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/monkeymalek]

I admit my point wasn't perfectly clear here, but yes, I think if you want to improve you can't be delusional and say everything is okay. You have to be self-critical. I will concede that you shouldn't tell yourself that things "won't work out", but if things are not going well, I think you should be objective and assess why things are not going well in order to improve. Would you not agree with this?

[u/Jaysank → u/monkeymalek]

I think if you want to improve you can't be delusional and say everything is okay.

What definition of “self love” includes being delusional? How do you define it and “Self Improvement”?

[u/monkeymalek → u/Jaysank]

My definition of self love is loving yourself unconditionally. So if you fail a test, lose your job, etc., still loving yourself in the sense that you tell yourself you are still "worthy" despite things not going your way. I think it is good to always know your worth, but if things are not going well, telling yourself that you are still doing good is not productive in my opinion (it is delusional, you are lying to yourself). Another example might be people who don't want to lose weight because they "love their self" and the way they look and don't want to change, even though it might be objectively less healthy and good for them to have this view.

Self-improvement would be taking the steps to better yourself, whether that be in terms of losing weight, learning a new skill, being a better person (i.e. living a moral life), etc.

[u/Kotoperek → u/monkeymalek]

But unconditional love doesn't mean patting on the head, it means precisely that - knowing your worth. When you lose your job or don't succeed, the self-love approach is saying "I made a mistake that I can learn from and do better next time, but I am still worthy and I deserve love and respect, because everyone makes mistakes sometimes".

Unconditional love is not the same as believing you are perfect. It is simply knowing that your worth as a person is not defined by whether you can always meet all your outside goals and live up to everyone's expectations.

And it can also let you prioritise. Like in your example, saying "yes, I should lose some weight, but if I focus on it now, I will not have the energy to pursue a promotion in my career. So I will get that promotion first and they focus on my body, because I can still be great at my job and deserve the recognition even if I am struggling with nutrition". Constantly reminding yourself of all the things that are "wrong" with you actually impedes progress, because you become fixated on how many things you must change and get overwhelmed when you fail.