When Does Self-Improvement Go Too Far?
Question of October
Maybe it’s because I’m 44. Middling is, after all, coming with a whole slew of new felt-senses and experiences—anyone else? I want to share a surprising and welcome one. “It’s okay,” has become my internal theme song—in my kitchen, driving, receiving disappointing news, scampering along forest trails, in the middle of an argument with my husband. I don’t feel it for larger collective issues but it’s there about my own personal terrain. This is brand NEW. When I met Chris in our early 20’s, I would side-eye him and his shaggy dark hair as he moved through the world with a general good-enough response to everything. On the sidelines, I didn’t understand. Good enough? What did that even mean? Who wants that? It seemed so floppy. It was not a speed on my personal dial. I was a young woman of spreadsheets and intention lists in my journal. I wanted anything and everything to evolve to be good as it could be. I wanted to fix it, make it better, improve upon it.
I could be better.
We could be better.
The world could be better.
There was so much to make better.
Familiar?
These days I’ve been asking myself: When does self-improvement go too far?
I want to make a distinction between self-improvement and community improvement. They are similar and related but they are also different. As of now, I still believe that community improvement—the deep, nourishing, inclusive kind—can’t go too far. Still wrestling with this one.
But modern people who are actively interested in evolving themselves now have all sorts of ways to measure their “improvement” (sleep trackers, to name a physical body example). I wonder, what would happen if I took my own foot off the gas pedal and just let the car coast. Would it arrive in the same place anyway?
Chris and I grew each other up and made two children who are wholly their own souls and whose fluidity in becoming I want to support. Without labels. Without ‘personalities.’ And yet, they each emerged with an unmistakable core essence/imprint. One more in the good-enough “it’s all good” camp. The other—more, in general, like me—with an intensity and focus in her eyes from the instant she was born.
If you are drawn to the human potential movement, you might have noticed the sharp edge of perfectionism that exists alongside all the delicious growth. We are “working” on ourselves. We are facing off with the no-good, even “sinister,” ego. We are regulating our unwieldy nervous systems. We are cleansing our bodies and minds continually to reach an ideal purity, even if no one admits to it. We are healing the ick and trauma, down to the deepest bone. We are attempting to prevent the explosion of the shadow or we might be “dancing” with it but with the aim to do something with it, sweep it up, evolve it, make it work for us. There is always a MISSION. Get closer. Get better. Get clearer. Get past it. Get wiser.
Go. Get. It.
Go. Be. It.
It’s exciting. It’s arousing. It’s meaty.
And it’s a lot of “go.”
Bo Neve continually grabs my face and says, “I love you so so much exactly as you are, mama.” It’s a new language to me. You mean I don’t have to change anything about me? She once stated that she had been put on this planet to love me. When I gave her permission to not take on that task, that it wasn’t her job to love me or make me feel any way in particular, she interrupted me and repeated with such surety, “I came here to love you.” She was 4 years old.
So far, my second-born generally gives me wide berth permission.
So far, my first-born generally sees me so deeply and holds me to the flames.
Because I have these two different types of mirrors/teachers in my daily life, I realize how essential both are for a life of fullness: nourished and growth-oriented.
As humans, we are wired to evolve. We want to learn and even feel the burn of building new muscles, physical and psycho-spiritual. It’s an integral part of species development. But sometimes the thrust toward expansion is held up as THE GOAL. Expand, expand. How capitalist. How colonialist. I want to honor contraction as the equally important counterpart of expansion. I want to get comfortable in that space, to bow at its feet and see its purpose. Breath requires both expansion and contraction as well as the transition between them. Neither one is permanent. I believe most of us know this cognitively.
It has taken me almost four decades to be willing to trust the contraction.
For so long it tasted like giving up.
As you read, how does your body respond to the idea of contraction?
A year ago, after my blood transfusion, I doubled-down on many of the lifestyle changes that had already been in the works. I found a woman who could guide me with some liver-supporting protocols. It was my style—humble, ancestral, completely food-based and not fancy or expensive or “hip” or restrictive in the end. It involved lots of old-fashioned beans. That they are shaped like ovaries really spoke to my metaphorical self. The first month required more intentional limitations and then it opened up in a very do-able way. It was all going smoothly with incredible results in my health and then I traveled and couldn’t stay on protocol as well. When I circled back with her to share my struggle, I was ready to slap my own hand and start all over again. Back to all those 1st-month limitations otherwise the healing wouldn’t really take. She paused. She said that Yes, often people start over: “But, for you Molly, I don’t think so. You don’t need to mobilized to do another hard thing. Just go back on the easy protocol next meal. Let’s give your nervous system something to feel relaxed about.”
My whole body settled down one big notch.
It’s okay.
It’s completely okay.
I can truly say that her words changed my internal tone. Oh, so if I’m relaxed, then the body actually starts to heal. Obvious, but not necessarily easy to inhabit for someone who has been conditioned and conditioned herself otherwise. For so long, I had been over-mobilizing to do “all the things” to heal myself (body and mind) but doing it at a high-stress pitch. Even when it looked serene, I was worried and deeply focused. No wonder “all the things” only worked for a little while.
Her invitation cleared years of my re-dos in an attempt to be better or get it right. What followed was unprecedented (for me) ease, expanding and contracting around this particular way of supporting my body. It has resulted in a steadiness and easy bounce-back in my system: cells, soul and all.
But what about everything that isn’t actually okay?
Yes, I hear you. Back to community (i.e. systems) improvement. Much in the world is not okay; it might never be okay. Our world requires people who are in full aliveness and push and motivation to make a change. I’m curious about the grey space where it’s both okay that it will never be okay and humans still work at trying to make it more okay.
I don’t have anything figured out.
I don’t believe there is a tidy-bow or end point to anything.
I’m often playing devil’s advocate with myself. I contradict my own ideas a lot.
Here, though, is how I’m playing with trusting the imperfection:
It’s never a blanket fairytale all-is-well sense. It’s nuanced. It’s okay that my loved one is mad at me, it’s okay that I’m feeling tangled-up inside, it’s okay that I’m noticing I wish I had said the thing differently, it’s okay that I feel like a dragon, it’s also okay that I notice I don’t want to be dragon, it’s okay that none of this feels okay. When I was confronting some shocking and devastating family news, one of my mentors gently said, “You’re right; it’s not okay. Can you let it be not okay?” It was her way of asking if I could be okay with it not being okay. The irony, of course, is that my man Chris has been asking that of me for over two decades. Maybe it’s some version of acceptance. Flowery universal statements always float away from me. I need to feel it to know it. I’m now inching my way toward okayness. I almost can’t believe it when it happens: Oh wow, here I am feeling okay enough in what would register in the past as a very not-okay moment.
I trust, above all, my internal nudge.
It lets me know when my “It’s okay” doesn’t have full legs. It’s okay that you aren’t okay with x, so what’s your impulse, what’s your next move, what’s the new way presenting itself?
Occasional Internal Nudge + Everyday Good Enough-ness might be my gold.
What’s yours?
How do you explore these edges?
Following the softness more often,
When Does Self-Improvement Go Too Far?
Self Improvement goes too far when it never graciously accommodates with an off ramp or a least a rest area, without self judgment for accessing them . I just glanced over at my book shelf. Almost every book I own is a self improvement book of sorts. Just in the past couple of months I have ‘allowed’ myself to buy some fictional stories, which include some classics. I realized years ago in a University class when I didn’t have anything to add to a literature conversation, just how much I have lived tuck inside self help books. If I could just Master the art of having my emotions all in tack, and perhaps earn a degree “Master of Arts in Happiness” to hang on the wall, then I could put down the self-instruction books with the Four Steps to arrive at wholeness. Then, I could pick up a book to read simply for the amusement of it. That would make me happy. In my mind, the privilege of reading for pleasure is like having to do your chores before you can play. But the chores of self-improvement never get done. It’s like the job of stocking a grocery store shelf. It’s always, always needing to be restocked. The need for replenishment is a never-ending task. For me, self-improvement has gone too far when I am not permitting myself to read just for fun. The joy of reading without feeling the need to have a takeaway that helps me to level up, now that sounds nice. Truth be told, I haven’t cracked open any of my new fictional classic stories. But I bought them, and I keep thinking about when I will read them. So that is a step in the right direction of self-improvement. (wink)