When you find yourself thinking “I want to be better,” pay attention. That small desire contains everything needed for transformation.
It’s not a weakness to want more from yourself. It’s not dissatisfaction or self-hatred. It’s the seed of every meaningful change you’ll ever make.
Without the desire for personal improvement, we wallow in a kind of desperate nihilism and try to convince the world that not caring is somehow desirable. Or our nihilism takes the dangerous form of narcissism and we insulate ourselves from having to acknowledge our own shortcomings by deciding we’re already perfect.
Both paths lead nowhere good.
The Only Thing Success Demands
Perhaps the only thing future success demands is ANY sense of humility, no matter how small. One that allows each of us to acknowledge we could be doing something better in some or all areas of our life. This acknowledgment inspires a DESIRE to AIM for improvement in said area.
A desire so strong that personal responsibility for taking action in the direction of achieving it becomes the natural next step.
I’ve watched this pattern unfold in my own life countless times. The moment I admitted I didn’t have it all figured out was the moment things started to shift. Humility isn’t weakness. It’s the door you walk through to become someone new.
Why We Choose What Hurt Us Before
Jordan Peterson writes about this in 12 Rules for Life. Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth, or when they refuse responsibility for their lives, they choose acquaintances of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past.
Such people don’t believe they deserve any better. So they don’t go looking for it. Or perhaps they don’t want the trouble of better.
Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.” An unconscious drive to repeat the horrors of the past. Sometimes to formulate those horrors more precisely. Sometimes to attempt more active mastery. And sometimes because no alternatives beckon.
I’ve been there. Choosing the familiar pain over the unfamiliar possibility. It feels safer somehow, even when it’s destroying you.
Faulty Tools, Faulty Results
People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results.
It’s in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly unwillingness to learn. Motivated refusal to learn.
But here’s the thing about tools. You can learn new ones. You can put down the hammer that keeps breaking things and pick up something that actually works.
That’s what the desire to be better really is. It’s the willingness to admit your current tools aren’t working and the courage to learn new ones.
The Fruits Tell the Story
The fruits of our life show us whether we’re planting the right seeds with the right timing and process. A little humble awareness goes a long way.
We always reap what we sow.
Look around at what you’ve built. Look at your relationships, your health, your work, your inner life. Those fruits didn’t appear by accident. They grew from seeds you planted, whether consciously or not.
If you don’t like the harvest, change the seeds. And it all starts with that simple, humble thought: I want to be better.
That thought is enough. It really is.
This is shadow work in action.
If you’re ready to examine the patterns you keep repeating, explore the Shadow Work practices.