Self-Improvement VS Self-Acceptance

How to Make Peace With the Paradox

The first self-improvement book I ever read was Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins.

I moved away from my hometown to go to college. I left behind what little friends I had and felt alone and depressed because I had social anxiety and didn't have the social skills to make new friends.

On top of that, I got my first job to pay bills and fell into a deeper ocean of emotional turmoil.

In other words, adulting was kicking my ass.

I was confessing my feelings to my mom one night after work. During a lull in our conversation, she walked into her room and came out with Awaken the Giant Within.

Quotes like these felt like your first sip of coffee in the morning after getting little sleep:

• “Every problem is a gift — without problems we would not grow.”
• “It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.”
• “You can’t have a plan for your day, ’til you have a plan for your life.”
• “Our beliefs about what we are and what we can be precisely determine what we can be”
• “The past does not equal the future.”

If those words aren’t the equivalent to a large cold brew with two espresso shots I don't know what is.

The book triggered my curiosity — “what else could I learn from books?”

I spent hours before work and hours before sleep reading reviews on Amazon about various books. Within a year I had more books than clothes. And the categories ranged from self-improvement to dating and relationships to novels with personal development messages (think The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho).

But my world flipped upside down and I fell on my head when I discovered self-acceptance.

The Dangers of Self-Improvement

I was reading The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden one night and its words sent my brain and body into a panic.

“As a psychotherapist I see that nothing does as much for an individual’s self-esteem as becoming aware of and accepting disowned parts of the self. The, first steps of healing and growth are awareness and acceptance — consciousness and integration. They are the fountainhead of personal development.”

“Acceptance? Integration? Disowned parts? What is this man talking about?” I questioned frustratingly.

I put down the book as quickly as I picked it up. I was experiencing so much success improving every area of my life I feared acceptance would leave me lethargic, unmotivated, and lazy.

After another recommendation of The Six Pillars, I grabbed it from the floor and swiped the dust off its cover. I couldn’t put it down. I even bought a pad of college-ruled paper and filled its page quickly. I essentially rewrote the whole book in my notes.

“If my aim is to prove I am ‘enough,’ the project goes on to infinity — because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.”

Upon reflection, I realized I was in an unconscious state of hypertension and anxiety because I felt I needed to improve myself. That if I didn’t, I wasn’t good enough to accomplish my goals or experience love.

I also began to compare myself to any and everyone.

“Am I more confident than them?”

“Do I think more positively than them?”

“Am I as hard-working and disciplined as them?”

And Braden notes an interesting observation — when does self-improvement end? When will you or me finally feel we're good enough? When will shame no longer be a motivator for success?

After devouring that book (which I highly recommend and believe it to be one of the best books you could read), I read others with similar ideas of self-acceptance, compassion, and how to handle shame.

I took a mini hiatus from the self-improvement world and committed to self-acceptance. But the acceptance road was as bumpy as the improvement’s pavements.

The Dangers of Self-Acceptance

“Is it healthy to want to improve?”

“Are my desires for success and love motivated by shame and lack?”

“What’s the purpose of doing anything to better yourself or life?

Doubts and questions like these left me stagnant and dazed with confusion.

And even worse, my feelings of comparison and shame increased in frequency and power.

“Am I as content and peaceful as them?”

“Successful people are money-hungry trolls. They’re not grateful and truly happy.”

Obviously, there is a paradox or contradiction between the two theories.

On one hand, you have self-improvement — the act of altering one's mental and physical qualities to achieve a desired outcome.

And on the other, you have self-acceptance — the unconditional approval of one's strengths, weaknesses, physical characteristics, and emotional states.

What’s one to do? Is one better than the other? How do you incorporate both? Is that even possible?

Make Peace With the Paradox

I spent years wrestling with the two theories. And after years of trial and error and research, I’ve come to the conclusion self-improvement and self-acceptance are almost identical minus this one caveat:

Your intention matters more than your action.

It’s easy to accept your strengths. But it’s difficult to acknowledge and approve of your weakness without the need to overcompensate or take action from a place of fear, anxiety, and shame.

Accepting our flaws, making peace with them, while acknowledging we have some improvement that needs to be done is the healthy integration of both theories.

“Yes, I have social anxiety and need to improve my communication skills to make new friends, network, and find a partner. But my value is not dependent on these two characteristics.”

“I’m codependent and need to fix this. But my flaws don’t need to be another weapon of self-hate.”

I don’t believe one is better than the other but I do believe unconditional acceptance, inner peace and neutrality are the foundation of healthy action and gratitude of what we might achieve.

Self-acceptance is nerve-wracking and scary.

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” — Carl Jung.

Jung’s words could be no further from the truth. But neither could the Dalai Lama’s:

“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”

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