What Does it Mean to “Self Improve?”What Does it Mean to “Self Improve?”
self improve? And what “self” are we improving?We each have two “selves” – our wounded self and our core Self. Our core Self is our true self, our natural soul self – our essence. Our core Self is our passion, our joy, our gifts and talents, our ability to love, our creativity. We come into this life as our core Self, and when this Self is loved and valued by our parents, we continue to naturally grow our God-given gifts and talents and manifest the fullness of our beings. This Self wants to improve by learning the skills necessary to fully express itself. But when this Self is not seen and valued in the way we needed, we create an alternative self, a self we hope will have control over getting the love we need and avoiding the pain we can’t handle – a self to help us feel safe. This is our false self, our wounded self, our ego self. This self is filled with the false beliefs that we absorbed as we were growing up – beliefs that end up limiting our true, core Self. This self does not needs improving – it needs healing.
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The term “self improvement” can sometimes be a bit misleading, because we do not want to improve our wounded self. We do not want to improve on the ways we lie, manipulate, and avoid in our attempts to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. We don’t want to improve on our many addictions to substance and processes. We don’t want to improve on our anger, our compliance, our withdrawal and our resistance. We want to heal it. Healing and improving are not the same thing.
We can certainly self-improve when it comes to skills. We can improve in sports, in art, music, writing, cooking. We can improve our health and wellbeing by improving our diet and exercise program. We can improve in the knowledge we need to be more successful regarding work and money. We might be able to improve our relationships by learning new communication skills. But what if acquiring new knowledge and skills does not improve our health, or our ability to earn money, or our relationships? And what if learning new skills does not bring us more joy and inner peace? It may mean that we need to heal the underlying fears and false beliefs that cause us to be anxious, depressed, stressed, guilt-ridden, shamed, withdrawn, angry, blaming, or sad. Sometimes Self Improvement just means practicing a skill, and others
