The Difference Between Becoming More vs. Less of Who You Are

What if we leaned into the stuff that’s “wrong” about us?

One of the most intriguing aspects of modern culture is our deeply ingrained belief that we must continually be working on improving ourselves. There’s always something we need to work on. Better time management, less lazy. More veggies, fewer bowls of pasta. This work never ends. Some of this has to do with capitalism – most of the things we buy aren’t necessities, they’re to improve ourselves and our lives. Self-improvement is big business and a ubiquitous advertising technique. And some of our obsession with self-improvement is a consequence of reaching a level of wealth where we have leisure time to spend on it. But I believe part of it is that we are afraid being ourselves. Think about it. Most of the self-improvement we are called to do involves becoming less of who we are, not more. Like there’s some kind of magical state of moderation of the personality, where our “good” traits at least equal if not outweigh our “bad.” And we apply this to our lives, too, where we are always trying to balance out or overload the productive/good side of the scale.

When our work begins to drain us and we feel such dread about it that our productivity falls, what is our response? To try harder, stay later, feel bad about ourselves. When we slack off on our exercise routine because life is calling us to focus on other things right now, what is our response? To try harder, bleed more moments from the day and more energy from our muscles, and feel bad about ourselves.

Let’s try a more amorphous type of dissatisfaction. What if you feel like something’s just not right with your life, you’re not sure what, but you are plagued by a constant sensation that there’s more out there for you. But you have a good job, many privileges, and you’re cognizant of that. What do you do?

If you’re like many of my clients, this is what you do: tell yourself you should be grateful for what you have, that something’s wrong with you for not being able to be satisfied with it, and you try harder, stay later, bleed more moments from the day and more energy from your soul, and feel bad about yourself.

But what if the answer is to step further into all the stuff we feel guilty about? Yes, you have privilege. But you’re still unhappy. That’s okay! It’s allowed! Step into that. You can appreciate your privilege but you don’t have to feel grateful for stuff that makes you feel like shit. Got it?

What about this one. You got a degree, maybe even multiple degrees, for a certain type of job. You invested time, money – maybe even other people’s money – in them. Then you get the job. You don’t like it. It drains you to the extent that your life feels dull, gray, and perhaps full of dread. What do you do?

Do you tell yourself that there are things you do like about the job, that you appreciate this or that aspect, that it’s a good job and you’re grateful for it? Do you expend major energy convincing yourself that you can like it enough to keep doing it, because after all it’s what you’ve trained for?

What if the answer is to step into your dislike? What if you stopped punishing yourself into “liking” your job and just decided you’re going to be honest about what you hate about it? What if you let yourself feel the full extent of your antipathy toward what you are forcing yourself to do every day? What if you let yourself stop feeling grateful?

Your life would stop being so dull and gray, that’s for sure. And you’d realize that you probably have to do something about your situation, that it’s not okay to just exist in it and keep going for as long as you can until you burn out completely. Things would become a bit clearer. And all you need is a little crack in that shell of excuses to begin to move forward.

Instead of punishing ourselves into doing things “right,” what if the answer is to step more fully into our “wrongs”? What if leaning into our lazy allows us to find more time and space to do what really matters to us? What if leaning into the boredom or dread we feel about our job gives us the impetus we need to take steps to change our situation?

What if we don’t need to change ourselves at all, but become more of what we already are?