Is Self-Acceptance Antithetical to the Self-Improvement Industry?
Pondering a paradox at play in the journey to be better
In the 2016 documentary, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki, the producers display the life of acclaimed animator and film director Hayao Miyazaki as he creates his first CGI project, Boro the Caterpillar. Despite several attempts at retirement, Hayao has continually returned to his company, Studio Ghibli, to put out award-winning animated films like Spirited Away.
As the camera people follow him between work and home, there’s a moment of monologue from Miyazaki in which he says “The song ‘Let it Go’ is popular now. It’s all about being yourself, but that’s terrible. Self-satisfied people are boring.”
For years, there’s been an ever-growing industry that revolves around self-improvement, self-help, and ultimately being a better you. You’ve no doubt seen this before if you’ve been on the internet for any minute of time, and perhaps you came across examples of this decades before the internet took off. Just think of the last guru selling a course to you during a Youtube ad reel. There are dozens of books, courses, videos, products, services, and anything that can be sold to anyone who wants to improve themselves.
…And there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. In fact, self-improvement can be a great investment in yourself and can be a continual journey throughout life to better yourself in any way you can imagine.
Yet, at the same time, a never-ending quest for self-improvement can pull some people into an endless search that in some cases leaves them feeling constantly inadequate when they’re not a certain way or can’t reach their goals despite having these resources.
Self-acceptance has gained significant attention in the past decade. This has become especially prevalent given the rise of social media and the attention garnered around mental health as a result of technology and other societal factors.
Miyazaki’s remark brought to mind this interesting paradox: You use self-help to improve yourself ultimately with the goal of getting to a greater place of self-acceptance/self-satisfaction. Since the journey can be never-ending, however, you may never quite accept yourself or be satisfied.
Blogger and Author Mark Manson has written about this topic in his newsletter and in blog posts, like this one and this one. Entrepreneur Sam Ovens has discussed how the world’s economy relies on people wanting to be a better version of themselves (or a better version of their business) and has also challenged the concept of being yourself by stating that making a better version of yourself involves changing who you are in some way.
So is self-acceptance antithetical to self-improvement? I think there can be a balance, and it’s helpful to distinguish satisfaction from acceptance.
Let’s equate “satisfaction” with “complacency”, meaning you have no desire to change and are ok with your current situation. Some complacency can be healthy when you identify what parts of your life aren’t important enough to spend your time improving (or at least not at that moment in time). Trying to do too many things at once is a recipe for disaster, and the same is true with improvement. Trying to care deeply about too many things at once will ultimately fragment your time and energy to levels that don’t make a significant impact in terms of improvement. Be OK with being OK with some things.
To be clear, you can change many parts of your life, but doing it in focused pieces for one or a few areas can be a better approach than trying to radically transform every aspect of your life in one shot.
Acceptance, on the other hand, can be defined as a level of comfort with oneself in the current situation while still being willing to optimize or improve. It’s another form of being OK, but more so that you’ve reached the bar you’ve set as acceptable while still eager to clear the high bar.
You’re in a place that you could live with, but you aim to strive for better.
What do you think? Is what you perceive and define as self-improvement ultimately opposed to having you reach “self-acceptance”? I’m curious to hear.
