Looking back at my life so far, I can see a continuous story of improvement in any stage of my progress. As a 7 year old child, a middle school student, in high school and the period after that – at every time I was seeking to improve, change the reality for me and get towards what I felt the strongest emotions about.
The thing about improving is that for me the biggest changes where I faced the most challenging situations and overcame all the obstacles became so because I was so strong and determined in doing the change, I look back and can not see any other option to have happened. I simply had to succeed because I felt like I must do it. Whether it is weight loss or social life, only when I feel that fire, that really deep emotion and understood it deeply, I was able to relay this sensation and tie it to motivation that was needed of me to get it done.
While being motivated by yourself and getting to do the changes you feel strongest about is not a bad trait, I recently realise that, like any thing in our lives – it can have downsides. Working in such way, I let my emotions, my emotional state, my life circumstances and convenience a big part in effecting the rate of my improvement. If it doesn’t hurt, if I can’t see it clearly, if I am comfortable where I am – all these states prevent me from getting better and perusing my improvement.
On a deeper level, I feel that myself and perhaps others who have experienced similar things, see ourselves as something that isn’t right, that needs to be fixed and that is the ‘base level’ that we build our changes on. If you have picked up a self help book and read it feeling you are doing something profound, you might relate to what I describe here. You might have been in a bad place, felt like you need to change something and shape up your life in some way, in order to make what is wrong now, right.
Viewing yourself as something that needs to be repaired, leaves room for denial of self love, lack of self acceptance and looking forward to change yourself fundamentally in order to be ‘alright’. This, in my experience is not beneficial on the long run – as overcoming challenges and reaching goals is fulfilling and absolutely a positive change, the general well being does not change drastically (complex issue that needs to be explored separately) and more importantly – achieving the short term goals does not necessarily relive you from the bad thought pattern that was fuelled on self hatred and not accepting yourself. This leads you to pick up another self help book or feel the same hard feelings about the next thing that makes you feel down. Problem not solved, as you don’t come to help yourself from a perspective of wellness but from a place of pain, fear and denial – some of it is reinforced by you acting upon it.
A realisation I start to see is that feeling down and coming to improve from a place of bad emotions and wishing for yourself to have been different or better, fuels the opposite of what I want to have in my life which is self love and acceptance, feelings of happiness, appreciating the moment and living confidently right now, without any self doubt or disconnect from the present.
Perhaps a better approach toward self improvement includes this self love which allows you to make the most of your time right from the start, and bases the motivation on things you wish to improve from the need to become better, be better for yourself and the people around you. All this with understanding that all you wish to change won’t account for your happiness, and loving and accepting oneself is key for a healthy living. This way, when you succeed to improve in something that is meaningful to you, your brain learns that the self love and acceptance, that good mindset you based your actions upon, is what you connect to when you improve and become a better person and not the contrary feelings of fear and pain.
Embracing this approach allows you to choose your battles instead of feeling forced into them, and enables you to control the things you do instead of being led by emotions that are in some way out of your control.
Making this change might prove difficult in practicality, but embracing this perspective and consciencely choosing to frame your efforts in that way, is crucial for leading a better life and worth the effort.