017
June 2021
Progress is, at its core, change.
Getting better at something means changing to meet the skill level required. It means learning and choosing to add more information to one’s consciousness. The same consciousness dictates who you are, how you view life, and how you interact with the people in it.
In a sense, deciding to get better changes who you are. You are no longer that person in your minds-eye; you're better at something new. You are no longer that shy person that you’ve always been. You’re confident now. That person you have seen as you for so long no longer exists.
And that is scary.
It is a weird sentiment towards growth and progress. But it is one that I thought about before I even had enough awareness to articulate it. I realize now that it may be a major reason why people might be reluctant to better themselves, myself included.
But how do you deal with that? How do you accept change when you view it as a threat to the very being of yourself? Do you bully yourself into accepting it? Accept that identity is ever changing? Or do you plant your feet in the sand and fight the tides of change?
Well, neither, I think.
Viewing bad traits as part of identity is the perpetrator in this case: the struggle of accepting oneself yet fighting to be better. That’s the conflict. We’re all labelled as we grow, with good and bad traits, from parents, teachers, and friends. And as we grow, we come to learn that those traits, be they good or bad, define us in a group. They make us different. They become embedded into our identity.
And while some people have no problem shedding preconceived notions about themselves, most struggle to see themselves differently than they always have. Taking a conscious decision to change is a step outside of what is known. A step out of a well-established image. And breaking that image might be scarier than keeping an unsatisfactory trait.
But that is exactly the solution.
We have to break what we conceive as ourselves. To build our identity the way we want it to be. An identity that is not set by others but one that is meticulously constructed by oneself. One that is not afraid of change. One that embraces change as part of itself.