On Self Improvement
Of all the wonderfully complex Greek mythological characters, my favorite is Sisyphus. A trickster and cunning by nature, he cheated death twice and caused massive embarrassment to the gods. Who then decided to punish him by condemning him to roll a boulder up a hill. The most ingenious part of the punishment? Every time he nears the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down!
My love for Sisyphus is partly because of his bad boy-esque personality but majorly because of the nature of his suffering. It feels tangibly familiar. Not to diminish his problems, but I know how he feels!
For several years now, I have been obsessed with self improvement. I’ve read almost every self help book out there, religiously tracked habits and genuinely believed that if I can just be 1% better than yesterday consistently, I’ll be 37% closer to my mythical ideal self by the end of the year. Self improvement became my Sisyphean boulder - an endless task that I kept working on everyday but with no end. There were many times I felt like I was within grasp of my ideal self only to have all the progress derailed leaving me at the base of the hill. And each time I arm myself with a new tool - a book, a journal or whatever and start up the hill again.
Albert Camus in his book “The Myth of Sisyphus” argues that perhaps we should all have Sisyphean pursuits. "The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy". Camus being a convincing man, I imagined myself happy for a while on my Sisyphean pursuit.
However, ironically, working so hard at self improvement left me feeling stuck and turned me into an anxious, approval seeking mess. Therapy helped me see that I was focusing on self improvement from a perceived sense of internal lack. And if the goal is to someday arrive at the feeling of being ‘enough’, then the task turned Sisyphean the day I conceded that I wasn’t already ‘enough’. For months I heard my therapist tell me what can be beautifully summed up in Heather Havrilesky’s words:
"Instead of redoubling your efforts to be more lovable and better, always approaching some infinite ideal of the whip-smart but easy-going professional with a body like a fuck doll, you need to take a good look at yourself and accept what you see."
But, self acceptance is not easy. Especially for chronically ambitious people. How can one who sees so much potential for all that they can be love themselves just as they are? Finding the perfect balance between self acceptance and self improvement - that’s another Sisyphean task in itself. But in the meantime, I’m overcompensating for the years I told myself I wasn’t enough through daily reminders. Lot more work to do but I’m getting there!
All this backstory because I wanted to ask you, do you accept yourself just as you are?
