We all have things we wish we were better at. As a therapist, I work everyday with folks moving through behaviors, reactions, and feelings they want to process and change. I have clients with personal goals related to their relationships, creativety, pleasure, self-confidence, and so much more. Every individual has their checklist. Don't you?

We all show up to our therapy sessions with a list of, “Things I would like to improve about myself.” The bullet points can be endless, and, personally, I know mine can be that way too. I have aspects of myself and my life that I would like to adjust, some of which I am working on now, and some of which I have put down for the time being, and there are things I'm sure I’m not even fully aware of yet.

Self-improvement is not inherently bad or detrimental; in fact, striving for more is a normal and healthy part of life and relationship to self. What is more, self-improvement offers humility, an awareness of areas for necessary growth, and a capacity to hold oneself accountable to change. That said, self-improvement can turn obsessive or toxic when the pursuit of perfectionism is at the core of how we navigate the road to self-betterment.

When we trick ourselves into believing that our value is attached to how perfect we are, and therefore, build our goals of self-improvement around this narrative, we end up causing ourselves more internal harm. The pressure of self-improvement can leave us feeling like we aren’t enough as we are right now and may always be.

A Toxic Industry

It is no surprise that self-help is a multibillion-dollar industry.

Much like the diet and beauty industries (which tend to feed into self-improvement toxicity), self-help and self-improvement capitalize off of a misplaced and false belief that perfectionism is attainable through materialism, in this case the fantasy of the perfect self and life through face masks, yoga pants, and supplements. If only we read enough books and attended enough self-help seminars, if only we exercised, processed, journaled, and meditated enough, if only we aced therapy…perhaps we would be fully healed and completely happy, and “perfect” and “worthy”…the list goes on.

Toxic self-improvement teaches us that there is always a better and a more perfect way to be, and that anything different than that is a failure. These ideas leave us stuck in an endless cycle of always chasing (and buying) an imagined “best” version of ourselves. And as we exist under capitalism, these perfectionistic ideas within self-help exist specifically so that you continue to spend your money for their profit.

The Impossibility of Perfection

And so, amidst the noise of the self-help industry, I regret to inform anyone who is reading this that perfectionism is not possible.

In fact, perfectionism at its core seeks to separate, divide us, and cause us harm. In thinking about the roots of perfectionism, I want to name the realities of capitalism and white supremacy that underpin our society.

In Tema Okun’s work White Supremacy Culture, she shares that “white supremacy culture trains us all to internalize attitudes and behaviors that do not serve any of us,” meaning that we are fed narratives about who we are and how we should be that limit, control, and harm our sense of self. Okun’s work is vast, and she defines many core characteristics of white supremacy culture, specifically perfectionism.

What does this mean in the context of self-improvement? If self-improvement is a pursuit of perfection, the very notion of perfection denotes that there is a singularly right or correct way of how things should be done and how you should be. Perfection provides very little, if any, room to be human or diverse, to make mistakes, to fail and learn and try again, to try something for the sake of it, to play and have fun.

If we are always trying to be the perfect partner, the perfect sibling, the perfect friend, situations where we inevitably make mistakes, we may feel like the biggest failure, which in turn can lead to tremendous shame, embarrassment, and self-loathing. Whether it’s our personal growth or our relationships to each other, mistakes and imperfections will happen. Life is imperfect.

The idea of perfectionism is meant to limit us: it’s meant to make us believe there is a standard we should always be seeking to achieve, a standard that is entirely impossible. And when we spend our energy believing we have to be a certain way, we are left unable to love, hold compassion, and feel valuable as we are today.

Radical Self-Love and Being Enough

So, you may ask yourself: What now? How do I stop striving for perfection? How do I seek self-improvement without getting stuck in this endless cycle of shame and rigidity?

‍Again, self-improvement is not inherently bad. For me, I want to be able to run more miles, I want to build stronger relationships with some of my family members, I want to feel more comfortable when expressing certain emotions, and I want to learn this complicated new crochet stitch I can’t seem to finish.

It’s okay to want self-improvement, but with this desire for improvement we must accept and love the current moment we're in, and remind ourselves that perfection is not a realistic standard for growth.

We can reject this pursuit of perfection, and remind ourselves that we are enough as we are, regardless of what we would like to work on. Engaging with books that are based on the unlearning of white supremacy culture and the building of radical self-acceptance can inspire us. Although similar to self-help, these texts are written by Black, anti-capitalist, liberatory authors committed to the idea that we are enough just as we are in defiance to white supremacy:

• Journal of Radical Permission by adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor
• Rest as Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

We can be lovable works in progress. We can be enough, with aspects of ourselves and our lives that we want to improve. We can also allow ourselves space to exist, rest, and love, exactly the way we are.

You are enough, simply and beautifully, because you are here and because you are you.

‍Photo Credit: Euphoria