When does one draw the line when it comes to being happy with your level of self improvement?
I have noticed a trend in my life; I'm never happy with the level of developent in my life. The question becomes is this a bad thing? I know that there are a lot of people out there who are of the philosophy that you have to be happy with you. I understand this line of thinking but I can't help thinking that with this as your guiding principle it is easy to become complacent about where you are in life. Is it good to be unhappy or uncontent about yourself if it pushes you to be a better person; you know the best you can be? I understand that one has to temper this with patience and a lot of wisdom. But I can help thinking about what Lance Armstrong said, patience didn't get me over that mountain (I paraphrase). Is it good to be a person who is never satisfied with where they are in life if it drives them to be better? Can one be unhappy with oneself yet still enjoy the simple pleasures in life? I think it can as I have done so. I have this feeling that the answers to these questions are more of degree than kind.
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"The difference between a champion and everyone else is the willingness to go through the pain period."
-Arnold Schwarzenegger
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
-Wayne Gretzsky
First of all, I'd like to categorize happiness as either illusionary or a choice. You really can be happy at any point in life, even at bad times. Actually, I think emotions are all a choice but I'm not getting into that here. How you react to what happens, good or bad, how you decide to handle things, are the result of conscious choices. You can choose to be depressed, and the more you are, since humans are habitual and comfortable in what's familiar, the more down you'll end up down that path overall. The best solution is to just stop yourself, just don't let yourself go there, even if it's not easy. If you could always be happy, then why not? It benefits you becuase you're prone to accomplish more and the mood is more likely to attract and encourage others around you.
Now what does this have to do with self-improvement? A lot, I think. I totally understand dissapointment or frustration. The thing is, beating yourself up over it doesn't accomplish much. Dissapointment is irrelevant if you couldn't have done any better. However, if you could have, then there's solutions. If it's something you can fix, then *do* it. If not, then learn from your mistakes and next time, or maybe the time after that, you'll catch on and improve. So thank God for your dissapointments and frustrations since they can be channeled to improvement. If you didn't have any, then you'd stop improving, which is bad becuase no one's perfect...
Now focus on what you *have* accomplished and improved. Smile and continue to do so. Sometimes a positive attitude can make all the difference in the world. That's from experience.
Wow, I'm not trying to get more attention than the original post. Stupid google wasn't letting me in and kept erroring and deleting my comments, which is why this is supposedly my 4th on this post when really I only intended one...
Yes, I'll stop now. Shine on, Jaeco Jimmy!!
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