“I feel that each year I get better at being myself. The version of myself I am now is the best yet.”
These words were said by a friend of mine over lunch this week. He said he remembers being much more anxious and nervous when he was younger, but that now he is calmer, less “neurotic,” to use the term from the Big Five Personality Test. He went on to say that he doesn’t understand or want to be the kind of person who looks back on early adulthood as the pinnacle of life. He looks forward to continuing to get better at being himself, for as long as he is given the opportunity to do so. The idea of self-growth and improvement is, for him, far from stressful. It is an opportunity that gives life meaning.
He is nineteen years old.
The conversation reminded me of Dan Pink’s question “Was I better today than yesterday?” as well as Carol Dweck’s work on the idea of growth mindset, and the role that overexcitabilities play in Kazimierz Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration. My friend probably didn’t think of the long hours he spent taking life at his pace, reflecting on who he is and was and wants to be, as meditation. However, as someone who homeschooled for high school and who has “a predisposition for deep meditation,” he definitely spent much of his adolescence in “periodic isolation of oneself.” Given time for “deep reflection,” what Dabrowski called “isolation in peaceful conditions,” we might not just feel better in the short term, but change the way our brains work so that we lead calmer, less neurotic lives.
The fundamental quality shaped by the everyday effort of the individual aiming at personality is the ability to meditate. We have referred to it repeatedly. It has its origin in a form of reflection, a predisposition for deep meditation, the ability to interrupt one’s daily activity, and the need for frank ‘philosophizing.’ The individual may avail himself of the many works of various schools dealing with spiritual life in order to deepen this capacity for meditation. Retrospection and prospection and periodic isolation of oneself give definite results here. They clearly promote all those activities which develop the inner environment and its hierarchy of values…” (emphases added; Personality-shaping Through Positive Disintegration)
How can each of us continue to get better at being ourselves, while, at the same time, accepting the current “version” of ourselves just as we are now?
I like to do yoga first thing in the morning, before I interact with anyone else. At the end I do some meditation and after that I like to think about my goals for the day, not goals like doing the laundry or having a clean house but things like Accepting People For Who They Are or Responding With Patience.
Heather, that’s a lovely way to start the day. It reminds me of the “One in the beginning and one in the end” practice that Pema Chodron writes about, making a morning intention and then reviewing it at the end of the day with loving kindness.