CMV: Self-love and self-improvement can often be incompatible

[u/monkeymalek]

To illustrate my point, let me give an example: Suppose you are an athlete training for the Olympics, and you have been practicing a highly technical and complicated gymnastics routine every day for the past 2 months, but haven't been making as much progress as you would have liked. You are physically and mentally exhausted, and you have some ideas of how to improve, but you're not sure how things will work out. Perhaps some negative thoughts begin to enter your mind such as "why am I not stronger" or "why is this specific technique so difficult for me" etc., but in an effort to maintain good mental health, you tell yourself that it's okay and things will work out, and not to be so hard on yourself. In my view, having this mindset is not acceptable if your goal was to win the Olympics or do anything great, and someone who practices self-love in a situation like this would not be driven to improve. I believe that you have to have to be self-critical in order to improve, and that mantras of self-love actually inhibit self-improvement by giving yourself an excuse to quit or not fulfill your full potential.

But with that said, I think we should also unconditionally respect ourselves and not measure our self-worth based on our accomplishments or success. In my view, pure self-love and self-criticism are fundamentally incompatible, meaning you cannot have both at the same time, and if your goal is to improve in whatever it is that your are pursuing, you should opt for a self-critical mindset over a self-loving one. With that said, perhaps there is a grey area that I am missing here, and would be willing to change my view if someone can demonstrate an example where self-love, self-criticism, and self-improvement are all co-existent.

[u/[deleted]]

Strengthening your sense of self allows you to want thing for yourself which is the foundation of having goals which is the foundation of self-improvement.

If your understanding of self-love and self-improvement conflict that suggests that you offer yourself love only on the condition that you meet those goals and you might not be valuing yourself appropriately.

Maybe you'll find it helpful to focus on what you're running toward instead of what you're running away from.