How To Become a Better Person

What type of person do you want to become? How do you want to be remembered as when you die?

These are questions I ask myself because it reminds me of how to act.

But David, shouldn’t you just be yourself?

I agree, but I also want to be a better version of myself.

When I look back and see myself 10 years ago, I’m glad I’m no longer the same me, but someone much stronger and wiser.

How strong? How wise?

That doesn’t matter.

It’s simply the fact that I changed for the better.

I brought this up because I constantly faced depression and anxiety from comparing myself to others.

This low grade anxiety developed because I never felt good enough as I always found someone who I thought was better than me in any given craft. Soon the anxiety gradually grew and shape shifted into an enveloping form of depression due to the enormous self created illusory mountain I couldn’t see myself getting on top of.

Fortunately that’s not where my head is at now, and I’m here to share with you the perspective of “character development” that allowed me to come out of this rat race.

First, I want to talk about something called resume virtues and eulogy virtues, coined by the author David Brooks.

The resume virtues are the list of skills you list on a resume to showcase for the job market. The eulogy resumes are deeper. They’re the virtues or characteristics that get talked about at your funeral. Whether you were honest, kind, courageous; what kind of relationships you formed, etc.

Even though eulogy resumes seem like the no brainer option we should all be focusing on, it’s easy to forget about it until we hit a life crisis.

Our education system and society orients us towards focusing on resume virtues, developing skills useful for our jobs, which allow us to make a living. Although it is great to work on technical skills, it has reached a point where some people are neglecting their own well being and character.

Sure, you could spend multiple nights to become the best person using Microsoft Excel at your office, but is it really worth all the potential relationships burned along the way?

Wouldn’t you rather be remembered as that person who was always there to listen to your friends and family when they needed you, or that person who was simply full of life?

That’s the person I’d like to be, and that’s the person who I end up respecting in the long run.

And if you don’t want to think about how other people remember you as your source of motivation, there’s another way I find joy in focusing on character development, or “eulogy virtues”

From my experience, one pillar of my happiness comes from growth. An improvement in any area of my life.

And I see that development in characteristics such as patience, self control, courage, perseverance, etc., similarly as getting stronger in the gym.

Like increasing the weights at the gym, I see an increase in the level of self control I have while resisting junk food, or perseverance from withstanding cold showers for a longer duration of time.

When I focus on these characteristics and the continuous development of them, the outside noise goes away.

What “this person” did, or what “that person” did, no longer matters. It’s just me, in the present moment.

So in sharing what I learned, I challenge you to ask yourself the same questions. What type of person do you want to become? How do you want to be remembered as when you die?

Maybe this can help you get out of your own head and move you one step closer to the person you are meant to become.

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Thank you for reading. Please share any thoughts you have down below.