3 Stages of Self-Improvement (How to Level Up)

Benedek Novak
3 min readOct 3, 2023

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Let me guess…

You are stuck on your self-improvement journey.

You do all the habits you should be doing, but you don’t see any real results.

You read countless books, watched hundreds of tutorials, and yet, don’t know where to go next…

You feel that your ‘self-improvement’ routines don’t lead to anywhere.

You progressed a lot since you started, but if you think deeper, you realize you haven’t achieved anything meaningful.

That’s because you are stuck in the first 2 stages of self-improvement.

Below, I describe all 3 stages of self-improvement, so you can avoid unnecessary pain, confusion, and wasted time, and start making real progress.

Stage 1: Base

At stage one, you discovered self-improvement, and you are learning about the basics.

You start doing the habits that books and influencers are telling you to do, without any purpose (cold showers, meditation, journaling, gym, reading, etc.)

You start gaining a little momentum, and your lifestyle is slowly becoming better.

You start gaining confidence and are proud of yourself for ‘being on self-improvement’.

But after a while, you realize that although you made progress in your lifestyle, you didn’t really achieve anything tangible.

You start to doubt the purpose of your practice.

Stage 2: General

At stage 2, in contrast with the previous stage, you are not mindlessly following the standard advice.

You are now learning about things you want to improve on, rather than what others tell you to.

You start to pursue your own curiosities and improve on them. This leads to a general improvement in multiple areas.

Now, self-improvement is a mindset, rather than something you are ‘on’.

You gain more momentum and start to grow a lot.

After a while, you look back and realize how much your mentality, lifestyle, and habits improved, and you see a lot of progress in multiple domains.

However, you didn’t actually achieve something meaningful.

You lack a sense of purpose and direction behind your practice.

That’s when stage 3 comes in.

Stage 3: Directed

This is the stage where you gain the most results.

You now have momentum from the first 2 stages and developed the necessary mindset, and traits to level up to this stage.

Now, self-improvement is baked into you.

You develop a more directed approach to your practice.

You develop a vision for your future and break that vision down into goals.

Your routine, learning, and energy goes into the progression toward your goals.

You let go of the habits that don’t serve your purpose (your vision and goals).

Your priority is to focus on the progress of your goals.

This directed approach will produce actual results, and your self-improvement practice will feel purposeful.

Hope you gained value!

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Benedek Novak

Exploring human performance, lifestyle design and self-improvement. Join my newsletter for free here: https://improvement-by-design.beehiiv.com/subscribe