“Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them. If we try to change them it means we don’t really like them.” – Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
This beautiful quote means something that I hope we all know deep down. And yet it has a deep implication. One that I have battled with most of my life, and that I would like to talk on with you today.
The most significant person to whom this quotation refers is you – it's you.
We live in a world where we continuously believe like we don't live up to standards. And the highest bar is always not the standards that we have set for us. These are the goals that we have built for ourselves.
And then we beat ourselves, we feel unworthy, we say, "I'm not enough." We're continually trying to change, to "self-actualize" ourselves.
So when we need to improve ourselves, what it means is that we don't even like ourselves. And if we don't even like ourselves, it's hard to appreciate and embrace ourselves as we are.
That's why true love has to begin on the inside. You can't give to anyone what you don't have yet. Without respecting yourself, you can't love anyone. And if you keep feeling like you're never enough, you'll always feel like others are never enough. You're still going to look for more, for more.
This conviction will show itself in thousands of tiny acts and behaviors, slowly poisoning you and the people around you. Your discontent on your own will be mirrored in your discontent with others. Your decisions will make people feel unworthy, not good enough, and they will come to believe that quickly. Their own conviction confirms your beliefs and reflects back to you. Until the intense and throbbing frenzy of self-loathing and striving becomes the norm.
Escaping this vortex is a simple matter, but it's not easy. What it takes is for you to realize that you don't need to improve yourself. That you are just a human being. That you're nice enough, just as you are.
Now, before you think about giving up your path of self-improvement (I know this feeling, I'm with you right now) let me tell you one thing: this decision doesn't mean you can't change; it doesn't mean you can't improve and become a better individual.
Yet the entire fabric of the path will radically shift.
For once you embrace yourself for who you are; once you value yourself unconditionally, for all your failings and errors. Ok, the explanation for abruptly altering is shifting.
You would be able to adjust, or you couldn't, sure. But turning your mind away from the pain of your own inadequacy would encourage you to look up and around you. So as you plan to go up in self-improvement, it won't be to save the bruises of your own self-hatred. It's that you want to make the lives of the people around you happier. Start with the person right next to you – wherever you are – and expand in ever larger concentric circles.
There's no other way around. You can't manipulate yourself by re-framing and rationalizing your motivations. Only wake up one day and continue to convince yourself to think that "I'm doing this for other people" is like gold-plating a turtle. It's only going to be another act to maintain, to others and to yourself.
The only way to get here is by the unexpectedly complicated discovery that you're all right. In reality, you're more than okay, you're amazing.
You are the amazing product of hundreds of millions of years of entropy; the sum of the contributions of billions of animals, human beings and moments.
You're enough, whoever you are, exactly like you are.
You're nice enough, just as you are.