Five Practical Ways to Improve Yourself

Proven self-improvement tips from Freemasonry

We all want to be better. We want to be better at our job, better in our social lives, and better in our homes. The question is, how? How do you find a practical course of action? How do you stick to it? How do you know it works? You may be surprised to learn that Freemasonry offers solid self-improvement tips to help you be successful in life. Here are five tips for self-improvement that have been field-tested by Freemasons for more than 300 years. They may not be your keys to success in life–but they are proven steps to getting you onto the road to success.

1. Believe in something bigger than yourself

We’re not talking about dogma here. We’re not talking about the rules and regulations of a system. We’re talking about a powerful, enduring force that steers your heart daily. It might be God. The various faiths persist for a reason–they give their members lives meaning. Maybe you believe in art’s ability to capture the unique quality of the human spirit, our endeavors in the material, and elevate these into virtues that live on long after the artist has passed. Perhaps your belief is in the overwhelming complexity and divergent splendor of nature. Maybe you look to the myriad systems of order emerging from the seemingly chaotic flora and fauna of this world. Maybe you find eternal truth in the endless and hypnotic geometry of the universe. Each of these beliefs shares an aspect that’s foundational in truly successful people: a sense of awe and wonder in the face of something that exceeds the self. A glimpse, perhaps, of the eternal.

2. Be optimistic

Can something so intangible as optimism be practical? Optimism might seem like a naïve attitude–especially when the world seems like it’s going crazy. But optimism isn’t something that happens to you. It’s not a symptom of a comfortable life. Being optimistic is a choice and a discipline. It’s practical because you have to consciously engage optimism every day. And look, of course, there will be times in your life when things go sideways, and you are having severe problems. Putting on a happy face and acting positively when you’re in crisis is crazy. That’s not optimism; that’s a delusion. Hopefulness means that even when you are suffering, you trust that your circumstances are temporary. In that hopeful trust lies an enduring, functional optimism that will see you through.

3. Serve your community

When you think of charity, you probably think of the standard organizations working to do good in the world–the World Health Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, or UNICEF. You think of a volunteer in a gaudy vest at an intersection in your neighborhood. You toss loose change into their bucket, and you’ve helped out a charity, which is great. But the word means more than that. At its etymological root is the Latin word caritas, which means love. Being charitable means loving your community, your fellow man. Giving loose change is significant but imagine joining the donation bucket brigade by donating your time to charitable work. Maybe that means serving food for the homeless on the second Tuesday of every month. Maybe it means volunteering to help build a wheelchair ramp at a local shelter. Maybe it means reading to bedridden vets who can’t see the words on a page anymore but long for the beauty in a story. Maybe it means shoveling the sidewalk of the single mother who lives across the street. Maybe it’s as simple as a kind word to someone on your street, a nod to the guy in 2B, holding the door for the Amazon driver as she hauls a massive box into your building. The important thing is to do something, even a small thing, purposefully. It’s important to know that belonging to a community–to a neighborhood, a township, a group of people, a religion–means you are also one of its stewards.

4. Choose mastery over mindlessness

Everyone has a bad habits list. And everyone has a list of healthy habits to start. Habits form because we are creatures that rely on establishing routines to kind of automate our days. And that’s fine. If you had to consciously decide how to tie your shoes or comb your hair or walk down the stairs every time you did it, you’d be exhausted before lunch. And routines are fantastic ways to streamline your work–like habits you form on purpose. They help you get your work done on time. It’s a natural part of the human operating system.

Think about driving. You jump into your car and zoom off into the city and never think about the weirdly complex maneuvers of signaling and executing a lane change on the freeway. So many things happen in a few short seconds–you check your mirrors, gauge your speed, flick on the blinker, check your other mirrors, choose to steer into the next lane, fit your car behind the idiot in the Prius, then slow down and settle into the flow in your new route. You don’t think about any of this. It just happens.

But imagine yourself in downtown Chicago traffic on a Friday at 4:45 pm. You need to swerve across four busy lanes to make a left-hand turn, watch for the cars exiting the underground parking garage, weave through five million pedestrians, avoid a taxi who doesn’t believe in lanes, and make the light. It’s an intense maneuver, and you don’t do it often, and with the Friday after-work traffic, the whole scene is intense. You’re thinking about every little thing. You’re jacked into the myriad details of your environment. Fully conscious.

These are extreme examples of how we go through our days. Most often, you’re ‘driving highway.’ You’re following a well-worn groove through the routine of the afternoon, thinking about beating a level in your favorite game, working robotically. 

But what if you made a promise to yourself to remember to snap out of it and live in the moment. You manage to do it once or twice, but your routine is strong. In the one or two times you’re really participating in your day, those moments are almost thrilling. Right there in your regular day, you’re suddenly aware of the details of your environment–like when you’re cutting across afternoon traffic.

The next day, you make a promise to do it again, and this time you’re in one of those purposefully attentive moments when your systems analyst comes into the break room looking like the entire company’s future is perched precariously on her back. You can see it. You know it’s killing her. You know she’s about an inch away from losing her mind and jumping out a window. You look down at the coffee you just poured–and remember from some distant meeting that you both take it the same way. In a flash of intuition, you wordlessly hand her the cup. For just a half a second, the pressure eases off her shoulders, and she thanks you and says, “Honestly, that was everything. You made my day.”

5. Which is why the final tip is—be kind

This is the logical result of all the tips above. If you believe in something bigger than yourself, then you also think everyone you see, everyone you meet, lives under the umbrella of your belief. Which surely leads you to be more optimistic, since all circumstances are temporary under the constant of that eternal thing you believe in. This shows you to value your fellow-creatures’ lives enough to serve them humbly and sincerely, which reminds you that life is a limited resource and maybe you should pay closer attention to every moment. Which means you see the many, many small, seemingly insignificant opportunities to change the tenor of a moment. It means you have the motivation and presence of mind to choose, in those moments when others are casually cruel, when others are insufferable, when others are indifferent, when others are afraid to act–to render a kindness.

Kindness is a Freemason’s superpower. I like to call small acts of kindness ’micro heroics’ because there is a slim chance that engaging in a daily practice of being kind may save the world. We can all understand the dramatic effects of a single, great heroic act. But most of us won’t be running into a burning building any time soon. However, imagine the accumulated effect of hundreds of acts of micro-heroism building up day after day, week after week, year after year. At some point, all that accumulated kindness will tip the balance in someone’s life, and it’ll be like a miracle. You’ll have done the right thing at the right time to, with a single, seemingly insignificant act, change their life.  

And yours.