Mats's Journal
I think the concept is that you accept yourself first, flaws and all, and then also work on self-improvement.
I think this is gold... at the core my people-pleasing tendencies is lack of self-love: toxic shame instilled in me in early childhood that led me to spend my life seeking validation from others, and thereby positioning myself as having less power than them...
The thing about developing genuine love for myself is that it comprises both unconditional self acceptance - 'I am already good enough' - and robust commitment to self improvement and bettering myself -'because I love myself, I will strive to be the absolute best version of myself' ... there's no trade-off between self-acceptance and self-improvement.. they're two sides of the self-love coin 🙂
The thing about developing genuine love for myself is that it comprises both unconditional self acceptance - 'I am already good enough' - and robust commitment to self improvement and bettering myself -'because I love myself, I will strive to be the absolute best version of myself' ... there's no trade-off between self-acceptance and self-improvement.. they're two sides of the self-love coin 🙂
Very well said. I've never thought about it that way before but it definitely makes sense. I'll be working on internalizing this 🙂
Since my last update I have made a few changes to my mindset and approach to self-development. Although I've been working on this for less than a month I've noticed a large improvement in my general happiness and how I see myself.
Some background
When I was younger I used to be very emotional and sensitive, but as I got older (about 13-14) I realized that guys are not "supposed" to be sensitive/emotional. As a response to this I adopted a more stoic outlook on life and tried to dominate my emotions. While I definitely managed to become a tougher and calmer person I went too far and started repressing my emotions to the point where I lost most of my empathy (also led to situations where I became resentful of friends and damaged our relationship). While I've been working on a lot of self-improvement I've never went deep into exploring myself, which means that all the results I've achieved have been built on a shaky foundation. Therefore I decided that the most important thing I can do for myself is to learn to love and understand myself and my emotions.
Emotional Mastery
To reconnect with my emotions I decided to try out Charlie Houpert's course Emotional Mastery. This course is probably not for everyone, but for me it was very impactful. The course is structured around three different approaches to emotional mastery:
- The cognitive approach: contains exercises like free-writing, thinking deeply about things that bother you, and consciously disproving limiting beliefs.
- The emotional approach. mainly consists of guided meditations and developing intuition (something I never succeeded with).
- The physical approach: the least used approach in the course, contains exercises like dancing and letting your body express itself freely.
The different approaches was something I enjoyed since different people react more to different approaches (for me the cognitive one was the most effective). Some of the main takeaways I got from the course are:
Things that bother you in other people often show parts of yourself that you haven't accepted
This was huge for me. By exploring the behaviors in other people that bother me and thinking about in what ways I exhibit the same behavior I not only got to understand myself better but I became less judgmental of others. Now whenever people annoy me I see it as an opportunity to learn more about myself.
It's okay to be a hypocrite
In regards to the previous point. I learned that one of the main things that made me lose respect for myself was the fact that I expect myself to uphold my own standards (which are already too high) without any exceptions. Emotions can't be controlled, and if you don't allow yourself to feel certain emotions because they don't align with your values these emotions become repressed and will harm you in other ways.
For example, I value self-control, and when I see others act impulsively I get annoyed (which I now understand is because I haven't accepted the part of myself that acts impulsively). In the past, I would have believed that I either need to get rid of my impulsive side, or that I need to let go of my value of self-control, because I thought I needed to act in complete congruence at all times. Now, I can instead accept that I value self-control, but that there is a part of me that is impulsive and that part of me also serves a purpose and deserves my acceptance. Self-love isn't about getting rid of your flaws but rather to stop seeing them as such.
Self development from a sense of self-acceptance
For this I have to thank Lucio and Lucas who both posted great replies in this journal 🙂 I used to have an irrational fear that if I accepted myself completely I wouldn't have any reason to improve myself. I used to beat myself down whenever I wasted time by for example playing video games, which on one hand led to results but also damaged my relationship with myself. From the EM course I developed the mindset that playing video games isn't a waste of time necessarily, instead, I can appreciate that I enjoyed the time I spent playing but if I ask myself honestly if that's what I want to continue doing the answer will be "no". With this mindset I can ask myself what I really want to do, which for me tends to be self-improvement, and still accept myself as I currently am.
Besides the EM course I have dropped one of my routines that wasn't giving me much value to instead implement some reading every morning. I've also been progressing through PU and keep having my mind blown by how good this course is 🙂
Good to see you back in your journal Mat! I totally agree on "Things that bother you in other people often show parts of yourself that you haven't accepted"... in my case at least, this has been very true and a major engine for personal growth... often irritation with others is the entry point or window that allows me to uncover something I don't like in myself that I need to take a look at, even if it's just to embrace or accept it... keep up the good work!
Rock on Mats!
Thank you for the kind words and cool to know about your thoughts on "Emotional Mastery".
If you want to write a summary/review into a post just let me know -I'm sure many people would be interested in a good review, the review of Charisma University here is quite a popular post-.
Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on January 27, 2022, 6:30 amIf you want to write a summary/review into a post just let me know -I'm sure many people would be interested in a good review, the review of Charisma University here is quite a popular post-.
Thanks Lucio!
I haven't written a review before but I'm definitely willing to try 🙂
Is there any specific program I should write it in (for example Google Docs) or would I write directly into the post?
Awesome!
Let me prepare a quick forum entry with some basic instructions, and then you can let your creativity go wild 🙂
Thanks a lot Lucio!
I'll get to work on it right away 🙂
In the past two weeks I have been struggling (and still struggle) to find time for my self-development work due to my University-studies. Despite this I have had a few insights and mindset shifts that I think are quite interesting:
Focus on increasing and providing value
TPM places a lot of focus on increasing one's own value, but since I joined PU I have focused more on how to increase my power. Recently though, I have been going through some of the journals on the forum and it has been an absolute goldmine for self-development approaches! Seeing the transformation of people on this forum has been a huge inspiration for me to raise my own value so that I can do more for others. As soon as I'm less swamped with my studies I will try to make a list of things to work on to become higher value.
Alternative way to approach habits
I was catching up with a friend of mine today who is very self-development driven and he shared a mindset that I liked a lot about how he views his habits. Because he has a lot of habits at the same time he makes sure that 1) they are easy enough that he can do them regardless of what happens in his life, and 2) he allows himself to half-ass his way through them.
By using the mindset: I have the privilege of half-assing my habits he can consistently do even the tougher habits like working out. That is not to say that the goal is to be lazy or do things poorly; but for days without motivation or energy this mindset allows you to do your habits anyway.
Developing social skills
In the past I tried Charisma University but while I thought the content was good I didn't feel like it worked well for me for three reasons: 1) I found it difficult to turn the action guides into habits that stick, 2) the high energy style of charisma is quite exhausting for me, and 3) I feel like being quick to laughter and speaking through a smile etc makes me come across as low-power and makes people respect me less.
I've started to think of social interactions as practice where I can try out different habits (like facing people head on, speaking loudly/slowly, using self-deprecating humor, etc). However, since social interactions are spontaneous I keep forgetting to work on the habits.