat. And at first this seams rather easy. We start somewhere down there, and try climbing one bar after another. But it’s only when reaching a decent high that we lose track on the beginning, the start, and henceforth we lose our model for comparison. Here is my suggestion: Try setting checkpoints down the road, so you have a better chance tracking your progress. Comparing yourself against the yesterday you is easy, but it will not do you any favor. Try comparing yourself with what you were like let’s say last summer, or the holiday season, or this time last year. You get the picture, right? Just set checkpoints.

3. Check the goals Before you started you probably had some laid goals in front of you. And that’s half the success, right? The reason why this is so will become clearer now, when you start reminiscing of those goals behind you. If you’ve chosen some reasonable goals, then the easiest way to measure self-improvement is to see where you stand in terms of completing them. If your goal was to, let’s say lose weight, and you are doing your routine of exercising for a while, nothing of this is right if there isn’t any progress. You probably buried your head deep down into the routine, and failed to notice that nothing has ever changed. If so, it’s time to shake things up a bit. Maybe you need to make radical changes? A new routine, a new type of diet, a different way of tracking your progress… When I was struggling with weight loss, I made a bold goal – to lose 5 kg i 1 week. Ridiculous as it sounded to me then, it enabled me to look at my training from a different perspective, and eliminate most of the exercises from my routine, in order to make room for others.

4. Self-improvement is about how you feel

Self-improvement can solve many problems you had, but in the end of the day your goal is to feel better, be happier, enjoy life more. If at any point of your self-improvement journey, you decide that you don’t feel this way, then it’s time for change – as simple as that.

5. Have you beaten the old enemies? Bad habits like procrastination, laziness, gossip, lethargy, inability to properly manage time… They are usually the common enemies self-improvement is aiming against. Try and spot any remain of these in your life. Measure the ones already erased. You will get a firm perception this way.