What is the aim of all this "self-work"? 🏹
For real though. What are we doing? (Part 1, incidentally)
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Good morning everyone. I’m kicking off today’s essay with a question:
What is the aim of personal development?
I’m not asking rhetorically. For real, I’d love to know: how would you answer?
Why do you hire a therapist, or a coach, or a reiki practitioner, or a spiritual advisor? Why do you work a recovery program, meditate, journal, pray, write gratitude lists, and so on? Why do you sign up for courses, workshops, retreats, trainings? What’s the point of all the discomfort, tedium, and boredom of examining your unhelpful patterns? What is the aim, ultimately?
Go ahead, have a noodle. How would you answer?
In my coaching practice, the reasons people reach out for support are as individualized as they are. And, every single person I have ever worked with (including myself) shares one struggle in common when they’re first getting started.
They are spending the majority of their time either:
💯 Striving toward perfection; or
👎🏽 Ruminating on all the ways they’ve failed.
Getting stuck in the binary of black-and-white thinking often looks something like this:
You spend the majority of your time either grasping toward unattainable standards, or self-flagellating yourself into oblivion for all the ways you fall—or have fallen—short.
You notice you are either daydreaming/magically thinking your way into a perfect future where you are a flawless person who never makes mistakes and to whom bad things never happen, or you are endlessly brooding over what you could have done differently in the past, convincing yourself that SURELY if you would have made slightly different decisions, they would have led to more perfect outcomes.
The longer you stay beholden to the inner pendulum that swings you mercilessly between future tripping and rumination, good and bad, success and failure, do you know what you’re missing out on?
Reality.
Congratulations! You’ve reached Obstacle #1:
The Doom Loop 🔁
More frustrating than terrifying,The Doom Loop typically presents itself in bold relief at the beginning of your journey of transformation. The Doom Loop reveal is usually preceded by a line-in-the-sand moment: there’s been a breakdown in the way you’ve been operating thus far, and you recognize it’s time to find support.
So you do: you collect practitioner referrals from trusted friends, or you read some helpful books, or you join an online community, and you get started. You’re eager, and motivated. The aforementioned breakdown was significant enough that you’re open and willing to do whatever it takes to feel differently and (fingers crossed) experience some relief.
What you are unable *at this moment* to factor in is the (annoying) truth that doing the work of changing the way you show up for yourself and your life doesn’t necessarily make your life easy, nor does it automatically free you from pain; if anything, the pain can ramp up, and for a period of time, life can get even messier. This is because you’re still operating under an assumption that healing and self-development are manageable, straightforward, linear undertakings.
Phase I of The Doom Loop: all you have to do is be perfect, and you’ll finally be free.
No problem! you think. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s check boxes.
You get started: you’re writing (and re-writing) neverending to-do lists, tracking calories, counting minutes in meditation, pushing harder at the gym. You’re drinking lemon water first thing in the morning, repeating affirmations in the bathroom mirror, and enacting boundaries all over town. You’re amassing an arsenal of supplements, listening to several dozen audiobooks and podcasts at any given moment, overhauling your pantry, over-exfoliating your face, sparking joy all up in all closets, and, and and, and!
Ugh.
(You know where this is going, don’t you.)
Phase II of The Doom Loop: you’re a total failure, who the fuck are you to even bother?
Phase II is associated with the arrival of The Critic. It’s that scolding inner voice that berates and shames you for all the ways you aren’t perfect. It’s here now, still very much alive, still very much on high alert, still very much at the ready to remind you of what a horrible piece of shit you are anytime you mow down a whole pizza to yourself or procrastinate on a project or scroll through Instagram instead of meditating or overshare on a first date or make an honest mistake at work or any number of things that make you human and not, you know, an android.
The frustrating thing about The Doom Loop is that none of this is new. There’s a familiarity, and now that you’re aware of it, it’s a bell that can’t be un-rung. You’re waking up to the reality that by pursuing endlessly unattainable standards, you’ve been applying the same obsessive fervor to managing the messiness of healing as you did to managing the messiness of whatever it was that had you seek healing in the first place.
Here’s what I believe:
The Doom Loop—aka, my hyperbolic nickname for the binary you must learn to extricate yourself from if your attempts at change are to have any chance of gaining traction—of either questing for perfection, or spiraling into shame when you inevitably fall-short, is just another escape. It’s just another way you forego the here and now, distracting yourself with either castle building or shame spiraling. It’s squeezing the vast mystery of a human life down into some small and malleable and manageable shape. And now you’re waking up to all the ways you’ve been bamboozled into believing that if you just checked all the right boxes you would be delivered unto a life that was safe and simple and happy, when really, that pursuit just whittled you down to size and now you’re looking around and your life has become a small, hard thing.
Not to mention that this is all so predictable! There is very little room for anything fresh or new or emergent in The Doom Loop. You think you’re being clever, or outwitting yourself by exerting so much control over everything, when really, you’re on a hamster wheel of your own making and not only do you not realize that you’re on the hamster wheel but also, you can’t see that you could simply step off…whenever you want.
And all the while you’re caught in the loop, reality is right here, right this second, beckoning you to connect to—and then realize—your deepest desires and fullest self-expression in this lifetime.
Healing your troubles and committing to the work of self-discovery and self-development has nothing to do with becoming perfect. Instead, it is a daily practice of relinquishing control, of leaning into the mess of being human, which includes cozying up to your flaws and loving—instead of hating—yourself for them.
What I know to be true is that your flaws are often gateways to rooms with views so beautiful as to be as yet unimaginable. The more you can accept who you are, exactly as you are, the more freedom you will experience, and the kinder your inner monologue becomes (not to mention, you will also become more loving toward others, including—and especially—those you used to judge).
Just like everyone else, you want to be loved, and acknowledged, and you want to look good in front of others, and you don’t want to be clumsy and fumbling, and you sure hate sticking your foot in your mouth. But your desire for yourself, for your own yearning and dreaming and imagination, is finally greater than your desire to be accepted by others. As you step past this threshold, your life—your real life, and not your life’s proxy—finally begins.
Welcome. You are now *in reality,* and it is unbearable to miss even a moment more.
This is not a prison sentence; it is prison’s opposite. It is a remover of doors, a breaking down of walls. Reality is exposure and vulnerability and it is creating a safe home within yourself where you can trust your own desire. If desire is life’s own yearning for more of itself, then learning to trust your desire is to learn to trust life, not as a force that would break you down, but that urges you forward, to become, to show up, to do the work that you are here to do. That only YOU can do.
To exit The Doom Loop, you must confront The Doom Loop, which is to say, you must confront yourself. And the process by which you navigate this confrontation returns us to my question at the beginning:
What is the aim of personal development?
Disrupting The Doom Loop is an essential clearing out that must happen. But it is not the aim. The aim is learning to live in the messiness between black-and-white extremes.
When you live your life beholden to a binary, the fundamental assumption is that there is something about you that is broken and in need of fixing. Disrupting The Doom Loop must include relinquishing the story of your brokenness, and stepping into the absurdity of your own humanity.
Once you surrender your attempts at perfection, you can then commit instead to becoming whole, and it is the pursuit of wholeness that is the aim of all this.
From Dr. David Brenner (emphases mine):
Inconsistencies, imperfections, and failures to live up to ideals are all part of what it means to be human. What seems to distinguish those who are most deeply and wholly human is not their perfection, but their courage in accepting their imperfections. Accepting themselves as they are, they then become able to accept others as they are.
The richness of being human lies precisely in our lack of perfection. This is the source of so much of our longing, and out of that longing emerges so much creativity, beauty, and goodness. With appropriate openness and humility, it is the cracks that let in the light. Once those cracks and flaws are embraced and accepted as part of the self, then, and only then, can the light flow out though them, into the lives of others and into the world…
Living wholeness is participating in the dynamism of love that gathers everything together into greater unity and consciousness. It is to live with an openness of mind and heart, to encounter others, not as strangers, but as parts of one’s self. When we enter into the heart of love in this way, we enter the field of relatedness and come to know our truest and deepest belonging and calling.
Wholeness and love are inseparable. Love leads to larger wholes and there is no true wholeness that is not built on love.
So…how do you do this?
I’ll be honest—this isn’t the essay I set out to write this week. Even though I want to be the type of person who has an editorial calendar and knows what I’m writing in advance, I’ve had to accept that I am…not that person. Instead I start with a spark of interest, and see where it leads. I thought I’d jump right into writing about integrity, and wholeness, but here we are, kicking in with The Doom Loop. So next week I’ll dive into the how of redirecting yourself out of black-and-white thinking and into the here-and-now. I’ll share practices you can begin experimenting with until you get so good at redirecting that it becomes second nature.
Because the only way to shift away from the binary is to take different and new actions, which is to say, you can intellectualize these concepts until the cows come home, but if you don’t practice different behavior, nothing will change in reality.
If you would like to explore how to do this in community, I invite you to come to my workshop on 1/31. I’m going to teach two practical approaches on how to offer yourself what would actually be nourishing and supportive to you—a gloriously imperfect human—and release the unhelpful ideas of what you think "should" be doing, or what you used to do, or what that person over there is doing. You will learn tools you can immediately apply as well as how to continue to adapt the tools as you—an ever adapting, wild and alive animal, never ever a hamster on a wheel—evolve and change and grow and EXPAND.
The stakes are too high to obsess over checking boxes. Now is the time to become fortified so we can stay engaged and in service to our communities and to the health of all life on this planet. The workshop is one hour plus a Q+A that will go fifteen minutes or as long as there are questions and I would love to see you.
☠ Close to the Bone: Become fortified and stay engaged
When: Wednesday, 1/31/24
Time: 5:30 PST - 6:45 PST
Cost: $13
OTROS EVENTOS:
THIS THURSDAY
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I’m hosting a casual, agenda-free “office hours” on January 25 from 11am PST - 12pm PST. I’ll bring my curiosity, and I hope you’ll bring yours. Drop in for ten minutes, stay for the full hour, whatever you choose is great. We can discuss whatever is on your mind and heart—whether that’s a question you have, a resource you want to share/solicit, thoughts you have about any of the above, or a recounting of your own encounters with aliens.
These are not sales calls in disguise; simply an opportunity for us to connect.
Register here (free/included in your subscription).
THIS SUNDAY:
✍🏽 January Creative Writing Workshop
When: Sunday, 1/28/24
Time: 10am PST - 12pm PST
What to expect: This generative writing workshop is based off the Amherst Writer's Method. There will be two prompts // two opportunities to write. Then, you'll be invited to share your work aloud if you like (no one is obligated, you can pass at anytime). Readers receive kind and generous feedback on what listeners like and remember from what they heard; there is no critical feedback (critique is great and can be very helpful—it's just not part of this style of workshop).
This workshop is appropriate for all levels. If you have questions, let me know—I'm happy to answer.
Cost: $33
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P.S. I’ll keep sharing my midwinter Spotify playlist, STAY TOASTY. Recommend you listen on shuffle. Two hours! and I keep adding to it.
SELF MADE is a call to deeply connect with the self—self-knowledge, self-trust, self-development—and then to make, small step by step, a life that you savor. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Certified Integral Coach, and Holistic Recovery Guide, based in San Francisco, CA.
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