To Self-Improve or Self-Accept, That Is The Question!

Oh, the continuous burden of choice in this reality can drive one up the walls!

After all the hoopla in our very industrial-revolutionized, efficient, competitive, bottom-line driven society in regards to maximizing one’s potential, it is absolutely no wonder that the Self-help industry is an increasingly growing sector of our economy.  Self-improvement seems to reign supreme and win, hands down.

The other day, I stumbled across an article where the author, fed up with all the self-improvement gadgets and hype was urging his readers to stop self-improving and to work on self-accepting. Interesting, I thought as I read the piece, he certainly had me hooked until about half way through his article. That is when he started coming up with some concrete examples. 

Here are a couple of the ones, I remember:

1. If you have bad skin, stop spending money on beauty products and love yourself and accept yourself just the way you are.

2. If you are overweight and you struggle to diet, stop worrying about it and love all of you.

Here is where my brain feverishly started interjecting questions?

But what happens if the weight poses a health risk and you develop diabetes that could have been prevented? What if you don’t feel good in your own skin and you really want to get back to manifest your fullest healthiest potential? What if your skin is sending you a message that your liver is overworked and your body is desperately crying for help? What if you are suffering from heavy metal toxicity and ignoring the surface symptoms will make things much worse?

In my book, these are all situations where I choose to self-improve but the concept of self-acceptance still does ring a strong bell.

I walked away from reading the article, not being able to shake it off completely, even though I disagreed with the examples given.

One day, while I took a shower (always a place of great epiphanies for me), it dawned on me how the pieces could fit together.

Yes, in our society we strive at times for things that are unachievable for us this lifetime. So, let’s work on self-accepting the things we can’t change i.e. body height, family heritage, the past and choices made, karmic contracts, talents or the lack of etc. Let’s learn to make peace with our true natures and realize there is always somebody bigger, brighter or cooler around the next corner.

But by all means let’s keep self-improving in all the areas where we know that we are slacking and where we are called to self-improve, grow, learn, evolve and heal because the lessons don’t go away and symptoms do tend to get louder if we ignore them.

So let’s self-accept while we continue to self-improve, which will guarantee a smoother ride!