You would find your own life and the lifeworld itself flourishes with more gracefulness if you just let-go the need to improve yourself.

Wait, wait: Don’t misunderstand me.

Not recommending that you stop doing Yoga or meditating or learning skills or gaining knowledge.

Did you know that the word improvement actually means “to make more profitable” or “to increase advantage”? It is one of those words that finds its way into wider usage through the evolution of our culture into capitalist interpretations of cultivation, production, and exchange.

I’m asking you to stop seeing these things as “self improvement.”

You make improvements on land to bring about a greater yield. You make improvements on products to grow market share.

When you talk about self-improvement, you are then treating yourself as some kind of reserve to be augmented for greater advantage.

This is not the loving struggle (or philosophy as a way of life). Rather, the violence accomplished by identifying your being as just another property to be developed is what chokes you up and forestalls ownmost (authentic) freedom.

Seeking to improve yourself, soon you will set out to improve others. 

Setting out to improve others, you will commit to improving society.

Committing to improve society, you will take up improving nature. 

Taking up the improvement of nature, you will attempt to improve reality. 

And are all of these not what you see happening around you everyday, everywhere you turn?

There is no mistake here that the root word is related to “proud,” itself a term that means to be above or beyond oneself.

Self-improvement, as it promulgated in our culture, most often is nothing less than hubris.

Keep exercising body & mind; keep disclosing your natural abilities; keep healthy, whole, and holy. Definitely, keep improvising as you commit to the journey of life.

Related articles

• Pǔ or the uncarved block (keithwaynebrown.com)
• Time to Improvise (keithwaynebrown.com)
• Hubris is like a gate on our minds (frugal2free.typepad.com)
• “Hubris”: New Documentary Reexamines the Iraq War “Hoax” (motherjones.com)
• Wall Street’s Hubris Meter Ticking Higher (blogs.wsj.com)
• reflections upon a day of Dharma retreat (maitreyabuddhistcentre.wordpress.com)
• How The “True Buddha Dharma” is as Simple as it gets! (buddhistinsight.com)
• Tao and Dharma: Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda ~ Robert Svoboda, Arnie Lade (evolutionarymystic.wordpress.com)