Progressive Muscle Relaxation will teach you how to relax your muscles through a 2 step process. 

First, you tense particular muscle groups in your body, such as your neck and shoulders. 
Then, you release the tension and notice how your muscles feel when you relaxed. 

Studies have shown that progressive relaxation can lower overall stress levels and increase feelings of well-being. You can lower the level of stress you experience each day by spending 10 minutes tensing and relaxing your muscles.

People with anxiety are often so tense that they don’t even know what being relaxed feels like. Through practice you can learn to distinguish between a tensed muscle and a relaxed muscle. 
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Then, you can begin to “trigger” this relaxed state at the first sign of tension that accompanies your feelings of anxiety or stress.

A systematic review conducted in 2008 and published in the journal BMC Psychiatry showed the efficacy of relaxation training, including PMR, in the treatment of anxiety. 
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Therefore, if you are looking for evidence-based options to help treat your social anxiety, PMR may be a good choice.

Please note - Relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation can be helpful to relief mild to moderate stress and social anxiety. However, if you have severe untreated social anxiety, it is important to consult with a doctor or mental health professional to obtain suitable treatment.

1. How have your current habits impacted your health and mental tranquility?
2. What new habits would serve you better?
3. For each of your negative habits that cause stress or disharmony, describe a positive habit you could try that would give you the same or a similar benefit.
4. What new, positive habit would be easiest for you to implement? What would you gain from this habit?
5. How can you reward yourself when you attain milestones along the way? Why does that reward motivate you
6. What are your contingency plans for those days when it seems impossible to stick to your new habits?How would your life change if you adopted all the positive habits you’ve identified?

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If you find that you’re suffering from physical ailments that have no obvious physical cause, then stress might be the culprit.

Because of the mind-body connection between your mental health and physical health, stress can affect your body and mind in multiple ways.

Chronic stress can have hidden signs, but you can learn to recognize them. Stress or anxiety often appears physically as vague aches that have no obvious physical cause.
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Here are some common physical symptoms of stress and anxiety that you may not realize are psychological in origin.

When we get to the battlefield, we should pick the right luggage and opt for the bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. In life’s battle, we will get hit and bruised. Wearing bullet proof armor in life means “self change” – change that comes from within. Our attitude, our behavior, and our way of thinking.


Eventually, building your self esteem will lead to self improvement. If we become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do, it will be like a flame spreading from the inside out.
When we develop our self esteem, we have to take control of our self discipline, our mission, and our values. 


Self esteem brings about self improvement. How do you start to put up the blocks of self esteem?


Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you to self improvement by building a good self esteem first.
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You spot an eye-catching girl sitting by herself at a party. You think to yourself, “she looks so perfectly calm and confident.” 


But if you could read her mind, you would see clouds of thoughts and it might amaze you that she’s thinking “are people talking about why I am seated here alone?... Why don’t guys find me attractive? ...I don’t like my ankles.”


We look at a young business entrepreneur and say “Wow, what else can he ask for?”  He stares at himself at the mirror and murmur to himself “I hate my big ears…why have I so few friends.”
Some people never tires of talking. And in most conversations, it is only them who seems to be interested in the things they have to say. 


An important key to self improvement is to talk to a trusted friend. Find someone who you trust. Ask questions like “do you think I am ill-mannered?”, do I bore you when we are together, do my breath smell?” and so on..


Your friend’s answers may surprise you and he or she will know that you are interested in improving yourself. In return you may help your friend with positive criticism. This is a win-win situation.

​Remember, you cannot give what you do not have. Be a product of self improvement first before you can tell other people how to improve themselves. 


The first step to true self improvement is to accepting yourself. Stop thinking of yourselves as second-rate beings. Forget the repetitive thought of “If only I was richer... if only I was thinner” and so on. 
Being yourself is observing you, finding out how to express yourself and be pleased with who you are. 


For a few individuals, it's finding out how to love yourself, for other people, it's not shrouding who you are or altering things about you to fit in. 


You can't be yourself if you don't understand, know, and live with yourself first. It ought to be your basic goal to discover this. Attempt to take time for yourself and chew over your life and selections. 


Work at accepting errors and selections you've arrived at; they're complete and in the past, so there's no use howling over spilled milk. Quit caring about how individuals perceive you. 


It truly doesn't matter. It's unimaginable to be yourself when you're caught up in questioning "Do they think I'm comical? Does she think I'm plump? Do they believe I'm unintelligent?" 


To be yourself, you've got to release these concerns and just let your conduct flow, with only your thoughtfulness of other people as a filter — not their consideration of you. 
        

Self-improvement and self love is the virtue of acceptance and contentment. Happiness will follow where self improvement has taken place.
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​Everything that happens to us happens in purpose. 
Sometimes, one thing leads to another. Instead of  staying in a cage of fear and crying over past failures and experiences, rather treat them as teachers and they may just become your tools in both self-improvement and success.

​Did you watch the film Patch Adams? Hunter “patch” Adams is a medical student who did not make it through the board exams. After months of suffering in melancholy and depression, he decided to voluntarily admitted himself in a psychiatric ward, seeking for medical attention. As he stayed in hospital for many months, he met different people.

He met a catatonic, a mentally retarded, a schizophrenic and so on. He found ways of treating his own problems and he realized that he needs to get back on track, that he still want to become a doctor. The positive attitude he carried himself with brought him self improvement and great success. 


Did he succeed? He became the best doctor his country has ever known.

Take these tips:
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•    Stop thinking and feeling as if you’re a failure, because you’re not. How can others accept you if YOU can’t accept YOU?

•    When you see hunks and models on TV, think more on self- improvement, not self pitying.

•    When people feel so down and low about themselves, help them move up. Don’t go down with them. They’ll pull you down further and both of you will end up feeling inferior.

•    The world is a large room for lessons, not mistakes. There’s always a next time. Make rooms for self-improvement.

•    Take things one at a time. There is no overnight pill. Self improvement takes time but eventually leads to success. Just take one day at a time.

•    Set meaningful and achievable goals. It hopes and aims to result to an improved and better YOU.

•    Little things mean BIG to other people. Just greeting someone with a pat on the back can mean so much to someone else.
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•    Remember there’s no such thing as ‘over night success

Better Yourself Master Your Life
Are you living the life you really want? Make your life one you actually want to live by learning how look inside yourself and not to the outside world for answers.
The detailed and flexible worksheets in this helpful guide will help you break out of your rut and learn the path to a better you through self-reflection and analysis. Now available on AMAZON.

Proper goal setting makes you the master of your own future. Tomorrow is directly affected by the actions you take today. And guess what? You did what you did today because of the goals you have set. 


If you set specified goals, you will determine where you should focus your efforts. It will also weed out the distractions that can hinder your progress. 


Unrealistic weight-loss goals are a bad idea as they will undermine your efforts. 


There are two types of goals for weight loss. 


The first goal focus on the desired outcome you want to achieve. This goal gives you a target but does not address how you will achieve it. 


The second goal is a process goal which focus on the steps to take to achieve the desired outcome. 
For example, a process goal may be to walk 30 minutes each day and to drink water with every meal. -process goals are very helpful for weight loss as you focus on changing habits necessary for weight loss. 


Set SMART goals
Both your process and target goals should be according to these criteria:
•    Specific
•    Measurable
•    Attainable
•    Relevant
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Long-term and short-term goals
To make your overall goal more manageable you should set long-term goals which is then divided into many smaller weekly and daily goals - like bite-sized pieces.
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Keep track
Keep track of your weight loss goals. There are many tracking tools available online or you may visit the app store for a goal tracking app.
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Set realistic goals within a reasonable time frame
We have good intentions but within three days we bury them in a bowl of ice cream. Setting realistic goals means to take real stock of what you can do within a said time.
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Adjust your goals as needed
As you make progress in your weight loss plan, you will sometimes have to change your goals. That is ok an allow for that.
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Allow for setbacks
Every successful person has experienced setbacks. That is a normal part of life and a normal part of behavioural change. 
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Stay open minded
To be open-minded means to be flexible, an important key to successful change. Remember that we cannot learn new habits overnight and that it will take time.

“Success is the sum of small efforts—repeated day-in and day-out.”  —Robert Collier