Why Fixing Yourself Won’t Work

Have you ever gone through a grueling series of job interviews only to find you were decisively rejected?

Have you recently lost a partner who walked away from you, trashing the time you spent together? Have you done a barrage of workshops, seminars and self-improvement courses with the lingering feeling that if you did just one more, then you would be OK?

Welcome to the club!

We all go through experiences in life where the only explanation seems to be that we are fundamentally flawed, that we don’t have what it takes and no one really cares about us. We are all on our own with little or no recourse.​

In such circumstances, it is all but impossible NOT to conclude that we are ALL MESSED UP, and we need to FIX OURSELVES.​

Wasting Your Time Without Knowing Why

When you come from a position that you are all wrong, but that you can get better through a massive self-improvement campaign, you set yourself up for a huge waste of time.

You are like the proverbial donkey chasing the carrot on the end of the stick not realizing that you will never reach it. Your problems follow you wherever you go like a persistent shadow.

While you may learn a lot in the process, even acquiring new skills, you will most likely end up feeling bitterly disillusioned. You are never going to find the end of this tunnel. Life is futile, and there is little point in going on.

The problem was you were using the wrong metaphor, laboring within an utterly disempowering context that ensured you would ultimately fail.

Fix Yourself The Wrong Metaphor

When you tell yourself that you must fix yourself, you are trying to lift yourself by your own bootstraps. On what are you going to pivot?

Not only that, you are using a mechanical metaphor that applies well to household equipment, but poorly to human beings. Considered as a body, you are an organism that grows and develops.

Your mind is an infinitely complex, self-learning instrument. You actually learn by making mistakes. Have you ever watched a little boy learn to walk?

Who said you are all messed up?  What drove you to such a conclusion?​

How you interpret your experience has a major impact on the outcome you hope to accomplish. Even your favorite guru most certainly has his own set of issues to face. As Werner Erhard once put it, “When you realize that everyone is ‘Not OK,’ you realize that it is ‘OK’ to be ‘Not OK’.” In other words, being OK is all a matter of consideration.​

You Are Already Ahead of the Game

Don’t get down on yourself. If you are concerned about self-improvement, this is actually a very good thing. The fact that you are already conscious of your needed development or growth in any specific area… it means that you are already ahead of the crowd.

Most people are relatively unconscious about their issues and don’t even want to consider working on themselves.​

What you may want to look at is becoming your own best friend by choosing a context that gives you an honest chance, rather than ensuring your failure.

Creating an Empowering Context​

When you start thinking about development and learning as metaphors, you will feel more at home with healing and insight, taking an experimental attitude toward life and giving yourself permission to make mistakes, so that you may more easily discover what actually works. What works for YOU…! 

The key is to create an environment (in your head) where you can go with the flow and make adjustments accordingly. In other words, drop resistance.

A truly empowering context is one of completion and abundance. The Universe has provided us more than we need, or even more than we could possibly ask for.  Should resources on Planet Earth be irreversibly dwindling, just imagine what is waiting for us on other stars and galaxies. (The latest space probes assure us that we are in for big surprises.)

Should we be willing to hold that God is Love, and our Creator didn’t fundamentally mess up in the first place, that He knows what He is doing, we can accept that we are co-creators within our own creation.

Therefore, there is no reason to be a victim. We were put in charge of our own creation!

Both human and divine, we are here like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, learning just how to create. The fact that we often get into major mischief is just evidence that our Source wants us to grow into Godhood.

Creating Change One Small Step at a Time

It is good that you want to get the perfect job, to find and maintain the perfect relationship or to become a guru yourself. With a deeper appreciation for the way things are, you can begin to systematically accomplish your goals in a fashion that deeply nurtures you, that makes yourself and others feel wonderful.

Tony Robbins is an absolute master at molding habits and building strategies that give you your desired outcome in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort. Tony recommends that you “chunk” things down.​

Take a complex task, such as losing 100 pounds of weight, and break it up into manageable parts or steps. Crash dieting too often results in binge eating where you end up even fatter than before. As in any marathon, a steady pace wins over the sudden sprint.

I, personally, overcame blood sugar management issues by paying more attention to diet and nutrition. I studied the relevant nutrients and learned about superfoods. I began systematically incorporating them into my diet.

I found satisfying substitutes for milk, and learned to enjoy salads over sandwiches. Within a few months, my blood profile dramatically improved to the point where my doctor stopped lecturing me. It was a learning experience relying on the best sources (Dr. Mark Hyman, The Blood Sugar Solution), applied on a daily basis.​

Surfing Your Way Through Life: Conscious Transformation

The thought that you are all messed up and need to get fixed is just another thought. It came up on your way to discovering what works. It is not wrong to have such thoughts and act upon them, just inefficient.

As you develop an empowering context for your life and identify metaphors that truly serve you, you will begin to surf your way through. You will stop trying to push the river (going upstream) and start going with the flow. You will begin to consciously create your experience (for more details on this topic click here).​

All the problems and challenges we face are necessary to keep the game interesting. Without them, life would be utterly boring. Life is one gigantic celebration, and we are all perfect just as we are.

You are the perfect YOU, not the perfect somebody else. On the being level – you are perfect – so start building and growing from here. There is no reason to look at yourself as being broken. You are not a robot. What is, IS. What isn’t, ISN’T. This may sound utterly trivial, and yet it is one of the most profound truths ever articulated.

As Werner Erhard once put it:​

Life is a game.

In order to have a game, something must be more important than something else.

If what IS is more important than what ISN’T, the game is over.

So, life is a game in which what isn’t is more important than what is.

Let the good times roll!

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