On being better and never being enough

Would you like to improve upon yourself? I know that I often find that I do.

For me it is borne from a feeling of ‘never enoughness’ and more than likely stems from well meaning adults valuing me only when I measure up to a set of ever increasing expectations.

My concept has long been “Be better”, and it is addictive because it has driven me forwards in life. But with reflection “Be better” than who? And when? The answer is of course to be better than Me and Now.

It doesn’t take much to recognise that this striving is causing an inner turmoil.

Our attempts to improve upon our-self is what Meditation Teacher Bob Sharples would call the “Subtle aggression of Self Improvement” (I have included the full passage written by Bob Sharples at the bottom of this article because it is wonderful) or as Allan Watts would say trying to “pick ourselves up by our own Boot Straps. It can’t be done.”

When we enter into a fight against our-self we are both the winner and the loser. It is a lot of wasted energy and our body and mind is the battlefield.

Learning to let go and accept who we are right now is a scary proposition. It suggests a sense of relaxing, of apathy, of not achieving results.

But as Carl Rogers once said “The curious paradox is, that when I accept myself just as I am then I can change.” or to quote Shunryu Suzuki “We are all perfect. And there is room for improvement.”

Once we have let go of the subtle aggression of trying to improve upon who we already are, we can inhabit our body and mind in the present moment without the rigidity of having to fight with our-self or to be seen as worthy in the eyes of another. Our direction of energy and attention can be single-pointed and we can approach obstacles with the full cooperation of our being.

It is a long, tricky and increasingly subtle path and we will often catch ourselves creating action from a place of “I’m not enough as I am now”. A discipline such as Yoga and Mindfulness can be helpful for creating a daily sense of stillness, non striving, and finding a sense of value even when we are doing or achieving nothing at all, and if we are lucky we can carry some of these internalised messages with us into our busy daily life.

And just when we think we have it cracked, we can smile when we catch ourselves wanting to help someone else to improve.