Love Yourself Whilst Fixing Yourself

You don’t have to choose between the journey and the destination. Most self-improvement and inner peace approaches lean hard in one direction, acceptance without growth, or growth without self-love. But real, sustainable, purpose-aligned change needs both.

Inspired by Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), this short talk offers a simple framework for holding acceptance and improvement at the same time.

What if you were able to love yourself while fixing yourself?

Transcript

So there's a concept from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, DBT, That I really enjoy, It really helps guide my practice, It's the idea of loving yourself whilst fixing yourself. A lot of practices do one or the other, It almost feels like it's either trying to get you to change yourself, You know, Do this, Move this way, Meditate in this way, Do all of these things, And you're not there yet, So you're left feeling like you're lacking, Like you're striving, Like you're not quite there, And you know, The truth is, Based on those practices, You're not. You don't know how to do it well enough, You aren't fully functional, You're not quite there yet, And that can leave you feeling dejected, Unmotivated, Sad, For some people it is motivating, But for others, Not so much. On the other side of things, You get this full acceptance, Accept the moment, Accept yourself, Accept everything, And that's great, But it leads to, Or it can lead to, Stagnation. If I accept everything, Nothing changes, And therefore I'm left stuck in my hole. I always had this sort of issue, This dichotomy that I couldn't quite navigate. Practicing Mindfulness Meditation, It's like, Accept what arises, But I'd prefer to accept what arises if the things that I'm accepting is good, Is happy, Is positive, Right? Obviously, There's a little bit of a, I guess, Theoretical contradiction there, And it's not full, Total mindfulness and detachment, However, I'm not a full, Total practitioner of mindfulness, I'm not a monk, I'm not a believer, So to speak. I draw from a variety of different sources, And the solution to this little mini-paradox came from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, The idea of loving myself whilst fixing myself. Dialectic basically means to hold two things at once, Two opposing truths together, So I can love myself, But I can also strive to fix myself, And this is something that has really helped me moving forward, And I encourage you to consider it. You can love yourself, And you should love yourself fully, Radical self-acceptance, Really just appreciating, Accepting, Loving, Connecting to all of you, The good, The bad, The ugly, And the unknown. However, You will have goals, You will have dreams, You will have things you want to achieve, You will not be happy with every aspect of yourself. There will be some part of your mind, Your body, Your spirit, Your work, Life, Your family, A little situation that needs improvement. This is true for everyone. So, You love yourself, Accept yourself, But you also take the opportunity and the actions towards fixing yourself, Not out of hate, But out of a self-love, Right? Why do I exercise daily? Because I love myself, I'm giving myself this benefit of this daily exercise. Why do I read? Why do I meditate? Why do I socialize? Why do I eat well? Because I love and accept myself, And by doing so, I want to give myself the best, But I also want to improve, Right? That's the goal. The idea is that we love ourself whilst fixing ourself. But what does fixing ourself even mean? I like the idea of fixing myself being a functional improvement. The steps that I take in my life to get me more. More ability to connect. More ability to play. More ability to work. Or perhaps less. Less days off, Unwell. Less days sick. Less days injured. Whatever improvement means to you, Take the steps to get there. And also take the steps to love yourself in that process. There are many, Many things that I'm trying to implement in my life, But I have to love myself in the process, Because if I don't, I will fall into the trap of overfixing. Changing everything all at once. Changing too much, And therefore not getting anything done. Being hyperfixated on the goal and not the journey. I know that I have certain tendencies, Certain proclivities, Certain things that I do that are not optimal. So I love those parts of me, The parts that are trying so hard to be as good as I can be, Yet nonetheless falling short. I also love the parts of myself that are lazy, That are tired, That need to rest. And I honour those parts. I don't honour them by just indulging them. I honour them by giving them what they need, And then by pulling them up when they need to be pulled up, Right? It is a balance here, And this is a practice. But it's something that, Even just reminding yourself, I love myself whilst fixing myself. I love myself whilst fixing myself. And the good thing about this is that you will find very quickly that you're on a trend upwards. If you find yourself doing a bad habit, You know, Eating the cake, So to speak, Well love yourself whilst eating that cake. You get to enjoy that cake fully. And then you love yourself, The part of yourself that feels guilty about it. And then you love yourself, The part of yourself that wants to exercise more. You love the part of yourself that wants to diet. You love the part of yourself that wants to meditate, And the part of yourself that doesn't want to. But you take steps to improve over time, To fix yourself, To do more of the good and less of the bad. But I guess now the question becomes, Well, What is the good? How do you fix yourself? What does that even mean? And this becomes quite philosophical or quite spiritual. But I sort of look at it as a dual process. Once again, Another dialectic. My goal is a distant mountaintop in the distance. It's all the way over there. That's the goal. That's what I'm aiming towards. That's improvement. That's fixing myself, Whatever that means. And it means something different for me. But you'll have an idea, A vague north star that you can point towards, A mountaintop. You at your level, You at your perfection, You fixed, Quote unquote, Is over there. So start walking in that direction, And love yourself as you get lost. Love yourself as you find the path. Love yourself as you move closer. Love yourself the entire way. Love yourself as you fail. Love yourself as you get back on board. Love yourself whilst fixing yourself. Good luck. And I'll see you in the next session.