On Self Improvement
It's all about what's next. It get's drilled into us from a young age. In elementary school it’s all about middle school. In middle school it’s all about high school. In high school it’s all about college. In college it’s all about the ‘real world’. Then it’s the next job. The next promotion. The next digit in the bank account. The next weekend. The next bar. The next like. The next lover. The next pair of shoes. The next number on the scale. And on and on.
It’s anxiety inducing. It’s lunacy. It’s always the next thing that’s going to make you happy, fulfilled, whole. We’ve been fooled. We’ve fooled ourselves. Because everything you could ever possibly need to feel whole already exists inside of you.
I remember looking in the mirror as a teenager and feeling like I was too scrawny, like I wasn’t enough. At the end of high school, I decided I would do something about it. I started going to the gym and lifting weights regularly. Over the next few years, I put on 30 pounds of muscle. But when I looked at myself in the mirror, though I looked like a different human, I still felt the same. I still wasn’t enough. It could have been 100 pounds of muscle. I still would've felt insufficient.
The fundamental issue with the self improvement mindset is it creates a current version of yourself that you can never fully love.
“But you’re going to get complacent and lazy!!!!”
Contentment and complacency are totally different things. Fulfillment and ‘success’ are totally different things. In fact, when you hop off the hamster wheel toward ‘success’, you can start getting down to living as your most authentic self. That doesn’t bring laziness - it brings vitality.
When we use images, numbers, comparatives, and superlatives to define our sense of self-worth and the worth of others, value is created only in comparison to the inadequacy or suffering of others. This thinking gives rise to a world wherein we feel the need to keep each other down in order to uphold our own sense of self. But even if you’re winning, you’re losing. Superiority and inferiority are both delusions of cyclical egoic thinking rooted in ‘I’m not enough’.
Goals and objectives help us bring structure to our lives and passions. But they aren’t the thing. No matter how much money we have, no matter how hot the body we sculpt, no matter the asanas we can bend ourselves into, we will always need more, and suffer because of it - chained to our objectives, our deadlines, our scoreboards.
Reminder:
If it’s wholeness you’re after, it’s right under your nose. It’s here. Get engaged with and grateful for what is. You are enough. You are universal. You are it.
Agreed. Wholeness is fundamental like whole wheat bread.
But for the mind and spirit.
lol yes fundamental like whole wheat bread
self-improvement doesn't have to make you feel like you aren't enough. Improvement has many aspects to it. If you feel you're running after things you don't really want and those that make you feel like you're in a rat race, stop pursuing them and enjoy the calm in the moment. That's improvement too. Btw, this post was a good read :)
My point was more about self improvement for the sake of self improvement. The mind obsessing over getting to the next, better thing. In short, the self improvement mindset I'm referencing is driven by fear. No destination or achievement will fill that hole.
If you can let go of that fear, that gripping, that need to get to what's next, you can start living from a place of love. The rest follows. Growth isn't something you force, it's something you allow.
I agree with you but I still believe that improvement isn't always driven by fear. It comes naturally too when you stop pushing yourself for the sake of doing something great and move on with the flow.
I gotcha :)
Excellent post. 🙏🏽