Having followed the idea of self-improvement within my own life and having had the beneficial difference it can bring be proven to me, I now look at the idea of how self-improvement and being better could be championed as an aspirational goal and on a national level. How might it look if we collectively, as a society, lived into the idea of always seeking to do better and to be better than we did and were before. What would happen if this virtuous message of being better grew as a movement? What ideas might we put forward, insights might we gain, what skills may we seek to encourage, what virtues might be collected, what problems might we solve? What if, for example, every day for a year, our journalists, politicians, government department leaders, government workers and citizens, all embraced the idea of seeking out areas of their work each day, where they could push for an improvement. If we did this in a coordinated fashion, what frustrations and injustices could we eliminate?

Now when we look at the idea of being better on the level of a country, we need to look at the truth of being better. It is not just one person's subjective opinon of what is better or a personal delusion of what is better; we have to look at a good way of defining what actually in fact is better. We need to talk about being better as a tangible, measurable, agreed phenomenon otherwise it will end up being just one person's or one group's subjective view of being better. Instead we must examine and analyse the measures to be taken that are proposed as being better. As another consideration, politicians as an example can't just pretend to be interested in being better or else they will have missed the point of the exercise entirely. Sorry to say but the stereotype and generalisation of a politician is someone that lies to the public and has a superficial way of supporting things that the public thinks is important in order to win votes so they can push their own agenda. Whether this is true of any individual politician or not is another matter. But if you are a politician reading this and wanting to be seen to be supporting this being better initiative, I fully encourage you to take on the idea of being a better breed of politician by seeking to be better as a person and as a public servant. It would be the best way to cast off any of those lingering stereotypes and generalisations. It would be the best way to show that you are genuinely interested in supporting the being better initiative as a real, tangible and measurable improvement movement.

As we look at being better we also need to agree that it is not at all helpful to get stuck on the negative of whether or not we have actually achieved a difficult improvement. What I mean by this is that being better as a movement, can come with great social, emotional and tangible benefit but there is another side to this. If we set for ourselves a goal of being better and we don't achieve better, this is not necesarily a negative. It is simply not an improvement. It may be that we have continued to do the great work that was done previously; or we maybe have slipped one or two points down which is actually not so bad. We shouldn't be punishing ourselves or others for this but instead we should simply ask again... "How can we be better?" If we attempted an improvement and did not succeed at that, how can we be better at being better? Perhaps our aspirations were unrealistic, perhaps there were circumstances unforeseen, perhaps our measures were not fair measures, perhaps there was good work done and it is realistic to expect some minor performance fluctuations. Again it is not wrong and not a fair criticism to not improve on what is already great, but it is worth taking a look to see what improvements could be made. Of course if there is genuine wrong; a harmful aspect of our social activity that absolutely must be corrected; then this perhaps should be treated more seriously than with a superficial or minor performance improvement. This requires an overhaul.

So Self Improvement on a National Level is not a tool for our critics to use against us, instead it is an aspirational goal that will keep us always ahead of those same critics. They may be critical as a function of their own personal negativity and point of view, what matters is our measureable reality. And if we are constantly and genuinely seeking improvement then our measureable reality will again and again prove to be developing with integrity. If we are constantly and genuinely seeking improvement then perhaps we will be listening to our critics and using any valid points within their criticisms as a call for even more improvement.

Proposed Implementation

The following suggestions are provided as a way to start implementing the basic concept of Self Improvement and Being Better as an initiative to improve the lives and outlook for individuals as well as for our nation as a whole:

• Emotion, psychology and philosophy training in schools. This would introduce students to some of the different ways to model the human condition. It would educate them on the basic operations of the human mind, show them the relevance of philosophy and how it can be used to change a person's outlook on reality. They would learn the impact that their emotions can have on their outlook and by contrast they would learn how strong emotions can shape and obscure a person's understanding of the world around them. Students would also learn how to seek out and utilise tools, information, ideas and techniques aimed at overcoming personal psychological issues as a way of taking control of the development of their own mind.
• Emotion, psychology and philosophy training available as adult learning initiatives. All the benefits as described above, with an age appropriate focus.
• Declare a national "Self Improvement Week" and run it as a festival each year encouraging people to take a look at what education, information, ideas, tools and techniques are available to them. The advertising of the event acting as a reminder to citizens to have a look at their own personal development.
• Create an "Improvement Department" inside of each major government bureacracy. Their duty is to look at social and political bodies at work, to look at their reason for existing, to observe and detail any areas that could be improved having regard for that purpose and to propose changes. These dapartments reporting to and involving the public where appropriate and using the public as a way of crowdsourcing solutions and suggestions for improvement. Politify being one tool they could use to do this.

Suggested Discussion Topics

• The personal benefits of self-improvement.
• Self improvement techniques that could bring wide social benefit.
• Psychological and philosophical cautions.
• The science and measure of self improvement.
• Avoiding fallacy, woo, subjective changes, intangibles and counter productive behaviours.
• Avoiding the bias of cynicism, criticism and the protection of self-delusion when evaluating outlook shifting techniques of self improvement.
• "Being Better" initiatives that could be suggested for beneficial social change.
• Government bureacracies that need an "Improvement Department" now.
• The best way to implement a government "Improvement Department" within our bureacracies.