What if Personal Growth Was About Discovering and Honouring Yourself Instead of Fixing What's Broken?

When you think about improving yourself, is it because you are broken or in some way faulty? Is there something wrong with you that you need to fix? Is it because if you fix this one problem, you'll be happier? Possibly via being more loveable or more productive or wealthier?

I've written before about the idea of approaching our self-improvement from the radical stance of not being broken--that we can like (or even love!) ourselves while we encourage healing and growth in our lives.

Now I am here to share a counter-paradigm to that brokenness that can help support our growth through a lens of love: what if we view personal growth as a method of knowing and honouring ourselves?

This comes from Catherine Andrews' Sunday Soother newsletter.
 
She actually says that growth can be knowing and honouring our souls, which gives just enough separation for those of us who may still struggle with fully loving ourselves, even though our souls are basically just us, concentrated. Us in our purest form. Us when we are swimming in enough love that self-doubt fades away. Us when we are sure. Who wouldn't want to get to know that version of themselves?
 
She specifies what this kind of growth looks like:

Discovering who we are, instead of fixing who we are
Trusting our intuition instead of outsourcing our improvements
Feeling and doing good, instead of trying to BE good
Being kind to ourselves instead of striving to prove ourselves to others
Understanding our authentic individual values instead of trying to live by some monolithic approach of what's right for everybody
Going after goals that inspire us, instead of goals that somebody else told us we should aim for
Having our own backs and developing self-trust instead of living by somebody else's needs or expectations
Listening to our hearts instead of trying to be "logical"

Sounds good to me. I'm going to start by asking myself why I am trying to do a thing whenever I set out on a self-improvement tangent.


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