racing to the finish

So the blackwood went really well. Ride conditions were not ideal and did not quite get the 30kms/hr time I wanted.
But that is old news.

Today I am thinking about self improvement. For the last couple of days my mind has been fighting through the sludge of boredom and depression. So I have been reading Lifehack.org and then found Breaking Free (which I am not so sure about yet.)
Something that I heard ages ago was that if you want to change something, do it slowly. Humans hate change. We hate to move away from what we know and it scares us. The best way to prevent change is to get inspired and change your whole life at once. That will last a week (or until the coffee runs out) and then collapse in a heap because it is unsustainable.
It is all about not getting inspired. It is all about changing anyway even if we don't feel like it. And it is all about one small change at a time. Get the change part of your lifestyle and then do the next one. Then in five years time we will not be in the same place doing the same thing. It will feel like we have not changed because it happened so slowly.

Everyone loves and exciting, life-changing, inspiring article or lecture. I have been wondering about all of this. If a person was to strive to better himself everyday and made little changes all the time, how long would it take him to be perfect? Is it possible? Is there enough time in a persons life? Is that what being enlightened means? Or holy? Or can only God do that? I am not getting religious (or maybe I am a bit - but I don't mean to). I was just wondering what is at the end of all this self improvement. You know what I want - happiness. That is all.
Such a small and then most incredibly massive goal.