How much of your time do you spend focusing on your flaws? How much time do you spend worrying about mistakes you made in the past? Or beating yourself up for what you should be doing better? Are you putting more energy into your shortcomings than what you already have, and who you already are?
You can’t really be blamed for this. Many of us are under the impression that unless we are honest with ourselves about our flaws and what we dislike, we will never change. We worry that accepting ourselves means giving up on our dreams, and we believe “hitting rock bottom” means reaching the pinnacle of self-hatred where change becomes easier than staying the same. There is, of course, a kernel of truth in this, but we give far too much weight to what we do not like about ourselves.
Pain should be a reminder to turn around, and it has an important place in our lives. But it’s not something to build our lives around. Of course, the truth is that life often hurts. Yet, the way through misery is finding the center of ourselves: connecting to the calm that follows bone-deep self-acceptance. This core of peace is the “rock bottom” from which we can create the lives we long for.
Many of us set goals, chase dreams, and set out to “improve” ourselves in an attempt to fix our flaws and “straighten ourselves out.” Of course you want to look forward and reach for more, but often, we use goal-setting as a way to wallpaper over a negative self-image and hope that by reaching our goal that we’ll finally like ourselves.
Our minds are very powerful. Even with a toxic self-image we can create amazing things in our lives and still make room for love, but in the long run, you cannot outperform your self-image. If you are trying to improve yourself out of self-hatred, you have probably been setting the same goals over and over, year after year. Progress is made and lost. Goals are reached and then we slide back into our old ways. A negative self-image is like a magnet, keeping us stuck to the parts of ourselves we like the least.
Self-acceptance frees us from this self-made prison. When we lay down our weapons of judgment and shame, we see our flaws for what they are: simple imperfections. And aren’t we lucky to be imperfect? For the imperfection that asks for love and lets it in: or as Leonard Cohen once sang, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Who are the people in your life who love you, anyway? Are you wiser than they are? How can judgment possibly be wiser than love? And who are those whom you love, whose imperfections you do not see? Turn this gentle gaze on yourself.
When our self-image is founded in love and understanding, our goals and dreams are transformed. They are no longer schemes to overcome our failures. Rather, they are expressions of our true selves. They extend from us naturally: they are the way through which our love is made real in the world. Pain lets us know where we are, but there is no suffering for we know the peace of love. So let yourself off the hook. Celebrate who are you today, what you have already created, and what is yet to be. You are already there, you never left. You are already loved and always have been.
