How easy it is to fall into the idea that improvement is linear and it would take another lifetime of Buddhist upbringing to undo the previous lifetime being taught that change is not inevitable.
BTW the magazine cover: I want magic not realism 🤣 did you write all the captions?
Ha! I wish I was that clever. I just prompted ChatGPT to think Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire.
Side note: If you have any interest in old-timey American cinema, it’s a worthwhile watch. Tennessee Williams was a force, and his play on the big screen was its own kind of magic, giving life to the vibe that was New Orleans in the early 20th century.
“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth." - Blanche DuBois, character in A Streetcar Named Desire
Apparently, Ms. DuBois was a post-modernist, keeping relativistic truths.
Nice. It's not an easy feat to articulate self-improvement versus self-unfoldment. I think one of the symptoms of acute self-improvement, where we constantly feel "not enough" in some way, is that we're often driven by inner voices of self-criticism to become a version of ourselves that we believe will be capable of receiving the love and belonging from others we hope to have.
Self-unfoldment comes from learning how to offer that very love, care, and belonging to ourselves through self-connection. Once we know that we can be sources of those needs being met ourselves, we can start to question all of the externally driven activity and experience new options to take action in the world.
Not action driven by less-loss-never. Action sourced from love.
Thanks for the words to play off, brother. Well done.
You know how I feel about the entire industry built around self-improvement.
Most of it assumes more effort is always the answer. But I’ve seen exactly what you’re pointing to, people doubling down on effort when the way they’re looking at the problem has already stopped being useful. Personally, I’ve seen how easily that turns inward. You assume it’s you, your effort, your execution, long after it stops being true. It's only Wednesday, and I'm exhausted lol
For sure. Our critical parts, reliably a part of this paradigm, think more criticism is what’s warranted. They’ll even criticise us for having critical parts.
Not always, but way too often, it’s just a flywheel of self-improvement.
Wait. Did we both just post about change fatigue on the same day 👀
I talked about the exhaustion in constant change too, but with a lot less good writing and a lot more sounding like an ad/used car salesman.
But I love how you are targeting the big reason we all feel exhausted these days and why change sucks some times - sometimes, it's ok just to be ourselves. We don't always need to grow. In fact, sometimes, we need to celebrate all we have done already. In fact, capitalism and marketers LOVE WHEN we want to change cause it makes them money!
Hey, people use Substack in different ways. It takes all sorts, I s’pose.
The right question is probably something annoying, like: Is it working for you?
Right, though. Kat. It is okay to be ourselves, and I don’t mean in the nihilistic way that people often interpret that claim. How we show up matters, but we can show up more powerfully without needing to find resources “out there.”
More to the point, I’m standing for the idea that we’re far more resourced than we tend to realize. It’s all right here. The well is much deeper than we imagine.
Seed nor automobile ✅
How easy it is to fall into the idea that improvement is linear and it would take another lifetime of Buddhist upbringing to undo the previous lifetime being taught that change is not inevitable.
BTW the magazine cover: I want magic not realism 🤣 did you write all the captions?
Ha! I wish I was that clever. I just prompted ChatGPT to think Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire.
Side note: If you have any interest in old-timey American cinema, it’s a worthwhile watch. Tennessee Williams was a force, and his play on the big screen was its own kind of magic, giving life to the vibe that was New Orleans in the early 20th century.
“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don't tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth." - Blanche DuBois, character in A Streetcar Named Desire
Apparently, Ms. DuBois was a post-modernist, keeping relativistic truths.
I can get behind ought-to-be-truths any day. 😬
Nice. It's not an easy feat to articulate self-improvement versus self-unfoldment. I think one of the symptoms of acute self-improvement, where we constantly feel "not enough" in some way, is that we're often driven by inner voices of self-criticism to become a version of ourselves that we believe will be capable of receiving the love and belonging from others we hope to have.
Self-unfoldment comes from learning how to offer that very love, care, and belonging to ourselves through self-connection. Once we know that we can be sources of those needs being met ourselves, we can start to question all of the externally driven activity and experience new options to take action in the world.
Not action driven by less-loss-never. Action sourced from love.
Thanks for the words to play off, brother. Well done.
100% this, @JJ Vega.
Self-improvement is the love fodder of critical parts, which are the love fodder of self-improvement paradigms.
And we just keep spinning that damn wheel.
You know how I feel about the entire industry built around self-improvement.
Most of it assumes more effort is always the answer. But I’ve seen exactly what you’re pointing to, people doubling down on effort when the way they’re looking at the problem has already stopped being useful. Personally, I’ve seen how easily that turns inward. You assume it’s you, your effort, your execution, long after it stops being true. It's only Wednesday, and I'm exhausted lol
For sure. Our critical parts, reliably a part of this paradigm, think more criticism is what’s warranted. They’ll even criticise us for having critical parts.
Not always, but way too often, it’s just a flywheel of self-improvement.
Wait. Did we both just post about change fatigue on the same day 👀
I talked about the exhaustion in constant change too, but with a lot less good writing and a lot more sounding like an ad/used car salesman.
But I love how you are targeting the big reason we all feel exhausted these days and why change sucks some times - sometimes, it's ok just to be ourselves. We don't always need to grow. In fact, sometimes, we need to celebrate all we have done already. In fact, capitalism and marketers LOVE WHEN we want to change cause it makes them money!
Twinsies! Or great minds?
Hey, people use Substack in different ways. It takes all sorts, I s’pose.
The right question is probably something annoying, like: Is it working for you?
Right, though. Kat. It is okay to be ourselves, and I don’t mean in the nihilistic way that people often interpret that claim. How we show up matters, but we can show up more powerfully without needing to find resources “out there.”
More to the point, I’m standing for the idea that we’re far more resourced than we tend to realize. It’s all right here. The well is much deeper than we imagine.