2792: [Part 1] Self-Acceptance vs. Personal Growth by Steve Pavlina on Self Improvement

This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 2792, self-acceptance versus personal growth. Part 1 by Steve Pavlina of Steve Pavlina.com, an numerator, jostymolic reading you blogs every single day of the year. Now today's articles a little longer than normal so I'll read the first half today and then finish up the rest tomorrow. So that'll get right to Part 1 as we optimize for life.

Self-acceptance versus personal growth. Part 1 by Steve Pavlina of Steve Pavlina.com. How do you balance self-acceptance versus the drive to grow and improve yourself? On the one hand it's a good idea to accept yourself for who you are, faults and all, right?

Isn't it also a good idea to set goals and aim for something even better than what you already experienced now? How do you resolve this conflict? Is compromise really the best solution? I believe most people simply compromise.

They don't fully accept themselves as they are but nor are they fully committed to lifelong growth. I think that's the lame solution though. Why not have both? Why not fully accept yourself as you are and also be totally committed to lifelong growth?

Can't you enjoy both? Is there a way around this apparent conflict? I often receive feedback both publicly and privately that suggests that because I'm so openly committed a personal growth that therefore I must not like and accept who I am right now is to assume that since I keep pushing myself to grow in new ways that I must be sacrificing the self-acceptance side. The linear mindset.

Why does there seem to be a conflict between self-acceptance and growth anyway? I think the conflict is actually a result of a particular mindset. I'll refer to it as the linear mindset. The linear mindset says that your life is like a point moving down a line segment.

Your life is a journey through time. The endpoints represent your birth and death. The points behind you are your past and the points ahead of you are your future. And your present moment is a little dot on that timeline slowly inching its way towards your death.

Every point on your lifeline can also be said to have a certain quality. You can look at any point on the line and measure your instantaneous state at that point. On any particular day of your life, past, present, or future, you can pose questions like, where do I live? What's my job?

What's my net worth? Who are my friends? What's my relationship status? How much do I weigh?

Self-acceptance versus personal growth. Within this paradigm, it's only natural that the conflict between self-acceptance and growth should arise. Once you start labeling some points on your life as being of higher or lower quality than others, then you have the means to compare any point to any other. How does your life today compare with your life five years ago?

Are you richer? Happier? Now you have to decide how much you want to push things to improve in quality as you progress through life. You can accept your current position as adequate and opt to simply maintain it, or you can strive to achieve something greater.

You can also adopt the belief that your life is largely out of your control, in which case your best bet would be to learn to accept whatever outcomes you experience regardless of how you might rate their level of quality. The more you accept where you are, the less motivation there is to grow, and the more you push yourself to grow, the less satisfaction you derive from your current position. You might end up oscillating back and forth along the spectrum, sometimes being very complacent and other times being very driven. Limitations of the linear mindset.

The linear mindset is very common, especially in the western world. We love to measure things and assign them grades and ratings, which car is the most fuel efficient this year? Is company X more profitable than it was last year? How fit and healthy am I?

And that mindset certainly has value, especially in business, and not suggesting that it's inherently undesirable paradigm. However, there are areas where this model works, and there are areas where it doesn't. And one of those areas where it doesn't work so well is your self-image. Trying to apply the linear mindset to your self-image creates the conflict between self-acceptance and growth.

Instead of merely measuring various aspects of your life and noting how they change over time, you identify with them. I am richer than I was last year. I am more depressed than I used to be. I went from being a telemarketer to being a sales manager.

When you identify with the positional aspects of your life, you pull your ego into the picture. Your sense of self-end becomes dependent on your particular position. If you primarily think about life in terms of hitting new highs, such as better health, greater net worth, or a more anal job title, then what happens when you experience a setback in your position, maybe even a big one, like being charged with a felony? We all experience setbacks.

It's only a matter of time. If your self-esteem is based on your position, then you'll suffer greatly when your position declines. What would it do to your self-esteem if you lost all your money? What if you gained 50 pounds?

What if your life made dumb to you? If you lose your position, will you lose your sense of self? Even more problematic than a real loss is worrying about the possibility of a loss in advance. You may hold yourself back because you fear becoming too dependent on a certain position.

If you stay low, you don't have far to fall when things go bad. Gaining a few pounds over the holidays isn't as painful when you're already 50 pounds overweight. Going broke isn't so terrible when you only have $1,000 to your name versus if you're a multi-millionaire. And how much worse can your relationship situation get if it's already lousy or non-existent?

Perhaps by setting up camp in mediocre land and staying far away from super-achiever, or protecting your ego from inevitable setbacks. You know that even the most successful people in the world experience setbacks, so why would you risk subjecting yourself to such dramatic highs and lows? What goes up must come down, right? The underlying problem is that by ruining your sense of self in something that will fluctuate like the current position of any measurable part of your life, you're going to suffer in one way or another.

Either you'll push yourself to achieve, achieve, achieve, and then suffer emotionally when things take a turn for the worse, or you'll become attached to outcomes to an unhealthy degree such that you may sacrifice your ethics to maintain your position, or you'll settle for much less than you're capable of achieving, and probably give yourself regular beatings for being too lazy and for over procrastinating. You'll always be haunted by the knowledge that you could be doing better. Or lastly, you may decide to withdraw from society in order to escape and transcend this whole punishing process, but still, your contribution is far below your potential. To be continued, you just listen to part one of the post titled Self Acceptance vs.

Personal Growth by Steve Pavlina of Steve Pavlina.com I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health, what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on. Superpower finally takes the guessing out of it. One simple lab test covers over 100 biomarkers in their app, gives you a complete picture of your heart, liver, hormones, metabolism, even environmental toxins. Plus, it used to cost $499 right now, it's just $199.

And head to superpower.com and use code old at checkout for an additional $20 off your membership. Thank you Steve. It's an interesting question, because this debate could be happening within ourselves. For example, with our fitness or weight.

Do we accept our bodies as is and be proud of it, even if we're out of shape, or do we look towards personal growth? I think this topic is as popular as ever in media these days. Self Acceptance is like a trend. As I listen to this podcast, I'm guessing you lean towards personal growth, but maybe not with everything.

As Steve said, instead of an or situation, maybe it's an and situation. Why not both self acceptance and personal growth? He brings up a great point about comparison, because if we're always comparing our current state to our previous self, it's pretty similar to comparing ourselves to other people. It's not helpful because we're always in flux.

Change is going to happen no matter what. And on top of that, we have the power to create change in ourselves. So with all of this change happening all the time, what good does it do to identify with these random data points? And is there a different or better way to think about all of this?

Well, we're only halfway through the post for now, so let's see what Steve says tomorrow. And with that, have a great rest of your day, and I'll catch you tomorrow, where we'll finish up the post and where you're off to my life. Oh, wait.