We Aren’t In Control Of How Our Self Improvement Ultimately Unfolds

That title may seem strange. After all, isn’t it control that determines what we focus on? Isn’t it our choices that direct us? Yes, that’s all true. However, when we set out to undertake any self improvement project, we can only guess at where we will end up. We can set goals and work toward them, doing everything we need to do to achieve that goal, but we don’t know what we will feel like when we get there. We don’t know because we haven’t been there yet. We also don’t know what we’ll learn along the way.

When we read self improvement articles about getting through problems or setting goals, the end result seems to be a sure thing. Once you know what you want, it’s simply a matter of time and effort until you achieve it. But, sometimes people achieve their goals and aren’t as happy as they expected. Sometimes they are happier than expected. Sometimes they change completely, and sometimes they stay pretty much themselves – just a better version. When we start out on a journey, we don’t know exactly how it will end, do we? We have a general idea, but we really don’t have that much control when it comes right down to it.

That’s a scary concept and one self improvement gurus don’t talk about. They emphasize our ability to control ourselves, to craft our own future, to make our own destiny. They tell us that the only thing holding us back is ourselves. But, they don’t – usually – talk about the truth that so much is out of our control, or at least our conscious control.

When Dealing With The Subconscious, We Get Surprised

As I explained in Just Because Your Working On Self Improvement Doesn’t Mean You’re Always Getting Better, the subconscious mind wants to make life easy for us, by putting as much of our lives on autopilot as possible. Even if we know this, we can’t control which of those things our subconscious will put on autopilot, or which thoughts are on autopilot already.

For example, one of the biggest improvements I’ve made in my life has been delving into my past and healing my emotional baggage – clearing out the clutter of hurtful messages. However, I really don’t have that much control over which pieces I end up clearing. Several times I’ve decided to revisit a broken friendship from college and ended up dealing with teasing from elementary school. I’ve looked at my relationship with my ex-boyfriend and bumped into things I’ve believed since I was a child.

The messages you have about how the world works mostly come from early life. However, those messages are reinforced throughout life, adding multiple layers. We don’t even realize, and we certainly don’t control, the way the mind puts different incidents together. One time, I was upset about a friend of mine taking another job and losing touch with me. I suspected this was tied to losing touch with other friends over the years, but when I probed the feelings, I realized it was tied back to when I was a kid and my grandfather died. It was the underlying emotions of feeling alone that tied the two incidents together.

This shows that the subconscious is wired in ways we are only beginning to understand. We know we have “issues” related to old boyfriends/girlfriends, or our parents. What we may not know is that we also have “issues” with siblings, old teachers, or old friends. We know we want to “deal with” the issues from a past relationship, but end up delving into feelings about how our parents dealt with sibling rivalry. We come away peaceful about our sibling, but still having “issues” with our past relationship. We’ve improved, but we didn’t exactly improve in the way we consciously intended.

Our Subconscious Mind Is A Terrible DJ

Most people are aware of at least a few things they believe about themselves that aren’t true. I knew that I had a fear of rejection because I was teased so much as a kid and didn’t have a lot of friends. What I’ve discovered through healing my past is that not only do I fear others will reject me, but I also believe that I’ll never be able to achieve my goals – that I don’t deserve to have them achieved.

We don’t have control over which of the false messages buried in our subconscious mind will play at any given time. We may have worked with an affirmation so long we believe it, but there are other messages we haven’t eliminated yet that will play instead. We give directions to the subconscious DJ, but it doesn’t get the memo.

Last summer, I realized I believed that the real me, the part I rarely showed to people, was unlovable. I believed that if I showed this part of me, I would automatically be rejected and people would hate me. It took me weeks to implant the belief that “The real me is lovable.” However, that only stopped one tape. My subconscious mind has several others. The inner critic just laughed and started playing “Yes I’m lovable, but a lovable screw-up.” In other words, I am loved, but I’m still not enough – I’m still a screw-up.

Well, I can say with certainty that I have noticeably improved self esteem because I now believe that I am lovable – I won’t automatically be rejected. However, I still believe I’m a screw-up. I don’t have control over how many of these messages I have to work through or when they will be played, or what will trigger these feelings. What I can control is becoming aware of them and working to remove them from the library.

Affirmations help, healing past hurts helps, but we are still chasing the messages, still working to stay one step ahead of the Inner Evil DJ.

Our Personal Timeline May Break The Rules

We don’t have control over how long it takes to reach self improvement goals. Sure, we have guidelines and general rules about what works and how long it takes: if we get 500 less calories a day, we’ll lose a pound a week; if we do something 21 days in a row, it’s a habit.

But, what if our body doesn’t react to insulin properly? Can we lose weight just by reducing calories? Will we need to change what we eat? What if we skip a day in our routine? Will that set us back only one day, or more? How many times will we have to say an affirmation before we believe it? Can we speed up the process?

These questions will have a different answer for every person. Every one of us reacts a little bit differently. The human body doesn’t follow rules made up by conscious thought – especially rules that are averages, but are stated as absolutes. A woman’s menstrual cycle is 28 days long. Not necessarily. 31 days isn’t odd, it’s just different. Average height may be 6 feet for males. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with a man 6’2″ or a man 5’9″. There is natural variation in these things, just as there is natural variation in our ability to hit certain “deadlines” for self improvement.

Even if we are doing everything “right”, and even if we are seeing results, it still takes as long as it takes. We can control what we do to get results, but ultimately, we don’t control the speed at which we reach our destination.

Self Improvement Isn’t About Ultimate Control, But About Doing Our Best

Change is possible and people do it all the time. Goals are set and goals are achieved. Sometimes, deadlines for goals are met, sometimes it takes less time, sometimes more. Unless we are incredible mystics who have learned ultimate control over even our heartbeat, we can’t control a lot of things about our lives. We don’t consciously tell our heart to beat and our lungs to inflate. We can deliberately take a deep breath which will also slow the heart rate. However, sometimes that’s not enough.

In the same way, we can send messages to our subconscious, but sometimes a few messages aren’t enough. The subconscious does what it wants to, whether it’s in accordance with our intention or not. We improve in ways we didn’t expect. We find connections we didn’t expect when something upsets us for seemingly no reason at all. Of course, the longer we work to change our automatic thought patterns, the more likely we are to change those patterns, but there’s no guarantee about when the change will be complete.

In the end, all we can do is our best. We change slowly, repeating over and over those things that we know will eventually stick. We control what we can and learn to let go of the rest. Even if we never really get the “letting go of the rest” part down, there will always be some things beyond our ability to direct.