Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yo Self (Check in with yourself)

Ice Cube sang it and now we should follow his concept to check-in with yourself to measure your well-being. I actually met Ice Cube in an elevator at the Four Season Hotel in Palo Alto. 

“You better check yo self before you wreck yo self ‘Cause I’m bad for your health… Chickity-check yo self before you wreck yo self”; he means to gauge yourself before you do something stupid.

Ice Cube’s point was clear, Check yo’ self (check-in with yourself) or I’m going to get you. Today, he may not get you, but you may get yourself in trouble. So take his advice and check-in with yourself to measure your well-being.

Here at UWB, we don’t like guns but his point is well taken: If you don’t check yo’ self you might wreck yo self. You, yourself, in fact, could be bad for your own health.

Checking in with yourself can help with a few things:

• Measure your well-being. Figuring out what you do that makes you happy and doing more of it.
• Comparing yourself to yourself and not others around you.
• Checking in against your habits or train of thoughts will help you to improve them.

Checking in with yourself is one of the most vitally important aspects of working on your personal well-being. Measuring your well-being and tracking your happiness levels are the first steps in improving your well-being. 

Why?

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This well-known quote—first coined by Peter Drucker, who is known as the man who invented modern business management. But this quote rings just as true in business as it does more broadly in life. Measure your results and measure your well-being.

You can’t possibly begin working to improve your something without knowing your starting point, and tracking it along the way until you eventually reach your goal or endpoint. We aren’t the only ones who do this. A Gallup poll surveys people around the world based on a ladder assessment.  A recent Atlantic article talked about measuring your happiness.

The challenge comes in how we measure this, especially because something like happiness or well-being is difficult to quantify. Many, if not all of the scales that we count on to measure these things in research are based on self-reports. Self-reports are hard to compare to one another as they have to take into account the unique differences in personalities between subjects. Some may tend to be more optimistic about their well-being levels whereas others may have a completely pessimistic view. 

When you check in with yourself, you will certainly start to learn about what makes you happier or gives you flow. That’s what we say in Ultimate Well-Being. You achieve daily flow and that gives you well-being and happiness. So, mind encompassing activities like cooking or reading a book lift up your well-being levels, do more of it. It’s really that simple. Ice cube didn’t say it like that but maybe he implied it.

You may ask what variables influence your daily flow?

One of them is your habits. Physical habits are a key to well-being because they give you structure, confidence, and clarity in life. Simply making your bed every morning, doing a small meditation, and journal session may seem trivial, but once you get into a rhythm, it’ll change your day. Tim Ferris has preached to master the mornings. The book Atomic Habits talks about this as well. We don’t just teach these but we form these habits at our Ultimate Well-Being Program.

From Shakespeare to Roosevelt, many have preached to compare to others, NOT. Theodore Roosevelt said, “comparison is the thief of joy.”  So comparing your well-being levels to yourself is the only way to measure how you are, in fact, doing? You’re not competing with other people to see who has the highest levels of happiness or well-being. You’re not even competing with yourself. Instead, the benefit comes from the introspection you gain from checking in. 

So take Ice Cube’s advice to heart. Slowing down and checking in on yourself and how your feeling is where the most important part of measuring your well-being comes in. Introspection comes from sitting down and asking yourself, “on a scale from 1-10 how do I feel right now?” Measuring your well-being allows you to work to understand your well-being. 

Check in with yourself, begin to measure your well-being. Join us at Ultimate Well-Being and do it with us.