Lately, I've been noticing the difference between self-improvement, self-observation, and self-love in a way and it was funny to notice it.
I was reading a book on Kindle and I noticed that they forgot the quotes. This is a new book that's out. So they probably haven't finished polishing it quite as well.
I thought I’d submit a little error on the Kindle, “You missed a quote here” or, “Oh, this is an extra word.” It's just something that I regularly do when I'm reading and it occurred to me that this wasn't necessary.
I realized that rather than being in a perpetual mode of improvement, of trying to correct the tiniest little things or make everything into perfect balance, it can sort of distract from just enjoying the beauty of what's there. Right?
I'm reading this book to relax and enjoy the story and the flow. So why am I breaking that beautiful flow and coming into a very particular, detailed space of “this little comma is missing or that quote or whatever.”
Maybe I could just let it go, maybe I could just let the little things go. They said don't sweat the small things and that they're all small things.
And for me, I thought, “oh, this is a really fun practice.”
So, for the last few days, I've been doing that - if I'm reading and I see a little error, I don't correct it. if somebody's talking and I notice a little grammatical error (I’m in Japan so it’s common to hear an English grammatical error), instead of thinking I should point it out or help teach them a little better English, I just think I can let this go. I can focus on, the beautiful message they're giving me rather than the fact that they're not perfect.
It’s the same thing with myself - if I'm feeling something, rather than constantly needing to improve myself, I can just say, “oh, yeah, that's kind of fun.” Like I have a little place where, something's, a little funny, a little strange, and that’s great. I just move on from there.
I liked it and I wanted to share it because I know that earlier on in my growth journey, I had this idea that I could improve myself to perfection. I don't know if it was a conscious idea, but it was there where I was just going after improving, improving, improving.
I want to get better at this, get better at that. I want to get rid of all the rough edges and I want to dive in and clear out the pain. I want to go full tilt into correction or healing mode.
And over the years, what I found is that it's not necessary.
It can be very fun. It's kind of like an adrenaline junkie style, of personal growth.
If you don't know that about me, I was, I've been an adrenaline junkie most of my life. But it's not necessary.
Our normal life brings us opportunities to observe ourselves to correct if we want to change how things happen next time. And it doesn't have to be effort.
And, just observing, like I've enjoyed the last couple of days not making the corrections and for things that I think that I need to correct.
I've been just putting them in a note. So next time I talk to that person or next time I hit that particular task I can read through these notes and see, here are the things I thought could be improved instead of doing it right now.
And what I noticed was, when I come back to the notes, like I'm talking to the person I read the note, these things aren't important. I don't need to communicate these. It was just me sort of being picky or noticing an unimportant detail.
Oh, I don't need to fix this thing in the software that I'm playing with because it doesn't matter, even though in the moment three days ago it felt like an important thing that I needed to dive in and work on.
So this practice of letting things go or putting them somewhere that I can check again later if I think it needs to be fixed is helping me to be more in the flow at the moment and just enjoy it without little interruptions all the time.
So, kind of fun.
As I said, I think this is probably the difference between self-improvement as a target or as a goal and just, a sort of self-realization, self-love, or self-actualization.
All these other words are just about being myself naturally with and without any perceived flaws because we're all a work in progress and is totally ok. That's totally lovable.
