There is a place where you can fully accept yourself and have your self-development/self-improvement come from the place of self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is a much more healthy and powerful energy to come from as we work to improve ourselves.
Have you ever struggled with being on a never ending treadmill of self-development. Would you like to learn how to accept yourself while you are also practicing self-development? If so then this episode can be a great resource for you.
In this episode, we explore the dynamic between self-acceptance and self-development. We discuss how embracing our current selves does not preclude growth and improvement.
This episode contains helpful insights, personal reflections, and practical advice aimed at helping you cultivate a healthy balance between accepting who you are and striving for personal growth.
What you will learn:
The definition and importance of self-acceptance and how it differs from complacency.
The positive aspects of self-development and how to pursue growth without self-judgment.
Practical strategies for cultivating a life-giving approach to personal development.
How to recognize when self-improvement efforts might be causing more harm than good.
0:00 - Introduction to Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Development 0:06 - Are You Chasing a "Better" Version of Yourself? 3:11 - The Never-Ending Treadmill of Self-Improvement 4:36 - Understanding the Value of Self-Development 5:59 - Balancing Self-Acceptance with the Desire to Improve 6:51 - Exploring Radical Self-Acceptance 9:06 - Why Accepting Current Realities is Crucial 10:30 - The Role of Self-Acceptance in Personal Growth 13:05 - The Continuous Journey of Self-Acceptance 14:48 - Signs that Self-Development Might Be Going Awry 17:38 - The Trap of External Validation in Self-Improvement 20:02 - The Importance of Being Present and Self-Acceptant 22:12 - Why There is No Final Destination in Growth 24:28 - How Future Self-Perception Influences Current Self-Acceptance 25:35 - Practical Tips for Healthy Self-Improvement 29:45 - Setting Realistic Goals in Self-Development 31:17 - Free Resources
There is a place where you can fully accept yourself and have your self-development/self-improvement come from the place of self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is a much more healthy and powerful energy to come from as we work to improve ourselves.
Have you ever struggled with being on a never ending treadmill of self-development. Would you like to learn how to accept yourself while you are also practicing self-development? If so then this episode can be a great resource for you.
In this episode, we explore the dynamic between self-acceptance and self-development. We discuss how embracing our current selves does not preclude growth and improvement.
This episode contains helpful insights, personal reflections, and practical advice aimed at helping you cultivate a healthy balance between accepting who you are and striving for personal growth.
What you will learn:
The definition and importance of self-acceptance and how it differs from complacency.
The positive aspects of self-development and how to pursue growth without self-judgment.
Practical strategies for cultivating a life-giving approach to personal development.
How to recognize when self-improvement efforts might be causing more harm than good.
0:00 - Introduction to Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Development 0:06 - Are You Chasing a "Better" Version of Yourself? 3:11 - The Never-Ending Treadmill of Self-Improvement 4:36 - Understanding the Value of Self-Development 5:59 - Balancing Self-Acceptance with the Desire to Improve 6:51 - Exploring Radical Self-Acceptance 9:06 - Why Accepting Current Realities is Crucial 10:30 - The Role of Self-Acceptance in Personal Growth 13:05 - The Continuous Journey of Self-Acceptance 14:48 - Signs that Self-Development Might Be Going Awry 17:38 - The Trap of External Validation in Self-Improvement 20:02 - The Importance of Being Present and Self-Acceptant 22:12 - Why There is No Final Destination in Growth 24:28 - How Future Self-Perception Influences Current Self-Acceptance 25:35 - Practical Tips for Healthy Self-Improvement 29:45 - Setting Realistic Goals in Self-Development 31:17 - Free Resources
Do you feel like you're constantly trying to get to a place where there's a better version of you out there somewhere?
Speaker 1:
It's that better version of you that you'll be able to accept? Are you confusing the fact that it is only the better version of yourself that's lovable? Are you unable to accept the version of yourself that you are right now because you're afraid that that means you'll give up on yourself, or that that means that you're you'll give up on yourself, or that that means that you're going soft or easy on yourself? Hello friends, it's Jerry, and welcome to the Permission to Love podcast, the podcast that's dedicated to helping people understand how to heal their relationship with themselves. Because when we heal our relationship with ourselves, everything in our life changes how we feel about ourselves changes, the relationships that we have changes and what we manifest in our life totally changes. You can live a life where you're at peace with yourself, you have healthy relationships in your life and that you're manifesting the things that you so deeply deserve and desire for your life. So I'm glad you're here and I hope you enjoy today's episode. Today's episode is a continuation around the topic of chasing normal. We're addressing that core belief that there's something wrong with us and that we need to fix ourselves and that we can't accept ourselves as we are. We're constantly chasing this version of us that is normal, that is lovable, and to get to the point where we don't feel like there's something wrong with us. So this is the third episode, and today we're going to talk about the difference between self-acceptance and self-development. How do we balance those two things, and are those two things in conflict with one another?
Speaker 1:
I want to take a quick moment and talk about my book Returning. It's a collection of meditations and reflections on self-love and healing. I designed this book to help you on your journey of moving from shame to self-love. It's divided in three sections. The first section is about seeing, seeing that you're not alone. The second section is about understanding that healing is possible. And the third section is designed to remind you and to show you that loving yourself is the path back to yourself. I've heard from a lot of people that they're using it as a daily reflection guide, where each day, they're selecting a passage, reading it, meditating on it, journaling on it, and it's really helping them in their healing journey and helping them understand that they are worthy of love, that they can heal, that they're not alone, and I know it can do the same for you. So if you haven't picked up a copy yet, please take a moment to do that, and if you have picked up a copy already, it would mean a lot to me if you'd take a moment and review the book, because the more positive reviews the book gets, the more likely people are going to become aware of it and benefit from the work. So thank you, thank you for picking it up, thank you for reviewing it and thank you for passing it along. Maybe, when you're done with it, you can pass it along to somebody else or pick up a copy for somebody else that you know could benefit from the work. You can get it on Amazon or you can simply see the show notes in this episode to get your copy.
Speaker 1:
So let me start by asking some questions. Do you feel like you're on a never-ending treadmill of self-improvement? Do you feel like you're constantly trying to get to a place where there's a better version of you out there somewhere and it's that better version of you that you'll be able to accept? Are you confusing the fact that it is only the better version of yourself that's lovable? Are you unable to accept the version of yourself that you are right now, because you're afraid that that means you'll give up on yourself or that that means that you're going soft or easy on yourself and you feel like that.
Speaker 1:
You really need to constantly chase self-development and, as we talked about in the last episode, you might have actually got addicted to this cycle of self-development or of chasing the need to fix yourself, and so it's wearing you out. You're burning yourself out and you find that you're never at ease with yourself, you're never able to accept yourself, and so it's wearing you out. You're burning yourself out and you find that you're never at ease with yourself, you're never able to accept yourself, you can't rest in your own presence, and you might be, like I was that when I went on a vacation, I felt guilty, like I was supposed to be doing something. I needed to be doing something that was actually productive, and what that was, for me, was productive, meant working on something, which meant working on me, which meant improvement, which ultimately came down to a core belief that I wasn't enough, that I needed to fix myself. I needed to constantly chase ways to develop myself.
Speaker 1:
Now I want to be very clear in this episode I am 100% for self-development, self-improvement. I'm 100% for self-development, self-improvement. I've lived my life as a continual learner or a lifelong learner, pursued degrees I'm actually getting ready to get into another degree program and so I love improving myself, I love developing myself, and there's nothing wrong with that. And so I don't want you at all to hear that I'm against self-development or self-improvement, and I want you to also know that there is a beautiful place of self-acceptance that we can come to and still practice self-improvement.
Speaker 1:
It all comes down to this one thing the energy that we approach it from the motivation that it comes from. So is the energy that we approach it from the motivation that it comes from. So is the energy coming from a place that you will be acceptable when you accomplish certain things, when you get to a certain point, or is the energy coming from a place of curiosity, of an excitement for change, or the need to want to develop yourself so that you can express the highest version of yourself? Those are two really different energies. One comes from a place that I'll only be acceptable, I'll only be lovable, when I improve myself, when I become better.
Speaker 1:
So what we're going to try to get to in this episode is helping you understand that it's okay to fully love and accept yourself and, at the same time, work to improve yourself. But what we don't want to do is be in the space where our self-improvement or self-development is what's determining our value or our ability to accept ourselves. And this is really important for those of us who've come from the space of feeling like there's something wrong with us and that we need to fix ourselves in order to stay safe. And it gives us a sense of control to do all of that and we wind up getting addicted into that and that cycle. So this is really important to understand the balance and the difference between these two things. So let's go ahead and talk about the difference between self-acceptance and self-development and why they're not at conflict with one another.
Speaker 1:
Self-acceptance, and what I'm going to call radical self-acceptance, is the ability to fully accept who you are, where you are right now, in this moment. Now, that does not mean that I can't work to improve myself or improve my current life situation or circumstances. I'm not talking about rolling over and just saying that, well, I don't like my financial situation, but I'm going to accept it and it just is what it is. No, because self-love will motivate us to be the highest version or expression of ourselves. But what self-love and self-acceptance actually does is it allows us to tap into the authentic self of who we are and allow that part of us to emerge in our lives. Acceptance also allows us to have self-compassion, because it accepts the fact that there's an entire story, an entire narrative that has brought us to the place that we're at right now and that can shift the energy towards ourselves. That will allow us to more easily move into self-improvement, because the energy's changed. It's taken it from I should be like this to I could be like this. It takes it to a curiosity approach of what is the highest version of myself that could be expressed. That energy comes from self-acceptance.
Speaker 1:
Now, self-acceptance also just looks at what is reality. What truth is, you see, when we learn to accept the fact that I'm in this current condition, in this current state and I don't judge it as bad, I just accept where it's at it allows me to see truth Because sometimes the thought of self-improvement, of who I could be, distracts us from where we're at right now and we have to take an honest assessment of where we are right now. I need to accept that my behavior isn't serving me or those in my life. I just need to accept that without judgment, without saying you shouldn't be like this. You should be like that Because the reality is I should be where I'm at. Why? Because that's where I'm at. That's the truth. Life should be where I'm at. Why? Because that's where I'm at. That's the truth.
Speaker 1:
Life has brought me to this point, and I can sit around all day long thinking about well, I should be here by now, I should be doing that by now, and this isn't where I want to be, and my life shouldn't be in this situation. If it wasn't for what happened to me, I wouldn't be where I'm at right now. All happened to me. I wouldn't be where I'm at right now. All of that is a distraction. All of that is keeping us away from being able to focus in on where we are, what we want to change and how we get to where we want to be.
Speaker 1:
Okay, self-acceptance does not ask us to let go of who we can become, who we want to become, and how we can begin to develop and transform into even a greater version of ourselves. What it does, though, is it asks us to change the energy so that we can more easily and more lovingly get to that place. You know, if you have an ideal place of where you want to be or the things that you want to improve and the way that you want to go about your life and who you want to become, you know you can either enjoy the journey of getting there and enjoy yourself and accept yourself, or you can beat yourself up and you can, you know, push yourself in a way that's unhealthy towards yourself. And so we have a choice in self-development. We have a choice in growth. We can either do it in an energy that causes suffering or we can do it in an energy that's life-giving to us.
Speaker 1:
There's a passage in my book about this that says that you don't have to enjoy the journey that you're on right now, but can you learn to love the one who's on the journey? And what that's speaking to is the energy that we approach ourselves in our journey of self-development and self-improvement. We can either come at it from a very shaming energy, or we can come at it from one that's self-accepting, realizing where we are also keeping sight, where we want to go, but doing it in an energy that's loving and free of self-judgment, because self-judgment is going to keep pulling you backwards. It's a negative energy and we want to get rid of that negative energy and one of the ways we do that is self-acceptance. So let's just touch real quickly on self-development or self-improvement. It's very normal, it's human nature. We're curious, we want to grow, we want to develop. So for the people who would say that self-improvement or self-development is something negative and there's people that are out there that says you just totally need to accept yourself and just be where you're at and there's no aspiration Well, I challenge that because I do believe it's a part of our nature and I don't think it's a negative thing in any way, shape or form. You want to continue to grow. Anything that's living grows.
Speaker 1:
What I also believe is a lot of self development work and self-improvement work is about unlayering. It's about removing the layers that we put on ourselves, that we believe about ourselves. It's about identifying and expressing the authentic self versus the false self. Because if we think about it like what we talked about in the last episode, what we're really after is a feeling. When we get involved in self-development work, we're trying to get into a space where we feel better about ourselves, that we're trying to improve our lives. We're trying to improve the lives for others in our life, we're trying to give our best expression of who we are on this planet, and then it all comes back to a certain way that we feel about ourselves, and that creates a loop right the better you feel about yourself, the more you do, and it continues to give you the energy to push you in the right direction. But, once again, what I want you to think about is that what you're after is a feeling. And what is that feeling that you're after? What are you trying to give yourself in self-improvement? And, once again, if the feeling is that you'll finally be acceptable, that you'll finally have arrived, that's the energy that's going to keep you trapped, because you're never going to get to a place where you've arrived. You have to learn how to accept yourself now so that you'll be able to accept yourself then.
Speaker 1:
Self-acceptance is a discipline, it's a habit, it's something that we develop, it's a surrendering process, and so what we do is we actually learn to practice it now, and that begins to be something that we carry with us into the future, because the only place that you can practice self-acceptance is now, the only place that you can learn to be at peace with yourself is now Delaying that thought and pushing that thought out to when you've improved yourself or developed yourself enough to where you can rest, does not exist. Once again, it does not exist because you're carrying you into that same future and you're carrying the core belief that we talked about in the first episode in this topic. You're carrying the core belief that we talked about in the first episode in this topic. You're carrying the core belief that there's something wrong with you and what self-acceptance does. Self-acceptance is the antidote to the feeling that there's something wrong with you. Now, a lot of people have the feeling that if I accept myself, then something bad's going to happen. Right, there's this undercurrent that if I let up off the gas and I don't keep pushing myself and I really learn to accept myself, something bad's going to happen, something is going to unravel and it feels very irresponsible to you, and so that once again, we want to learn what the root of that is and it often comes from those traumatic experiences that we've had that we need to be vigilant, we need to be on guard and then, if we're not, something bad's going to happen. So I just want to remind you that that's often an energy that we're working from, that we want to move away from, and self-acceptance helps us move away from that energy. So what are some of the signs that self-development has gone awry in our life?
Speaker 1:
Let's just talk about just a few examples. One is that you carry this sense, or this feeling, that it's only when you arrive to X point whatever that point is that you'll then be lovable, that you'll then be acceptable. Another thing that happens is you never celebrate your wins, because you always find a reason why it wasn't actually a win and that you could have done better. You also might feel like you're on a never-ending treadmill, that the bar is always getting raised. Well, it is because you're always raising the bar, because there's never going to be an accomplishment that's good enough to wash away that feeling about how you feel about yourself.
Speaker 1:
Another sign is that you start to get burned out. Or maybe you are burned out because you're constantly pushing yourself and you're never feeling like you can rest. Another thing is you're constantly scanning yourself for things that you might need to fix about yourself, like we talked about in the last episode. There's this constant sense that there's something in you that if you fix that thing. That'll finally be the thing that you can fix. And the challenge is every time you fix something, you find something else about yourself that you need to fix.
Speaker 1:
Another sign is that you're way over committed on the things that every time you fix something, you find something else about yourself that you need to fix. Another sign is that you're way over committed on the things that you need to fix about yourself. You got like a huge list and you're relentlessly going from one thing to the other thing that you need to fix or work on about yourself. And you've signed up for so many self-improvement programs and all of a sudden, you're involved in three different workout programs and all of a sudden you're involved in three different workout programs and five different courses and all of a sudden you've got so many things on your plate about what you need to fix about yourself. You're overwhelmed and you can't possibly get to all of them and you've actually set yourself up for failure. It's actually a self-sabotage mechanism to cause you to fail and you are once again reinforcing the core belief that there's something wrong with you. Another sign we talked about it you feel guilty when you rest and when you relax.
Speaker 1:
Another thing that might be happening is that anytime somebody says something or points out something about you, you put that thing on your list of things that you need to fix about yourself. Another sign is that you might be choosing self-improvement programs that are shame-based, or the person who's leading it has this energy that's belittling or yelling at you, telling you what a loser you're going to be if you don't do X, y and Z. It's this really off energy, but it's an energy you're familiar with, because it's often the energy that traumatized you, and so when you look at that, you're attracted to it subconsciously. Another thing that's important to be aware of or assigned to look for is when you look at that, you're attracted to it subconsciously. Another thing that's important to be aware of or assigned to look for is when you don't even know what you're trying to improve and you just heard everybody else tell you what life is supposed to be like and who you're supposed to be like, and because you don't have that internal compass, because you feel like there's something wrong with you, you don't trust yourself. So now you're just doing what everybody else is telling you to do and you, you don't trust yourself, so now you're just doing what everybody else is telling you to do and you're involved in all kinds of programs. You're trying to develop yourself in directions that you're not even sure if that's what you want or why you're even involved in that program.
Speaker 1:
Now, if a lot of that sounds familiar and you're finding yourself in those scenarios, it might be for you that self-development has become something that's about fixing who you are as a person versus accepting yourself and allowing a healthy energy to come out in pursuing the person that you want to become. So how do we hold the tension in a healthy way between self-development, self-acceptance? Well, the first thing I want to encourage you to do is lead with or err on the side of self-acceptance. Why is lead with or err on the side of self-acceptance? Why? Because the energy is so important. How we approach all of this and the energy of self-acceptance is life-giving and it's loving and it's long-term, sustainable motivation. The other motivation of something's wrong with you. You need to fix yourself and you should be doing this or you should be doing that only leads to burnout and it depletes your battery, or self-acceptance is a self-charging battery. It will keep you motivated because you're comfortable with who you are already and the source of your transformation is coming from a place where you're at peace with yourself, not from being at war with yourself.
Speaker 1:
So let's start with self-acceptance. Let's start with there's nothing wrong with you. Let's also start with you don't need to be fixed, like we talked about in the last two episodes. How do you practice self-acceptance? First, you accept who you are. A lot of people think, as we talked about, that if I accept who I am, I'm afraid that that means that I'll never change. No, what you're doing is you're actually just facing reality about who you are, where you are in this moment, and you're doing it with a loving energy. You're doing it from a space that says I accept who I am, I love who I am and I'm okay with who I am in this moment. Why are you okay with who you are in this moment? Because you are who you are in this moment. What else can you do? And we get into an energy of fighting who you think you are in this moment. That only sets up once again that internal war within yourself and you're wasting so much energy in fighting against yourself and fighting against reality and that energy can actually be put into making progress on what you want to heal and where you want to go, because acceptance is the basis for all change in our life.
Speaker 1:
I have to accept that I'm at X before I can get to Y. I just have to be able to do that. That's the reality. I have to look at where I'm at, and that'll bring an awareness to Y. I just have to be able to do that. That's the reality. I have to look at where I'm at, and that'll bring an awareness to me, because if I refuse to accept that I'm at X, I'm just going to get really annoyed and frustrated that I'm not at Z already. I'm going to miss out on my entire life. I'm going to keep projecting of the someday where I should be, where I want to be, where I'm not at and I'm no longer enjoying my life. I'm no longer enjoying my own presence. I'm frustrated with my own presence because I think I should be somewhere else than where I am.
Speaker 1:
And so a very beautiful spiritual practice of self-acceptance allows us to come into the present moment, and when we're in the present moment, we can take an honest assessment of where we're at and we'll actually begin to see that things are not as bad as we think they are. We will begin to see ourselves from a loving place, a more calm place, a more realistic approach about who we actually are. Now, not only do we need to accept who we are, we need to accept where we are and it's the realization that I am here in this moment with these life circumstances and it's okay. And you might say, no, it's not okay, I hate where I'm at, I don't like my life right now, and if I accept that, then I won't change it. Once again, that goes back to that false narrative and story that we have that acceptance means a lack of change.
Speaker 1:
Acceptance doesn't mean a lack of change. Acceptance becomes the motivation for change. We have to accept where we're at. We have to take a look at our life circumstances. We have to take a look at our life circumstances. We have to look at our relationships. We have to look at our economic situation. We have to look at all of it and give it an honest look and accept it. Accept where it's at. Accepting the truth allows me to change what is going on. A lack of ability to accept the way that things are keeps me from changing what's happening in my life. So going through the practice of looking at what's going on in my current life situation and accepting it just really looking at it and accepting where I'm at will become the springboard for you to make the changes that you want to make.
Speaker 1:
Another important practice of self-acceptance is realizing that you'll never arrive and you're not supposed to arrive. There is no place of arriving for us. It is the sense that we're going to arrive at some point that causes a lot of the suffering. When we accept that there is no arrival, that we're always going to be on a journey, it allows us to start putting our focus on the journey, which then can allow us to choose to enjoy the journey, to look at it differently, that we're not running after some destination, that we're on a journey of growth.
Speaker 1:
You know, if you think about a tree, a tree's not thinking okay when all of a sudden I get tall enough or I get enough leaves on me, or all of a sudden I'm looking like this that now I'll be an acceptable, beautiful tree. No, a tree just does what it does. It grows, it evolves, because that's what it's supposed to do, and it has seasons where it has leaves and the leaves fall. It's just a whole cycle that's happening. And with us it's a whole cycle that's happening, we're evolving, but when we get so focused on a destination, it creates such suffering for us because we want to be there, but we're here and we think that here and the us that's in this here and this now is unacceptable. No, it's the here and the us who's in the here and now that's going to evolve into that future us.
Speaker 1:
So we need to love and accept where we're at right now, because who we are right now, where we are right now, is the journey that gets you to where you want to be. You don't get to become that future version of yourself, you don't get to come to that place of being that person without going through what you're in right now. So learning to accept what you're in right now, so learning to accept what you're in right now, learning to love the person who's in all of this right now, is the thing that you need in order to become that person. Think about it this way Is the future version of you loving and self-accepting? Does the future version of you that you have in your mind have acceptance for you or judgment for you? Does that future version of you love you or does that future version of you continue to shame you.
Speaker 1:
Well, if you're trying to grow and you're trying to develop, I would imagine that in your mind, the future version of yourself accepts you and loves you. What does that future version need from you right now? A future version of you needs for you in this moment, to begin to practice self-acceptance, to begin to practice self-love, because that future version of you likely isn't going to wake up one morning and all of a sudden go oh my goodness, all of a sudden, now I completely love and accept myself. No, what happens is we begin to practice that behavior, we begin to show ourselves that, and then it becomes a normal part of who we are. So if the someday version of you is a self-accepting version of you, then the right now version of you needs to begin to practice that. The right now version of you needs to begin to get that in your system so it becomes a normal part of your daily life in the future. So remember, you're not just going to arrive to some place, you're going to grow into some place. Okay, it's not teleportation that's going to happen. It's going to be a growing process into the version of yourself that you want to be, and it starts with accepting the version that you are right now.
Speaker 1:
So let's shift gears and talk a little bit about how do we practice self-improvement in a healthy way. I encourage you to get on notepad, take some notes around this. If you're driving, you can do it later. Go back and listen to this portion. But the first thing I want to encourage you to do is identify just simply, what do I want to improve in my life. What's that thing about myself or my life situation that I want to improve on? Just write it out, because a lot of times we're not even clear on that. We just have this feeling that something's off or there's something wrong with us and we need to fix something, and so we just shotgun, we just go after everything. Right Now, let's get really focused in on this and let's just think about one thing what do you want to improve?
Speaker 1:
Then move on to a second question why? Why do you want to improve that thing about yourself? What's the motivation? Where is it coming from? Is the motivation coming from others, others who have told you you need to fix something or change something about yourself? Is there this legacy voice that's in your head, or is it really coming from you that you desire to change this part of yourself. You see, you can't change yourself for others, man, I know I tried. I tried changing myself because other people said I needed to change something and it wasn't until I decided that I wanted that thing out of my life or in my life that I actually changed things. Self-motivation for change is sustainable. Others telling you need to change something. You're trying to change yourself to make others happy or to be acceptable to them. Man, it's exhausting, it won't last, it won't stick. You'll all of a sudden find yourself repeating behaviors and patterns in secrecy instead of actually authentically changing, because that's who you want to be. So ask yourself the question why am I wanting to make this change Now?
Speaker 1:
The third thing is what's the energy? Okay, so we get to some of the motivation, but now we need to get to some of the energy. What energy do I want to approach this from? What energy am I approaching it from? Is it one of I should change, that I need to change that about myself, and some of that's okay. But if we get too heavy in that energy, it really becomes exhausting, because it's shame-based and it's hard to sustain change from guilt and shame. Is it an energy of? There's something wrong with me and I need to fix this or change this about myself. There's something wrong with me and I need to fix this or change this about myself. Or is it an energy of curiosity and hopefulness and dreaming and inspiring that I could become, that I could have this thing be different in my life, or I could have this thing be a part of my life? There's a lot lighter and more inspiring energy that you're coming from.
Speaker 1:
Well, the next thing I want to talk about in healthy self-development is what's the goal? What are you actually trying to accomplish? Where are you trying to get to? Because a lot of times, we'll just put our head around a theory of what we need to be like or what we want to manifest in our life, but we're not actually sure of what it looks like when we get to that place, and so, because we have no goal, we're never satisfied. We're constantly chasing it, we're constantly trying to figure out how to get there and not sure if we've got there or not. So that just creates even more frustrated energy and continues to cement the fact to us that we're not going to change, because we don't know when we've changed and we don't know what change looks like. So get some type of goal around. This is where I want to be. This is what I want to have accomplished in X amount of time.
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So if you want to be more loving towards yourself, for example, and you identify that the way that you talk to yourself isn't very loving, then you want to set a goal around. How can I change the way that I talk to myself and how will I know when that begins to change? Right, so you might have a certain thing that you say to yourself that's not really kind. So you can begin to measure that. How often do I say it? Have I begun to replace it with more life-giving words and a different way of speaking to myself and really begin to track that? So we've got to have some kind of idea about where we're trying to go and some kind of measures of when we get there. Otherwise, we're just going to stay trapped in the sense that we're not making any improvement because we don't know what improvement actually looks like.
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Now, another part that's important in healthy self-development is we don't choose too many things to work on at once. I encourage you one or two things. One or two things, because when we start to work on six, seven, eight things about our lives that we need to change. We're setting ourselves up subconsciously to sabotage ourselves so that we can reinforce the fact that we can't change and that there's something wrong with us. So one or two things maximum to try to work on over a set amount of time, over this type of period of time. I want to work on this thing and I want to know if I'm making some improvement in it.
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And then, the whole time that we're going through this process, we're just continuing to check in on our energy. Where is the source of it coming from? Have we all of a sudden got more shame-based or are we still in a life-giving approach? Or are we doing it for the motivation of others? Are we doing it to be more acceptable? Are we doing it because we love ourselves and we want the highest version of ourselves to come out simply for us, because we want to see what the highest version of ourselves looks like. We want to see what the expression of our authentic self looks like on this planet in this lifetime. I hope that's helpful in helping you hold that tension between self-acceptance and self-development, and really healthy self-development, in my opinion. The way I look at, it is when we get to the place that we're simply trying to get the beauty of who our authentic self is to shine forth, instead of coming from an energy that we need to fix something about ourselves. That's when self-development is absolutely beautiful, fun and a fantastic journey to go on.
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Speaking of a beautiful, fantastic journey to go on, I want to encourage you, if you haven't already done so, to download my free self-assessment and 30-day guide to a healthy relationship with yourself.
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You can see the show notes in this episode to the link to download your free copy, or you can simply go to my website at jerryhendersonorg. It's designed to help you evaluate the five key areas of a healthy self-relationship. I also want to take a moment to remind you, if you've not had a chance yet to subscribe or to follow this podcast, please take a moment to do that. That's going to keep you updated on when new episodes come out, and also, if you haven't had a moment yet to rank it or review it. That would mean the world to me, because that's going to continue to extend the reach of this podcast and get it to people who need to hear how they can heal their relationship with themselves. Well, thank you for joining another episode of the Permission to Love podcast. I'm always so grateful that you show up and that you're a part of this community, and I want to remind you, as always, that you are worthy of your own love.