What If Nothing About You Needs To Be Fixed?
What I'm about to say may sound counter-intuitive to my work in personal development, growth, and coaching. Like most things, it's not black or white. It's nuanced, and I invite you to sit with the intention behind what I'm saying, holding that in mind as you read on:
We've built an entire culture around the idea that there's always something to fix about ourselves. A habit to break, a trigger to manage, a flaw to smooth over before we're allowed to feel good about who we are.
Self-improvement isn't the problem. It's useful, even necessary.
But somewhere it got mangled into something else: an incessant message that you are a project that isn't finished yet.
After years of sitting with people at every level of success, I've come to see that almost nothing about you is purely good or purely bad. It's a spectrum.
I've also noticed that the same perfectionistic and hyper-achieving tendencies that make someone successful in their work and in other parts of life often get turned inward, and they become their own never-ending fixer-upper.
It's a never-ending cycle: find an area to improve, pour attention and energy into it, manage it, then look for the next thing. Self-improvement burnout isn't far behind, and neither is a quiet, ongoing kind of self-flagellation.
So let me go back to where I started and say it plainly: it's not either/or here. It's not 'do the work' or 'don't do the work.' It's yes, and: do the work, with awareness of what's actually driving it, and do it with self-love and grace.
So before you sign up for the next thing that promises to fix you, or set a goal to correct all that you think is 'wrong' with you, ask this first:
What if there's nothing wrong with me?
What might it feel like to allow yourself to just be, even for a day, without nit-picking or working on yourself? Or better yet, to get off the hamster wheel of self-improvement long enough to let the good work you've already done take root and flourish?
Not everyone who comes to me wants or needs to be fixed. Most of them just need permission to stop treating themselves like a problem.