"Recently someone offered me a couple of books on the spiritual healing arts from a respected author—for free. It was the kind of offer I once would have responded positively to, taken them gratefully, and brought them home to sit on my "to be read" shelf. Maybe I would have tried to read them, maybe I would have even completed them. Instead, what I heard myself saying, with unusual frankness, was, "No thanks. I'm sick of self-improvement.""
"I don't think this is a radically new notion. Meditation, Eastern philosophy, and much of the perennial wisdom counsels us to be more in process and less striving to achieve results. What I'm trying to peel back here, which at least for me is new, is that even those methodologies, at least as practiced here in the West, can become their own kind of self-improvement treadmills."
Self-improvement often operates as a treadmill that people can choose to step off. Process-oriented practices, including meditation and spiritual methodologies, can become another form of striving or achievement when practiced as goals. Many people feel fatigue from constant marketing and cultural pressure to become better versions of themselves. Choosing a time-out from improvement efforts can arise from aging, decreased vitality, or an emerging inner peace. A shift toward simply being emphasizes acceptance and the idea that individuals are already enough. Turning every practice into a metric of success can lead to unnecessary self-criticism and diminished well-being.
Read at Psychology Today
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