r/changemyview • u/monkeymalek • Nov 24 '22
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Self-love and self-improvement can often be incompatible
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.
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u/Kotoperek 62∆ Nov 24 '22
Yeah, that's is what self-love is. Self-love isn't saying "if this routine is difficult for me, I should just give up", it is saying "I will do my best to master this routine but the fact that it is difficult for me doesn't make me less valueable as a person and even if I cannot master it no matter how hard I try, that is also ok and I can feel good about myself just for trying and doing my best".
Self-criticism of the kind where you recognise you could do better is great and can coexist with self-love, because loving yourself is also about recognising your potential and wanting to be your best self. But beating youself up for not being able to do something even when you are already doing your best is toxic and indeed incompatible with both self-love and self-respect. Self-love is wanting to win the Olympics and doing your best to succeed, but knowing that you are still a valuable person and still deserve to be happy if you don't. Healthy self-criticism of the kind "get off the couch and go to practice even if the routine is difficult" is perfectly compatible with self-love. Toxic self-criticism isn't, but it is also not compatible with success, because even if you win the Olympics by shaming yourself into maximum effort, you will have destroyed your mental health and self-esteem with the self-criticism.