"Stop trying to improve yourself." Alan Watts.
Why this can trap us and how we can free ourselves and still enjoy learning and exploring? Let's explore why we feel as if we need to improve ourselves and why we are already who we need to be.
"Our conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even if at first we don’t know exactly how or why. But soon enough we have filled in the why's with our shortcomings and failures, and self-help provides the how-to's with unending methods for self-correction. Armed with our story of deficiencies firmly in place and a surplus of paths toward improvement, we set off on our life mission—namely, becoming someone else. And we are proud of, and celebrated for, this mission. Growing and evolving, becoming a better person—it all sounds so virtuous. Who would turn down such an opportunity? If we boil it down, we keep fixing ourselves in the hopes that we can, finally, just be as we actually are. Once we're fixed, enough, worthy—whether that means more compassionate, more disciplined, or whatever shape our more's have formed into—then we'll be entitled to feel what we feel. We can think what we think, experience what we experience—in essence, be who we are." Nancy Colier in Psychology Today
There is an idea that we are broken or sinners and we feel that we need to improve ourselves, in fact we are enough. We can take classes, discover amazing things, leanr form great teachers, but it's not to improve ourselves, it's
because we are enjoying it or that it will help us to get a better job. Let's explore!