What does self improvement mean?
And what does it need?
For the longest time, I believed that improving oneself meant disliking ones flaws and becoming some sort of saint – no negative emotions, undisturbed by others and their judgements, uncaring of personal likeability.
And, of course, that appears to be an insurmountable task with no starting line or path…just a border. One day you’re on the side where you need to improve, and the next you’re miraculously on the other side after eliminating all your flaws.
I have two things to say.
First, even though its clichéd, our flaws make us human. Because if we were all emotionless, pure beings, sure, maybe a few world problems would be eradicated, but we would especially become AI. No need for ChatGPT or Grok anymore.
Second, the path is always there, its just not on a yellow brick road (yes, that’s a Wizard of Oz reference). But it actually has such small steps, that we tend to overlook them.
It’s like Calvin said, you’re cruising along in life until you wake up one day to realise that you’re a different person. That’s not an overnight change. It happens over minute moments, like that time you decided – perhaps subconciously – to stop investing in one-sided friendships, or when you stood up to a very good friend and said “I’m sorry but I can’t agree with you on this”, or even when you were on the metro or train and instead of suppressing your discomfort with someone’s actions, expressed it. It’s when you said, “excuse me, my stuff is already there” and when you “selfishly” ate the last piece of the pie. It’s when you realised the difference between people pushing you because they can and pushing you because they feel it will help you.
And when those tiny tiny changes accumulate. Those small split-second decisions which generally don’t waver from the norm compile together, that is when you “self improve”.
We’ve, ironically, made self-improvement something we do for societal happiness. The aunt who lives in the corner house thinks I speak too much, so I’m going to “see and not be heard” when she’s around. The guy just needs a place to sit, its okay if he moved my stuff without asking. She doesn’t know that I disagree, but that’s fine as long as we remain friends.
Self-improvement does not mean becoming a chameleon, changing oneself for others’ happiness. It means changing for ones own happiness.
And if you’re happy, maybe you don’t need to self improve.
When these small changes accumulate and you wake up energised one day, saying good morning and meaning that it’s good, it may feel like a scene in the movies, where one fine day everything fell into place.
But it doesn’t work like that. There’s no director behind the scenes, so it falls upon us to change our own brain wiring and decide whether the camera has taken the correct shot or if we need a retake.
Because life gives a lot of retakes. Each conversation, each decision, each moment is a retake. You just need to say “CUT, again but this time like __”
