Some of the most drastic self improvement measures anyone can take involve changing their mind, rather than any kind of physical situation. One of the main things that fans of self improvement advocate is trying to remove, or at least depress, your negative impulses. This can have a big effect on you, making your life seem better and also making you a more attractive person to spend time with. A new attitude can be the beginning of a new you.

At this junction, an old phrase becomes apposite: “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. Other adages along the same lines exist – such as “every cloud has a silver lining” – but for most the former is the most astute. It is all about taking the bitter, unpleasant things in life and making them more palatable.

It is natural human instinct to react negatively when something bad happens to us, but very rarely does that negativity ever produce any results. Sitting around talking about how annoyed or disappointed you are achieves nothing but perhaps making you feel a touch better. One of the biggest parts of self improvement is to take that bad situation and try and see the good in it. This takes work and practice, but eventually can lead to a more positive, less cynical – and therefore more pleasant – you. There is a positive to everything – you just might have to look hard to find it.

It isn’t, however, what adulthood is about. Adulthood is about realising that some things aren’t possible. This might sound like a ridiculously simple sentiment, but it’s something a worrying amount of people fail to grasp.

In truth, it’s easy to see why, and the blame does not lay solely at the feet of the individual. In modern society, we’re foisted the idea of the ‘can do!’ attitude. If you want something, you’re encouraged to get it – and worry about the consequences later. When we can turn back time’s effect on the body and spend money without actually having it, a lot of people fail to see why they can’t have it all. These are the people that quit their jobs to form a band and six months later, with no money and no home, still say it was worth it, because they lived their dream. It wasn’t worth it, and a full five years on, those people have seen the light and just refer to their band period as ‘The Embarrassing Incident’.

The biggest key to self improvement is to understand, and accept, your limits. You may still dream of being a fighter pilot, but to achieve true contentment you need to see that it isn’t going to happen. Instead, when embarking on a course of self improvement, see what you realistically can change. Maybe pay off your mortgage early or give more to charity – obtainable goals are the key, and through them and not their flight-of-fancy counterparts, you will see your life improve.

Yet it is really the late 1980s and 90s that brought self improvement and self help to life. The boom was huge and seemingly ever-lasting, going from very little to an awful lot. self improvement found it’s way in to popular culture and has never really let go, making an admirable leap – that probably made some marketing guru a fortune – from hippy-like to generally accepted.

The self improvement industry is, quite literally, huge. If you type ’self improvement’ into Amazon, over 10,000 books alone will be listed for your perusal. There is then the huge numbers of websites dedicated to creating a better you. Google Blog Search lists over 500,000 blog posts that have some element of self improvement contained within their text.

There are then hundreds of self-styled “life coaches”, some of whom claim that using their unique skills they can teach you how to live a better life. No matter what you’ve got to spend, it would seem that any amount will buy a little self improvement.

The problem with such a saturated market is that, for someone beginning to explore self improvement, the options can seem endless and mind boggling.

The easy answer is to look for things focusing on the aspect of life that you yourself which to improve. This may seem simple, but in the mire it can sometimes take a little effort to find something truly relevant. When you’ve found what you think you’re looking for, be smart and check previous user reviews. Don’t be misled by outlandish claims of miracle works on the back of a book or website banner – find out for yourself what real people really think.

If at first you don’t succeed, don’t dismiss the entire industry because of one bad experience. There clearly is something in self improvement, or it wouldn’t be such a dominant market, so keep trying until you find the exact right fit.

Your sense of self should be looked upon in the way that grand artists view their masterpieces – they never quite know when they’re finished. In the case of your self, how can you ever really know you’re as happy as you possibly could be? There are times in life that everyone experiences that, when they happen, genuinely seem like they’re the happiest they could be – but then something happens years later that blows that prior experience out of the water.

Very few people on this earth can look in the mirror, at both body and soul, and be truly content. Philosophers as far back as Ancient Greece have pondered the concept of happiness, often stating that happiness is subjective. For example, if a man earning $30,000 a year and was given $1,000 as a gift, he’d be delighted. On the opposite side, if a man worth $30 million were given $1,000, they’d probably think it was nice – but it wouldn’t make them as happy as the first man.

What this point is trying to illustrate is that, throughout life, we as human beings change. Once upon a time that man worth $30 million – unless it was an inheritance – would have been as happy with $1,000 as the first man. As his life has gone on, his experiences of happiness and joy have changed – and so do yours. Maybe not to such an extreme extent, but in life you should never stop learning.

Put simply, there is always room for improvement. How can one person ever declare themselves truly “finished”? Is there no aspect of your life – really, genuinely – which could do with a little tweaking? If you can definitely answer no, then congratulations. If, as is more likely, the answer is yes, then self improvement can help you become the person you can be. This doesn’t mean the current version of you is bad, but the future one could be even better.