What Does It Mean To “Self Improve?”
Self Improvement has become mainstream. In the last few years,since I have been writing articles and submitting them toarticle sites, Ive noticed that the category of “SelfImprovement” has been showing up lately when it was never therebefore. To me, this is very good news.
But what does it really mean to “Self Improve?” What are wereally improving when we self improve? And what “self” are weimproving?
We each have two “selves” – our wounded self and our core Self.Our core Self is our true self, our natural soul self – ouressence. Our core Self is our passion, our joy, our gifts andtalents, our ability to love, our creativity. We come into thislife as our core Self, and when this Self is loved and valued byour parents, we continue to naturally grow our God-given giftsand talents and manifest the fullness of our beings. This Selfwants to improve by learning the skills necessary to fullyexpress itself.
But when this Self is not seen and valued in the way we needed,we create an alternative self, a self we hope will have controlover getting the love we need and avoiding the pain we canthandle – a self to help us feel safe. This is our false self,our wounded self, our ego self. This self is filled with thefalse beliefs that we absorbed as we were growing up – beliefsthat end up limiting our true, core Self. This self does notneeds improving – it needs healing.
The term “self improvement” can sometimes be a bit misleading,because we do not want to improve our wounded self. We do notwant to improve on the ways we lie, manipulate, and avoid in ourattempts to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. Wedont want to improve on our many addictions to substance andprocesses. We dont want to improve on our anger, ourcompliance, our withdrawal and our resistance.
We want to heal it.
Healing and improving are not the same thing.
We can certainly self-improve when it comes to skills. We canimprove in sports, in art, music, writing, cooking. We canimprove our health and wellbeing by improving our diet andexercise program. We can improve in the knowledge we need to bemore successful
regarding work and money. We might be able toimprove our relationships by learning new communication skills.But what if acquiring new knowledge and skills does not improveour health, or our ability to earn money, or our relationships?And what if learning new skills does not bring us more joy andinner peace? It may mean that we need to heal the underlyingfears and false beliefs that cause us to be anxious, depressed,stressed, guilt-ridden, shamed, withdrawn, angry, blaming, orsad.
Sometimes Self Improvement just means practicing a skill, andothers times it means that we need to participate in a deephealing process. For example, many people try to improve theirhealth by losing weight and exercising. But if their foodaddictions are covering over unhealed pain, they might not beable to just change their diet. They might need to open to ahealing process in order to eventually improve.
If you are really trying to self improve but find yourself stuckand unable to progress, or find that you have no joy or innerpeace, you might want to open to the possibility that unhealedpain and beliefs are blocking your progress and causing yourpain. It is easy to improve yourself when there is nothingblocking the way. But if you have old false beliefs about youradequacy and worth, these beliefs may be blocking your abilityto take loving action in your own behalf. All your efforts toself improve will not bring you the satisfaction you are seekingif you have beliefs that are keeping you limited in fullyexpressing your true, core Self. If you are stuck, then you needto seek out a healing process, such as the Inner Bonding processwe teach, that will move you out of the fears and beliefs thatlimit you. Healing these fears and limiting beliefs will openthe door to improving your life in all ways!
About the author:
Margaret Paul, Ph.D., best-selling author of eight books,including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You” andco-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. LearnInner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bondingcourse: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her atmailto:margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone Sessions.
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