Painful Realizations We Make When Working on Ourselves

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

— Maya Angelou

There’s a lot more to making change in our lives than the Instagrammable version, journaling sessions under a warm blanket.

There are a lot of things you could call ugly in the realm of personal development. There are a lot of pointless words written about it that only scratch the surface. There are dozens of life coaches out there who will be happy to take your money even if what you really need is a licensed therapist. There are probably thousands of courses you could buy to kickstart your personal development journey.

There are a lot of scams out there, unfortunately. I don’t say these things to hate on anyone who puts true effort and knowledge into coaching or course development. It’s just there in addition to good sources of information and help, but there are a lot of glittering boxes with nothing inside. When you’re looking for help or to better yourself, there’s a good chance that you’re doing so while feeling a little vulnerable.

But those aren’t the ugly sides of personal development that I want to talk about today.

Really growing means exploring a lot of horrible things about yourself.

And that is quite possibly the most painful part of personal development. It’s more than just acknowledging your worst traits. It’s about examining them, figuring out where they come from, and what triggers them. For example, if you feel like you’re frustrated all the time, there may be underlying triggers you haven’t identified yet. Some triggers are obvious and very apparent, like if you get stuck in gridlock traffic, but others are more subtle and might have to do with how you interpret events or how you were raised.

For me, there are quite a lot of things I’m trying to work on through small steps and changes. I’m working primarily on my temper, my proclivity for overreaction, and my strong desire to have some sense of control over whatever is happening around me. These are three pretty big things.

I’m working on my short temper through meditation, mindfulness, and getting more physical activity in general. I’m trying to curb my overreactions by reprogramming my thought processes a bit — I tend to see everything quite negatively, which makes even the smallest bump in the road seem a lot larger. I’m keeping a gratitude journal to help me shift to more positive thought processes. I still need to make some changes to start working on the last one, but I’m trying to make schedule changes at a reasonable pace.

Deeply investigating your worst traits or habits is difficult but essential work.

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”

— Abraham Maslow

I don’t think this is because the vast majority of us think we’re flawless. Most of us aren’t that arrogant.

It’s just that there is a chasm between knowing that you have your flaws versus trying to change those flaws. It’s more than just identifying your problematic traits. We are all products of our experiences and our genetic predispositions, both of which can be deeply seeded in how we see the world and interact with it.

Yet since these things are so deeply integrated into who we are, both the good and the bad parts, they’re very hard to change. Once you’ve identified what you want to work on, you need to figure out the root causes and analyze why you keep playing out these painful or damaging scenarios. For example, it’s uncomfortable to feel lost in emotion but then realize that you’re just overreacting and that it isn’t that big of a deal. It takes a lot of presence to acknowledge when you start to see the parts of your behavior that don’t connect or make sense.

Changing those traits and patterns takes a Herculean amount of mindful effort.

“One of the most important steps in therapy is helping people take responsibility for their current predicaments, because once they realize that they can (and must) construct their own lives, they’re free to generate change.”

— Lori Gottlieb, MA

Getting into the growth mindset is just one part of changing yourself in a meaningful way. A lot of it comes down to actions — making those small changes that you can implement to address the habits and traits that are making you miserable. Even so, once you’re in the emotional trenches of figuring out how you’re sabotaging yourself, it’s a lot to deal with.

This is where I’m personally getting stuck. Here’s one scenario; let’s talk about my temper for a moment. I’m a big ball of frustration wrapped in a cute sweater most of the time. But when I realize that I’m overreacting too much, I feel so disgusted with myself for being this way in the first place that I cave into self-loathing. I struggle to find the energy to keep practicing the habits I’m working on developing to change my worst traits.

On the plus side, as time has gone by and I’ve kept working on these things, it’s gotten a little easier. I win more battles than I lose. More often than not, I’ll buckle down, do five minutes of exercise or a short meditation session. I try to work through those feelings of frustration in a way that’s helpful instead of stewing harmfully in them.

But if we can change, it’s a benefit to us and a virtue for our dearest people.

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

Personal development is a lot of hard work. The results will be incredible, but the process can be really ugly sometimes. It’s also difficult because you will inevitably see people who don’t suffer from the same problems as you. You might see them navigating life more easily and wonder why you can’t live more like that. But there’s no way to know how many years of hard work it took for them to reach a less stressful way of life.

The triumphant stories will always make it sound as though the suffering is nothing compared to the benefits. After all, once you’re finished a book in the series, you tend to forget the minutiae of what it took for the hero to achieve their goal. I do believe that is true to some extent — that the pain of change is worth it for becoming a better, more balanced person. But also, I know I’m not there yet — I’m not at the point where I’m reaping the benefits of my efforts fully.

There’s a bravery and valiance to changing our worst habits and patterns.

“…we’ll look at how self-care is built on self-awareness. As you become more skillfully self-aware and active on your own behalf, knowing what you really want, you will feel more competent and life will feel more manageable.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson, PhD

Yes, it’s hard work, but every meaningful change is worth feeling good about.

But as you read so many different stories about people’s personal development journeys, remind yourself that this isn’t just about sipping tea for self-care or cozying up under a blanket to do some journaling. Those things can absolutely be part of your new routines and your efforts to become better, but always remind yourself that there will be your fair share of difficult and unpleasant moments as well. They might be way more frequent than you expect at first. But if you stick with it, they will happen less and less frequently.