You do understand that everything you said and the sentence “be comfortable with who you are” are a contradiction, right? Fulfilling all the other stuff you mentioned will take massive amounts of energy of you’re not the type who does them naturally, trapping you in a cycle of “still not good enough”. Vigorous self-improvement is quickly becoming the “high performer” equivalent to bulimia: a form of utter self-hatred expressed as pseudo-beneficial behavior that actually does way more harm than good.
Truth is: love is chance. You might be able to increase the odds somewhat, but in the end, none of us can really control if we.end up meeting someone we will be able to spend our lives with. Trying to constantly be different tha you’d be naturally (trying to be the career guy with hobbies sports and eating healthy, while deep down you are a lazy ass couch potato) will increase your chances of meeting someone, bit I’d argue it will not increase your chances of being happy with someone. Or being happy with yourself for that matter.
This is true. I went through a long period of this exact pattern in my early 20s and while some positives came out of it, it also made me never feel good enough and like I always had to change things to be better. Nothing was ever enough and it was depressing and exhausting.
I only realized how toxic the pattern had become when I started going to therapy. The therapist pointed out that all of my appreciation towards myself was conditional. I only felt good if condition x/y/z was met, and there were always new conditions to make me feel not good enough anymore. He encouraged me not to remove all conditional appreciation, but to try and find an equal degree of unconditional appreciation and love towards myself that wasn’t based on others. Not easy to do, but it made a real impression on me and it changed my outlook, even if I don’t always succeed.
You do understand that everything you said and the sentence “be comfortable with who you are” are a contradiction, right? Fulfilling all the other stuff you mentioned will take massive amounts of energy of you’re not the type who does them naturally, trapping you in a cycle of “still not good enough”. Vigorous self-improvement is quickly becoming the “high performer” equivalent to bulimia: a form of utter self-hatred expressed as pseudo-beneficial behavior that actually does way more harm than good.
Truth is: love is chance. You might be able to increase the odds somewhat, but in the end, none of us can really control if we.end up meeting someone we will be able to spend our lives with. Trying to constantly be different tha you’d be naturally (trying to be the career guy with hobbies sports and eating healthy, while deep down you are a lazy ass couch potato) will increase your chances of meeting someone, bit I’d argue it will not increase your chances of being happy with someone. Or being happy with yourself for that matter.
This is true. I went through a long period of this exact pattern in my early 20s and while some positives came out of it, it also made me never feel good enough and like I always had to change things to be better. Nothing was ever enough and it was depressing and exhausting.
I only realized how toxic the pattern had become when I started going to therapy. The therapist pointed out that all of my appreciation towards myself was conditional. I only felt good if condition x/y/z was met, and there were always new conditions to make me feel not good enough anymore. He encouraged me not to remove all conditional appreciation, but to try and find an equal degree of unconditional appreciation and love towards myself that wasn’t based on others. Not easy to do, but it made a real impression on me and it changed my outlook, even if I don’t always succeed.