Not-Self-Developing

Am I improved enough yet?

My most recent personal crises revolve around not doing enough to develop myself. I haven’t been as dedicated to my “practices”; I haven’t been meditating or setting intentions every month; I haven’t been doing the routines I previously clung to in order to be ok and improving.

Last year, in the few months before returning to California from Chicago, my life had become an endless stream of self-improvement: an attempt (that worked, to some extent) to drown out grief and anxiety. I thought I needed all those routines and regimens to be ok, and therefore, I did need them.

Now, a year later, I’m learning that I’m actually good without performing a list of things to keep me ok. That sounds like…self-development?

What I have been doing lately, instead of all my practices, is living: eating croissants for breakfast, drinking beer on weeknights (sometimes); walking on the beach, driving to the desert, hanging out with my girlfriend and saying yes to a variety of things that don’t involve gazing at my navel all day. (Don’t worry there’s still plenty of time for that!!)

It seems like the practice of relaxing away from developing my self is exactly what my self has been trying to get me to develop.

. . .

Self-discipline is a skill each of us need in varying doses in our respective areas of life. At the risk of revealing my arrogance, I think I came into the world already knowing this skill. I can discipline myself all the way through my goals; from sunrise to sunset; for better or worse. But the line between constructive self-discipline and neurotic efforts to control the uncontrollable is thin: what looks like a healthy boundary can easily function as a tool for suppression or avoidance.

If you feel like you have to do something in a certain way to be “progressing” or “improving” yourself and life, you probably should see what it’s like if you don’t do that thing. Developing or improving your self involves actually listening to your “self”; your self probably does not have a list of rules for you to follow to become more actualized.

The questions to ask to determine whether you’re being constructive or neurotic may be something like: is this expanding my life or contracting it? Is this allowing me to live more fully, or am I trying to control out of fear?

When I set new rules to follow, I’m not improving my self, but strengthening my obedience to my mind: a mind that rarely knows what I actually need or want, because the mind is not the self. Minds are here to make sense, to observe and ponder and discover, to plan and look outwards into the world: minds are not for directing life’s decisions. They can’t, really. They’ve got too many other jobs.

I wonder, if when I think I’m improving myself by implementing a new regime, I’m actually just trying to be what I’m not. In those moments, I’m not listening to myself at all—I’m doing what my mind thinks I should be, instead of what I actually am presently drawn toward to or satisfied by. The self I want to listen to is here in the moment, underneath the rules and without an agenda, waiting to respond to the life that is in front of her.

. .

I won’t pretend that I’m giving up on extreme routines that may or may not make sense—I enjoy them sometimes. Sometimes, it really does help me to know that I’m going to spend X amount of time doing Y—that’s part of self-discipline, or knowing myself. But I’m interested in learning to inhabit a little more gray area; in what shows up in that gray when I’m not filling it with control.

Chances are, I’ll be back with a variation of this epiphany in 6-8 weeks. But for now, I’m gonna try to enjoy not caring as much about improving myself. I think there’s some good growth in that, too.

Maggie