Before you can become a better version of yourself you need to accept who you are today.
When you have a vision of an ideal or better version of yourself, you can get lured into self-deception. You can imagine a state where you’ve improved, changed, or are better at something than you really are, and instead of seeing all the hard work that will need to go into you getting there, you just try and live in that illusion.
People do this with weight loss, with new skills they are learning, and with all sorts of personality traits, they want to improve.
What’s missing is an assessment and acceptance of where you truly are today.
If you are learning Ju Jitsu and only grapple with beginners who are worse than you you will quickly plateau. You can convince yourself that you’re great until a real expert comes along and shatters that illusion. At that moment you will be devastated and want to quit and never come back.
If you wanted to truly set yourself on a path of continual improvement that would mean recognizing that you are better than some and worse than many. Accepting that emotionally puts you in a place where you can go out and learn from people that are better than you.
In the example of Ju Jitsu it is hard to hide from reality, but when it comes to the skills you use in your job or more core personality traits we can live in self-deception for years. Never accepting the reality of where we are and, as a result, never improving.
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