Self-Love vs Self-Improvement

We get two blaring, contradictory messages blasted into our brains on a daily basis. One school of thought encourages us to love ourselves, embrace our flaws and be the most ‘YOU, you can be.’ Whenever someone tells you to be yourself…your immediate thought is ‘okay, who am I pretending to be for you?’

Because isn’t that what we do? Shape-shift to be the people our family, co-workers and friends are comfortable seeing? It is difficult to objectively define who we are. At times it just feels like we’re a compilation of the books we’ve read, movies we’ve seen and songs we’ve sung. We’re a combination of our heritage, bits and pieces of our religions, common phrases we’ve heard our parent’s use, jokes we share with our friends and experiences we’ve either sought out or had forced upon us. Our character is defined by our obstacles, our accomplishments are achieved by our efforts, but who are we in our bones?

Fuck, if I know.

So take the heap of confusion you are, and then find ways to improve upon it. It’s like trying to create the Mona Lisa out of Jell-O.

Please continue to love yourself; however there is an app, diet, exercise, cream, and meditation that will help you be better!

Maybe we’re all massive closets on the inside and we can just take away the pieces that don’t work (jiggly thighs—goodbye!) and make room for the better parts of us (unwavering kindness—hello!). Or do we take a whiteboard and strategize using our own personal SWOT analysis?

Strength: Can make others laugh

Weakness: wobbly ankles, large tonsils, uneven eyebrows

Opportunities: would like to juggle

Threats: Everyone and everything.

Perhaps before beginning to love ourselves or even improve ourselves, we should start with getting to know ourselves. Hello, how are you today? Do you like pudding…?