Does making improvements in life take an ardent and endless journey of disciplined self-exertion each step of the way? Or could there be another side of it, which is the opposite—in which it follows a period of providing oneself with grace and reprieve? The path of personal growth is paradoxical: once we pause from constant effort and allow for a healing self-acceptance, the hard work of personal growth that follows no longer becomes an ongoing struggle but instead a natural flow state. It still very much involves doing the work, but in way that flows out like water, possessing both its strength and natural effortlessness. As water’s effortlessness allows for its as strength, lack of struggling against the Self is what opens space for true discipline.
I witness how almost universal it is that when people make changes for the sake of self-improvement, they do it like it is trench warfare: they are putting in massive effort for small gains, only to feel like they lose the progress, in an ongoing vicious cycle of feeling like one is always going back to square one and barely moving forward. What happens then, is they want to quit it all and throw it all aside, as change does not seem worth all the pain. And they are not wrong, for the way they are going about doing it is detrimental to their own wellbeing. When we get into a state of obsessive effortfulness, this is what happens. But there is another way.
Constant, obsessive effort leads to stalled progress, because at a fundamental level, it comes from lack of self-acceptance. It comes from a desperate cry that “one is not good enough,” and the Self senses when “progress” is coming from the wrong source. When the Self sees we do not accept it, it will resist what is detrimental to our wellbeing. We can sense this deeply at an unconscious level as the Self pulls us away from making any real and substantive progress until we learn to value ourselves for who we are. On the surface, this expresses itself as easily feeling exhausted even when it seemed we barely expended energy. It can seem like when it does this, it is sabotaging our progress, but it is the opposite: it is saving us from unhelpful action.
I see this time and time again with those I work with as a psychotherapist. People could put in tremendous effort to only feel like they are going around in circles. Behind this is resistance to self-acceptance, as if any amount of give to self-acceptance is an admittance of defeat and a contradiction to change. I could sense how locked up they are in this thought to the extent this struggle to push down the value of one’s own Self takes all energy away from making real progress. However, true self-acceptance is the key to change. Upon learning this truth superficially, one might attempt to force self-acceptance in desperation, but that does not work either—because again, this effortful forcefulness does not come from true acceptance.
What unblocks people from self-acceptance, and thus from making progress? I can tell you from my personal experience of working with others. When I sense how much they are fighting themselves to make changes that seem to go nowhere, it appears to me as a stifling and rigid energy within them that is blocking change. I shift this energy completely into one of validation: first a genuine validation of their effort and desire to make the change, then of their disappointment of feeling blocked, and even validation of the criticalness they feel towards themselves for feeling that they blocked themselves. Validating all these different parts of themselves that they disown works paradoxically: they struggle against them in order to force change, but it is when they release of all that pent up energy that is used in the struggle, they have the energy to make genuine changes in their lives. I validate too this struggle and the fight, for it comes from a genuinely well-intended place to make a difference for oneself. To witness this release is a quieting experience, and can often feel peaceful for both of us.
When they can really see it for themselves the value in self-validation without being attached to making changes, they satisfy the parts of themselves in resistance to change. That is when the internal fight they feel all begins to drop. An inner freedom arises as they become unlocked from the fight. It is in this space created by validation that a sense of freedom arises that makes it much easier and more natural to make genuine changes in life. There is a release valve that simultaneously opens the way for change come, with much less effort than before. I do not leave it here, as therapy is not simply about validation. But it is the gateway that makes active collaboration between us around making concrete changes much easier. The damming up of the energy for change is freed up, which allows for the freer flow for change to come.
