You Can’t Become a Better Person

I’ve had to learn over and over that personal growth is not about improving yourself.

For example, I was never able to successfully lose weight until I did the inner work of healing my relationship with my body. Trying to impose a more acceptable body on myself didn’t work. It was just playing out the same inner battle based in self-rejection. As long as losing weight was an expression of self-rejection, the part of me that didn’t want to be rejected (like, most of me), would resist it.

I wasn’t able to make progress on feeling loved and accepted until I worked on my core belief that something was wrong with me. Before that, I was just trying to avoid rejection by trying to become “more acceptable”. I was acting from the wound, not healing it. Avoiding rejection and feeling loved are just not the same goal, and one can’t create the other.

Self-rejection creates resistance

Self-improvement based on self-rejection doesn’t create lasting change. Our body and spirit know that there’s nothing wrong with us. Any self-work that is predicated on self-hatred or self-denial or self-judgement won’t stick, because it will create or perpetuate an inner conflict.

This turns self-improvement into a kind of self-violence.

When you hit resistance to change, listen to it. That is some part of you advocating for a deeper kind of self-love and self-care and self-acceptance.

So what is personal growth actually about?

• It’s about liberating yourself.
• It’s about dismantling the layers of pain and constriction and oppression that have clouded your heart and formed a cage around your soul.
• It’s about loving the fragmented parts of your consciousness and processing and grieving the pain they have held for you.
• It’s about making your mind a friendlier place to inhabit.
• It’s about loving and supporting yourself no matter what is happening in your external environment.
• It’s about intentionally crafting a life that supports your full aliveness.
• It’s about bringing your outer expression into alignment to your inner truth, because you have no reason to hide.
• It’s about showing up in the world with vulnerability and courage and confidence that you are valuable.

Growth reveals yourself, it doesn’t create yourself. You can create a life, a practice, a habit–but the deepest part of you, your Soul, can’t be created or destroyed, and it can’t be improved upon.

Your inner self can’t become better. You can heal, and become more free and joyous, but there’s nothing wrong with you. You aren’t broken, so you can’t be fixed. It’s just the wrong goal.

Go look at a baby. Could it be a better baby? Of course not.

Healing is about remembering who you really are.

You are already good. You are already enough. You are already valuable and worthy and acceptable and lovable.

That remembering can be hard and painful, because the things that made you forget were hard and painful. Healing is a putting-back-together of something that used to be whole and was shattered. But the pattern of wholeness is still inside you.

Look for that wholeness inside yourself. Nourish it. Support it. Fuel it. Believe in it. This is who you really are.

Hi there! I’m Emma and I write about self-liberation. My writing is meant to share my process & inspire your own. If you want more frequent/current writing, visit my Substack Sparkly Dark, where I’m unpacking my neurodivergence.

If my writing has helped you, you can leave a tip at buymeacoffee.com, leave a comment below, learn more about me, or follow me on Instagram.

Also! I’m also looking to start a community of people looking to build authentic connnections & grow together.

Thanks so much for reading! ~Emma

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