Do we need self-improvement? What if we aren’t things to fix?! I think we are enough as we are. This is a lesson I’m constantly relearning, through my own personal development journey over the past 7 years.
My path to where I am now began long before that though, and traveled through many seasons of not feeling like I was “enough,” and instead feeling worthless, undervalued, “just average,” etc.
The Journey Begins
A little over twenty years ago, as a high school junior, I got the dream job I’d coveted since childhood.
I became a bookseller at B.Dalton Bookstore. For anyone younger than me, that’s obsolete now!
My first week on the job, I had to memorize where all the different genres were located in the store, and get familiar with the bestsellers in each genre, including “self-help” which I ignorantly thought was for people with real problems. The titles I saw didn’t appeal to me in a significant way and I never took much interest in “those kind of books” again.
Until…
It was 2013. I had just finished my second stint in ad school, trying unsuccessfully to become a creative advertising copywriter. Well, trying unsuccessfully to become a paid creative advertising copywriter.
I decided to go explore Portland and check out several agencies there, which I would later apply for jobs at. While there, I made the most out of my trip by doing all the touristy things, which of course included visiting Powell’s City of Books.
If you’ve never been to Powell’s, it’s a multi-level kingdom of every book you can imagine, and the store covers an entire city block.
I Needed a Pick-Me-Up
I wasn’t feeling great about my career prospects at the time, and wanted something to cheer me up. I was walking around Powell’s, trying to just feel… happy… about being on vacation, enjoying myself, and relaxing, when I saw it. A book called “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin. The book’s description read:
One rainy afternoon, while riding a city bus, Gretchen Rubin asked herself, “What do I want from life, anyway?” She answered, “I want to be happy”—yet she spent no time thinking about her happiness. In a flash, she decided to dedicate a year to a happiness project. The result? One of the most thoughtful and engaging works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject.
The Happiness Project synthesizes the wisdom of the ages with current scientific research, as Rubin brings readers along on her year to greater happiness.
In fact, Rubin’s “happiness project” no longer describes just a book or a blog; it’s a movement.
It sounded great! It sounded exactly like what I needed! I needed a project to get me back to being my happy and confident self I used to be as a teen.
I Hated It*
* Disclaimer: Gretchen Rubin became my all time favorite personal development author, which I’ll elaborate on shortly. I still feel terrible saying this, but I hated The Happiness Project the first time I read it.
I read it in one sitting, on the plane ride back from Portland. My initial thought was “who is she to be unhappy? She has my dream life, living in a big city, with a family, she had the resources to leave a legal career and become an author, my dream career.
I couldn’t relate to her at all.
In hindsight, I realize, that was a lie. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t relate to her. The problem was that I could relate to her. I had a pretty great life myself. I had loving parents who didn’t even question that I was still living with them in my late twenties. I had a close-knit group of friends who lived locally, I had a dog who I trained to be a therapy dog and volunteered with every weekend, and I had amazing bosses and coworkers in my retail career.
Who the heck was I to seek more happiness or feel like I needed “self-improvement”?
My Reintroduction to the Concept
I’m leaving a very big chunk of my story out here, but the short version is I settled when it came to my first full-time job… it was with a company that was not a good match for me, and the level of stress I felt each and every day gave me heart palpitations and panic attacks.
By the time I got out of that job in 2016, I really did need help.
Around that time, I happened to be at Barnes and Noble when I saw, on its own display in the “self-help” section, a book called Better Than Before, by none other than Gretchen Rubin. I’d already picked it up and read the description before even realizing or remembering who that author was, and I was intrigued. The description for this book read:
Many habit experts offer one-size-fits-all solutions. But as we all know through hard experience, no magic formula exists. The secret, Rubin explains, is to pinpoint the specific strategies that will work for us. From finding the right time to begin a new habit, to setting up a counter-intuitive system of reward, to using the pleasure of treats to strengthen our good habits, Rubin identifies the 21 strategies that will allow every reader to find an effective, individual fit.
I don’t use the phrase “life changing” lightly. Better Than Before was life changing. It was the book that started to teach me that I am absolutely enough as I am, that the things I want to change about myself and my life can happen, but I need to know myself better and take an approach to habits and life goals that works for me. I also learned from this book that I am a “Questioner”–from a concept Gretchen Rubin calls The Four Tendencies (also a book of hers).
I then reread The Happiness Project with my new mindset, and appreciated it so much more. I started seeking out and consuming nothing but self-growth and self-care related media, from books and magazines to podcasts and Facebook groups. I became a huge fan of Gretchn Rubin, and her sister Liz Craft (the pair host a podcast together called Happier with Gretchen Rubin), and my happiness and self-growth fandom grew to include authors and podcast hosts like Rachel Hollis, Mel Robbins, Jen Sincero, Kara Loewentheil, and many more.
They’ve all told me what Gretchen Rubin tried to first tell me 7 years ago… what feels like ages ago now. That I am enough as I am. That I don’t need “improvement.” That happiness is found in the journey, and that growth is an important part of life, but that doesn’t mean becoming another person. I don’t need to become another person! I want to be the best version of me.
You are enough as you are. You don’t need improvement. Happiness can be found in your journey. Grow, nurture yourself, take care of yourself. Please don’t ever feel like you have to change who you are at the core to get there, though.
Joyfully Jendependent 