Self Improvement is an Addictive Habit

If there were self-improvers anonymous meetings I would be a permanent attendee for I am addicted to personal development. Now that I have started down this path I find that I cannot help but push myself to achieve more and improve more. One of my main hobbies has become the act of continually seeking to improve my life and the lives of those around me. I have noticed that other serial self-improvers "suffer" the same consequences, perpetually improving their lives and achieving more and more success as they do so. Through this observation, and my own experience, I have made a simple conclusion: self improvement is an addictive habit.

Self Improvement is an addictive habit

Addictions are generally bad things. The word itself has a strong negative connotation and the usage generally implies a lack of control and self-awareness. But not all addictions are bad.

Positive things with positive outcomes can also be addictive. Productivity, achievement and success all trigger a "natural high", a mental state of supreme happiness, awareness, and confidence. Self improvement just happens to ticks all these boxes.

The result of self improvement is a positive increase in all the above areas and so much more. It creates a positive aura, one that attracts more positivity and success, and it stimulates our mind and body and encourages us to start operating at a higher level. This is what makes it so addictive.

A friend of mine actually inspired this article when we were talking about home improvement. Here is his direct quote, and proof that once you start improving something, your mind begins to open up to see other opportunities:

Installing a new wardrobe was a bad idea...I now want to do all the other stuff on my To Do list. I'd kind of forgotten about all the things, but now we've started I'm remembering them all and when I walk around the house now all I see is things that need improving.

The beauty of self improvement is that it is never ending. There is always something else that can be learned and adapted to our lives. There are always new experiences, new people, and new challenges presented in our lives, and this is the only dangerous aspect of being addicted to self improvement - it easy to forget that there is no specific end goal in mind and that the simple act of self improvement is what provides happiness. This is summed up perfectly in the oft-quoted line by Souza:

Happiness is the journey, not the destination.

So for those just starting down the self improvement path, be mindful that it is the actual deed of self improvement that provides us with the happiness - the feeling of adding to our skills and knowledge, of making ourselves a better person, and of achieving more success. Do not get too hung up on thinking about the future and where you are going, but rather on living (and improving) in the present moment.

Or You Could Stagnate...

The alternative to this wonderful addiction called self improvement is that of stagnating. By stagnating I mean making the decision (conscious or not) to stay exactly as you are right now.

If you are not willing to challenge yourself, to grow, and to improve then what are you doing? Are you saying there is nothing in your life that needs changing? Are you saying that you couldn't be happier?

If you can truly answer yes to those questions (and I highly doubt that you can) then I have one more question: is there nothing more that you can do in your life that could help improve the life of others?

Even if you had everything you ever wanted, if you really were living your perfect life, I believe that you could still find even more happiness simply by helping others. And isn't the ability to sacrifice and be charitable, just one of the results of self improvement? See what I did there?

There is never a valid reason to stagnate in your life but, sadly, I see this as the default stance more and more people are taking. They are "giving up" and just accepting a life of mediocrity, anger, and unhappiness instead of trying to make a change. It doesn't take much. All you need to do is actually make a start.

Start Improving Today

I know that self improvement is an addictive habit because I am experiencing it first hand, but for those first-timers, and those who are trying to break out of their habit of stagnation, it can feel almost impossible to start. But don't worry, it's not impossible. You just need to start small.

Try being grateful for one thing, or giving a fresh compliment to someone, every day. Try some positive affirmations before you leave the home or just focus on observing your own thought patterns and living in the moment. It doesn't matter what you do, just as long as you do something!

Once you start down the path of improvement it will become near impossible to stop. The first time you work on self improvement is like the first snowflake that causes the avalanche - pretty soon the desire to improve is raging and the amount of improvement you seek is like a torrent of snow tumbling down a mountain.

But unlike the snow avalanche, this metaphorical one is not destructive. It is actually quite the opposite. Imagine an avalanche that only removed rubbish, beautified the landscape, and made the mountain an even more amazing place than it already was. That is what the avalanche of self improvement does in your life - it is a constant force that pushes away the negativity and stimulates the development of positivity. All it needs is that one snowflake to start it off...

Go forth and seek out self improvement. Your happiness depends on it.

Image: vichie81

Start Being Awesome

Today I have a cold. I am sitting here in front of the computer feeling sick, wallowing in self pity, and watching the pile of used snotty tissues steadily building around me. Gross huh? But this little cold has also reminded me that sometimes it is too easy for us to get caught up in feeling sorry for ourselves and being negative. It is too easy to play the life isn't fair card and sook in the corner about what is going on.

Just because it's easy to do doesn't make it right to do it though.

I could sit here feeling sorry for myself and my runny nose. I could mope about and pretend as if somehow this cold is a sign of the world "picking on me" and I could whinge about it to everyone I see, telling them of how things just go against me.

Or I could take a lesson from How I met Your Mother character Barney Stinson:

Whenever I start feeling sick, I just stop being sick and be awesome instead.

That is the perfect example of how to use a positive attitude to turn a bad situation around. Being sick already sucks so why make it worse by being a negative nancy? It's a terrible waste of time and effort. Try being happy and positive instead. Try being awesome, even if you have to pretend at first.

This is exactly what Barney does in that same episode when asked if he is sick:

I'm fine. My nose is just overflowing with awesome and I had to get some of it out.

I love it!

That is the exact opposite of what most people do when they are sick. Everyone likes to complain and feel sorry for themselves when they are sick but what does that really achieve? Is being a pain-in-the-arse, negative, so-and-so achieving anything other than annoying everyone else around you?

Positivity Breeds Positivity

This doesn't just apply to being sick either - it applies to EVERYTHING in our lives.

Ever noticed when you start having a "bad day" that things just seem to get worse? You might sleep through your alarm and miss your train, so you rush to work but then you realise you've got the wrong pants on and you left your wallet at home which makes you angry, and then while you're trying to think of an excuse to avoid that annoying meeting you've got later on you stub your toe outside and spill your coffee all over yourself. It makes you feel like screaming about how bad your day is.

I've got some bad news for you. You created that bad day. It is entirely your fault that you had such a bad day.

Many people will disagree and try to lay the blame somewhere else, but the reality is that any emotional judgment of your day is 100% in your control. You control how you see and interpret the world. If you train your brain to only see a set of negative experiences than that is exactly what you will see. You will only notice the bad stuff while all the good stuff just flies by unnoticed.

The flip side is that if you choose to start with a positive attitude, and start being awesome, then you will start having more of the good days. Those days where everything just feels right. Those days where you are happy, excited, and energetic. Those days where you cannot help but smile when something bad happens because everything else is just so damn good!

Eventually those bad things just wont happen as often. Your positive attitude will draw in more positive actions. You will attract people, situations, and events that mirror your attitude. Your life will be filled with so much positivity that those "bad" things will just be minuscule blemishes on an otherwise wonderful life.

You control your attitude. You determine whether you see things as good or bad, happy or sad, positive or negative. You have the power to make your life better by simply changing your attitude.

Start being awesome. Image: photostock

Are You Making Things Harder Than They Really Are?

You wake up to the incessant buzzing of your alarm clock which is set all too early for a Friday. Peeking outside you notice how beautiful the day is already looking - the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and there is not a cloud in sight. And you're miserable. You've got a million things to do at work (hence the early morning alarm) and they are all due today. You can feel the stress building inside you already and you're not even out of bed yet! It's going to be a tough day…

If this sounds all too familiar then I am willing to bet that you often feel like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it in, and I am also willing to bet that you are wrong. You have plenty of time but you are just making things harder than they really are.

Making Things Harder Than They Are

This is something us humans love to do. We love to make things harder than they actually are, for any number of pseudo-psychological reasons, and it can be a very difficulty habit to break out of.

It is hard to break because the symptoms are not always obvious.There are dozens of little actions that we do every day that purposefully make our lives more difficult and often they are so small, or so ingrained in us, that we don't even notice them.

Of course this means that we just assume things are hard and we have to deal with it, when the reality is much different. The reality is that things are generally simple and we choose to make them harder.

It is not always obvious that we are doing this. Like many things, being at the centre of the problem actually makes it harder to identify it.

When we are slap-bang in the middle of a stressful and difficult time our mind is focused on finding solutions to the problems, not on questioning why the problems exist. But that is exactly what I am encouraging you to do.

Why We Make Things Harder

Whenever you are faced with a difficult situation that is causing you stress, stop and ask yourself if you contributed to it. Did you somehow make this situation harder? If you want to play the victim and pretend that all this bad stuff just happens to you then stop reading now. You wont be willing to change anyway.

We all make things harder for ourselves at different times in our life, and some people more-so than others. But why do we do it at all? Why would we purposefully choose to make something harder than it needs to be?

Making Excuses

The most obvious reason is that it gives us an out. It provides us with an excuse for mistakes, or sub-par performances, and allows us to exaggerate any successes. We create a fictitious win-win situation where we feel excused if we do bad and feel praised when we do well. But this is bullshit.

When we make things harder we only make it harder within our own frame of reference meaning that, for most of the time, other people do not see the added difficulty we create. They see the problem in the original, simplified manner which means they wont be likely to accept the excuse or find you deserving of praise.

How many times have you had a task sit in your inbox, or on your to-do list, for weeks only for you to get stuck into it in the last few days before the deadline? You end up going a little crazy as you try to cram weeks of work into a few days and somehow you manage to get it all done and you feel like you've worked your butt off to do it. You may have too, but in the eyes of your boss, or your client, or whoever was waiting for that task, all you have done is finish the task in the allotted time. Nothing special there. But if you had missed that deadline they would have been very unhappy. You had weeks to do it and you still couldn't manage!

Making things difficult to have an excuse doesn't help anyone and is just plain wrong.

Thriving on Drama

The next biggest reason why we make things harder for ourselves is that we naturally thrive on the drama. When we are immersed into a stressful situation our body produces chemicals and hormones that amp us up to perform at abnormal levels.

This is known as our fight-or-flight mechanism and in previous centuries it was very useful. It was built into our bodies to enable us to be ready to take instant action whenever we were in mortal peril. But our modern lifestyle rarely has a need for this mechanism so we create excess stress in our life as a cheat. A cheat which is not doing anyone any favours.

The energy we generate in fight-or-flight mode is designed for very short bursts. It is literally used to escape danger by fighting it or fleeing from it. These are not long-term activities.

When we use this as our main source of energy just to "get things done" we force our body to run on this intense energy for periods much longer than it expects to. Our body is not designed to do this and the result is any number of negative consequences - physical and mental burn-out, tiredness, inability to focus afterwards, headaches, and so on.

Picture a time that you worked under an immense stress (legitimate or manufactured) for longer than a few days. Do you remember how you felt afterwards? Most people cannot keep it up for long before they crash, and the bad news is that the longer you over-use this fight-or-flight mechanism the bigger the crash will be.

Avoidance

Avoidance is the next most obvious reason we subconsciously make things harder than they need to be and this ties in closely to making excuses. If we make things so hard and complex that we are constantly busy then we can feel a little bit better that we didn't get those crappy tasks done.

It's the perfect excuse for not cutting the grass, not calling the phone company, and not joining that nudist colony.

In reality it is not an excuse at all. It's just poor time management.

The worst form of avoidance though is not the small and boring tasks but the big and important ones. Being "too busy" has become the excuse of choice for those not willing to take a chance and pursue their dreams. These people manufacture a life where they are constantly busy, working hard, and feeling stressed, so they have the perfect excuse for not achieving their dreams. This stems from a fear of failure and a fear of success and neither are valid things to fear.

Avoidance is never the right option.

Making Your Life Easier Instead

The key to changing this behaviour is to become more aware of your actions, your motives, and your choices. Start by analysing your actions to identify when you are subconsciously making your life harder than it needs to be. Once you recognise that you are doing it you can start to change it.

Making the change comes from attacking the root cause of the problem. Think about why you are creating more difficulty than is required. Are you making excuses or avoiding something? Do you just love the pressure of an impending deadline? Or is there some other hidden reason?

Once you figure out the reason behind your actions you can begin to implement changes - use a daily to-do list to stop you from procrastinating, halve all your deadlines so you don't have time to waste, or run away and join the circus.

The choice is yours but don't waste your life pretending to busy.

Image: Michal Marcol

Learn to Love Yourself

I used to dislike myself a lot. And I mean, a lot. I saw myself as an unattractive, no-hoper, who was doomed to a string of bad relationships and ill-formed friendships. Funny how these ideas can be self-fulfilling. Everything I saw in myself manifested and my life went suitably pear-shaped. It was a dark time but also a valuable one as it became the driving force behind my dramatic shift towards personal development. Even today, whenever I need to keep myself on track I look back to those days to remind myself how much progress I have made. And the biggest step was learning to love myself again.

Learning to Love Yourself

Ok, ok for the cynics and skeptics out there this whole "loving yourself" business sounds like some new-age hippy fad. And to those with dirty minds it sounds…well, dirty. It's neither of those, but feel free to use it as an excuse for the latter if you want.

Learning to love yourself is about putting aside all the negative ideas you have about yourself and focusing on the positives. It can be very hard, especially if you have a lot of limiting self-beliefs, but the rewards are fantastic - happiness, confidence, great friends, and successful loving relationships. Do these sound like things you would like in your life? Of course they are, and you can get them all but you have to start loving yourself first!

The First Step

I am going to keep this article short so here is just the first step down the path of loving yourself.

Spend 5 minutes everyday looking at yourself in the mirror. Observe any negative thought that floats into your mind and then find a positive about yourself that counters it. Verbalise the positive and repeat it while looking yourself in the eye. Say it with passion and pride like you mean it!

I recommend doing this twice a day (at the start and end) to keep those positive thoughts at the forefront of your mind. Pretty soon you will start believing them. I cannot do this activity without ending up with a big smile on my face and the attitude to match it.

Future Work

If you have some very strong negative thought patterns that are hard to break keep an eye out for an article coming soon on how to destroy your limiting beliefs. The process is pretty confronting but works wonders for getting rid of those useless and debilitating negative thoughts. Don't forget you can subscribe to my email newsletter to say updated on everything that happens here.

Go ahead and start loving yourself. You are worth it.

Image: m_bartosch

Learning to Say Sorry Properly

For most people saying sorry has just become a trick we learn to perform whenever the appropriate social cues present themselves. Girlfriend crying? Say sorry. Got caught in a lie? Say sorry. Forgot your anniversary? You'd better say sorry unless you want to sleep on the couch forever. The problem is that for too many people the words of an apology are empty and nothing more than lip service. But learning when and how to say sorry is a major part of self improvement and ultimately becoming happy.

The Story of a Compulsive Apologiser

A few years back I was a "people pleaser". I had very low self confidence and I desperately wanted to be liked. By everyone. No matter if it was some random I had just met I was always seeking approval from others. It was terrible. I was so focused on getting other people to like me that I generally did whatever I could to make other people happy, often at my own expense. The biggest example was my habit of saying sorry for everything.

If we ran out of toilet paper I would apologise for not getting some more. Even if my housemates had just been at the shops. If got into one of those awkward moments when a stranger and I tried to pass each other but kept moving in the same direction I would apologise. It was crazy. This went on for years until I woke up to myself and began my self development journey.

First stop on my journey was to develop some self confidence and I did this with good success. Deep down I did love and value myself for who I was but I just had to remind myself. But in this process I developed the attitude of never saying sorry because I thought it showed weakness. No apologies. Ever. Even if I was a complete jackass.

This attitude was just as silly as the original one. I had gone from one extreme to the other and it wasn't pretty. I offended people, I hurt people, and I caused some major hiccups in my personal relationships.

Early on in our dating days I occasionally said or did something to hurt Sophie emotionally. Nothing major, but at times I could be a little rude and Sophie would take offensive. But I would not say sorry because I was too much of a man to do that. It would sacrifice all the power in the relationship to her and I would be forever apologising. Luckily for me, I learned that this attitude was wrong and I managed to turn it around before I ruined the relationship.

In the process I have discovered how powerful saying sorry is for encouraging personal growth. When you say sorry and actually mean it then you have shown the ability to observe and assess your own actions, recognise how they impact the world around you, and take ownership of your mistakes. This is how you learn about yourself and develop as a human being. It is the basis for all personal growth.

Act with Good Intentions

I now focus on acting with good intentions and saying sorry only when its truly needed.  As long as I am always aiming to help others, but not to the detriment of myself, then my actions will be respected. As long as I maintain positivity and never receive a benefit at the expense of others, I will not need to apologise.

But even following this new motto I still have times where I need to apologise. I am not perfect and I will make mistakes but as long as I keep saying sorry when and how I should then I will always be improving myself and nurturing healthy positive relationships.

When to Say Sorry

The best time to apologise is anytime. It does not have to be right after the moment. It can be days, weeks, months, or even years down the track but I can promise you that any sincere apology is worth it, not matter how long it has been.

The key is that it must be sincere. When you actually feel real sorrow for the pain you have caused in another then you are ready to think about how to actually say sorry.

How to Say Sorry

Sorry is not a magic word. You cannot just say it and expect the world to right itself again. The magic of an apology comes from the feeling and sincerity behind it.

The apology must come from the heart and must not be for any personal reason or gain. It must not be just because you are feeling guilty, or because you want everyone to like you. You should only say sorry when you truly regret your actions that caused a negative outcome in someone's life.

The tricky area is to define what a negative outcome is. Often people will react negatively to actions in their life which are actually positive. They either cannot see the positivity, do not want to see it, or have trained themselves to be negative-focused.

For example, providing constructive criticism to a friend is positive because it highlights how their actions affect you and encourages them to grow. Initially the friend may reject the criticism and display negative emotions but this does not mean you should apologise for it. If you were acting with good intentions, not purposefully trying to hurt your friend, then in the long run it will be a positive action.

What to Say Sorry For

Following on my that example and my life motto of acting with good intentions, an important skill to learn is what to say sorry for. If you keep these two scenarios in your mind and apologise appropriately when they arise then you will begin to experience a happier and more positive life:

• When you act with bad intentions - this includes taking advantage of a situation at the expense of others, ignoring the effects your decisions have on others, or purposefully hurting others for any reason. This is simply not on in any situation and and apology is required.
• When your actions are neither good nor bad intentioned but cause hurt in someone - these are likely to be accidents and you should be willing to apologise if they cause pain for other people. But watch out for people who will try to make them bigger than they really are. It was an accident so apologise once and move on.

Getting Your Apologies Valued

One thing I noticed is that after refusing to apologise for so long, when I started saying sorry again people respected it more. It became obvious to myself and others that I am truly sorry whenever I apologise which gives it much more weight.

I encourage you to look at your own usage of "sorry" and question whether it has lost its meaning for you too. Hopefully you experience a similarly positive journey like I did.

Fitness February - lose fat, build muscle, run better

February 2011 is going to be all about fitness. Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net fame is a shining light for how to break bad habits and introduce good ones and in the past five years he has quit smoking, lost 50 pounds, run several marathons, tripled his income, wrote a novel, wrote several e-books, and the list just keeps going. One of his key concepts is to only focus on changing one habit at a time which is a simple yet effective method consider the basic human behavioral stance is to oppose major change. Following this concept I have decided to dedicate the next 28 days to fitness.

Fitness February

The word "fitness" is pretty generic and is too vague on its own. The changes I am implementing will be a little bit more than just one thing but they all come under the fitness umbrella term. I think I can manage that. But as I mentioned previously, setting measurable goals and tracking data is the best way to remain focused on a task, so I will break it down a bit more to set myself tasks that I can easily measure my success against.

February Goals

Visit the doctor - I generally manage to steer clear of doctors baring semi-emergency experiences (collapsed lung, broken wrist, attacked by a clothesline). But this month I am going to schedule an appointment jus to get a full assessment on my health. I want to know how I am going now and what areas I need to work on.

Visit a Feldenkrais expert/Physio/Chiropractor - I was researching neck relaxation techniques the other day and stumbled upon a reference to the Feldenkrais Method. This phrase particularly piqued my interest: "changes in our ability to move are inseparable from changes in our conscious perception of ourselves as embodied", so I will be visiting a Feldenkrais practitioner to see what we can discover about how I use body. If I cannot find a good practitioner then I will settle for a physiotherapist or chiropractor for the time being.

Trim body fat - before I started My 4 Hour Body adventure two weeks ago I estimated my body fat percentage to be at 17.5 - 20%. That is too high. I am a naturally sporty person and I do not like being out of shape so my goal is to trim down to 10% body fat and reduce waist and hip measurements by a further 2cm (already down 4.5cm and 2cm respectively).

Gain size in muscles - I want to be one of those guys who kisses his biceps before going to bed and wears nothing but singlets, even in winter. Ok, not quite that bad, but some extra size in the right places would be great. I want to gain at least 2cm in my biceps, chest, and thighs.

Improve my running style and ability - I want to do some analysis on my running style and improve it to be more efficient. I am thinking about creating my "30 year bucket list" (things to do before I turn 30) and competing in a marathon\triathlon will definitely be included. So I want to iron out any kinks in my running style. As a subset to this I want to be able to run 5km in under 30 minutes by the end of February.

I think that will do. February is going to be great and by March I am going to be a leaner, fitter, stronger, and happier version of myself. And I will be ready for my next lifestyle challenge!

Update (2/2/11): You can now read the outcomes of Fitness February in this article.

Caffeine Withdrawal - Beat your addiction in 2 weeks

There are two distinct aspects of caffeine addiction that need to be addressed in order to break the addiction and overcome the withdrawal stage. Most people, however, only ever target one of the problem areas and are thus likely to fail. I will show you how to target both aspects and demonstrate the steps I took to go from drinking 3 coffees a day to being coffee-free in less than 2 weeks. The obvious problem that people target is the physiological addiction and related symptoms. This is where your body has adapted its natural functioning based on an expected regular caffeine intake. When you suddenly stop this, then the body reacts. Badly. This is what is called withdrawal. Symptoms vary for each person but for me, withdrawal consisted of strong headaches, grumpiness, and nearly falling asleep at my computer around 3pm. The good news for caffeine is that its withdrawal period is only around 2-3 weeks.

The second problem with caffeine addiction is the one that people overlook the most - habit. Habits are, by their very nature, hard to break. A habit is an acquired behavioural pattern that is performed subconsciously, and the more often it is performed, the more automatic the behaviour becomes. Professor of Social Psychology at Yale, John Bargh had this to say on forming habits:

"Features of an automatic behavior are all or some of: efficiency, lack of awareness, unintentionality, uncontrollability".

These are what we have to beat in order to break the habit.

If you are serious about controlling your caffeine intake then you need to address both the addiction and the habit to succeed. This is exactly what I did when I went from 3 coffees a day to none:

Step 1: Go "cold turkey" for as long as you can at the start

This is by far the hardest step but you need to push through the pain as long as you can to establish your baseline for the rest of the steps. You will experience the biggest withdrawal symptoms but I promise that the extra effort here will pay off later on. When you feel like you cannot go any more, reward yourself with some caffeine. I lasted 3 days. And then I had the biggest coffee I could find.

Step 2: Halve it!

Halve the time you lasted in Step 1 and wait this long until you have another drink. The reasoning for this is three-fold. Firstly we are mixing up the regularity of the caffeine intake, secondly we are reducing the severity of the withdrawal symptoms, and thirdly we are starting to break the habit.

Step 3: Introducing your new best friend: Decaf

Wait the same time again (half your cold turkey achievement from Step 1) before your next drink but this time make it a decaf. Set aside 10-15 minutes for this one and make sure you are mentally in the moment when drinking it. I really enjoy the taste of coffee so I found myself a very tasty decaf and sipped it slowly, savouring the flavour. Doing this is a reminder that we are consciously choosing the drink for enjoyment and not whatever pseudo-physiological reasons we have assigned to the drink (e.g. "I need a coffee to wake me up"). Do this step twice.

Step 4: Get back on the horse

Add an extra day to the wait time from Step 2 before rewarding yourself with a full-bloodied caffeine drink. Remember to focus on savouring the flavour and drink for enjoyment. Congratulations - you have now gone without caffeine nearly twice as long as your cold turkey achievement! Did you notice? I barely did - I had a slight headache towards the end but nowhere near as strong as Step 1.

Step 5: Push yourself again

Go caffeine free for double your time from Step 1. If you find yourself wavering before that time go back to Step 3.

That's it - begone devilish addiction! I went another 10 days before my next coffee and I had no withdrawal symptoms or habitual urges. If you find you are still struggling to maintain it just keep cycling between steps 3 and 5 adding more wait days between each time through.

Please consider your own situation before committing to using this method and if in doubt, contact your doctor first. Also, use some common sense - I nearly fell asleep sitting up during Step 1 so if you do something that could be even remotely dangerous when suffering sudden caffeine withdrawals (e.g. forklift driver, brain surgeon, game tester) then use your brain and plan your withdrawals to occur at a different time, like the weekend. Please do not endanger yourself or others. Otherwise be happy, be strong, and enjoy breaking your addiction!

Image: nuchylee