This post is a follow up to Jenny’s comments about bettering myself.
Perhaps the major barrier that holds people back is feeling unworthy. There are many forms of it, but it’s what a lot of issues boil down to. Read more about what are you great at?
After the last post I was asked a couple of questions. I love these questions because they force me to explain more clearly and precisely. Here I’m answering Craig’s question, there will be a separate post for Jenny’s. But for now here’s Craig’s comment. More on should we be better or happy as we are?
I was writing to someone today who wrote explaining that they were trying to better themselves. I can understand the sentiment behind what they meant. I worked out fairly young that you can solve problems before they happen if you work on ‘bettering yourself’. And so I read a lot.
But today after many years and much observation and contemplation I see a mistake in it that stops people from getting much ‘better’. It’s this…
The idea of self improvement is based on an idea that you are incomplete and ‘not good enough’. It’s a striving to become worthy.
The truth is that you have always been fully formed and perfect. In other words you have the choice of a full range of behavior and emotion. You can be evil or Saintly. You can be as suicidally miserable or ecstatic.
What determines which we access?
The story we tell ourselves, or the picture we paint for ourselves, of our life. Life is a blank canvas. It really is. We are bombarded by sensory data. Off the top of my head I think it is something like 3 million or 3 billion discrete pieces a second. Either way that’s a lot of raw material that gives an almost infinite choice in how you interpret what is happening to you.
Your senses decide which to make available to you based on what seems most relevant to you. So what does it choose? The most powerful vote is cast by your emotional location.
So if you are happy you access the perceptions that are congruent with being happy. I’m good enough, the world is good, good things are happening.
And if you are miserable, your perceptions will fit in with that. I’m bad, I’m not worthy, the world is bad, bad things are happening.
It’s not about getting better. It’s about accessing the best of yourself.
Being happy in other words. Then you’ll treat others with kindness, generosity and compassion. You’ll act in ways that make you feel proud and so on.
If you beat yourself up about not being good enough, you won’t access the higher emotional states and so you won’t display the best of yourself.
And that is why I write about finding happiness. Because it is the only solution to every problem.