Real growth happens when you decide to improve because you deserve better
We’ve confused finding love with finding ourselves in other people that until you meet someone who feels like they were made for you, you cannot give yourself the kind of love you deserve because you believe in the ‘right person’ syndrome.
The one who life would suddenly make sense with. And because they haven’t found you yet, you say you cannot work on yourself until they do because people you know don’t deserve to see who you’ll become. You don’t realize it, but that’s a dangerous way to view love—that it is nothing other than trying to find yourself in other people—places where it never existed to begin with.
I spoke with a friend who told me, until she’s met with the man who would love her, the people who already know her, don’t deserve to see who she will become when she eventually does work on herself. And I thought deeply about people who think this way.
Saying you won’t work on yourself until you’ve met someone who deserves it, is denying yourself the opportunity to truly become a version of you no one is prepared to see. It’s telling yourself that even though you haven’t yet met the person you’ve longed and ached for, you’re not putting your life on hold just so you can be miserable now and then the perfect version of yourself then.
What people often miss
We want to become better versions of ourselves but think we haven’t yet seen a solid reason to, so we begin to postpone that desire until the right person comes. And without knowing, you’re telling yourself you’re not deserving of a certain kind of grace until people you think loves you, does. And what that says about you is that you’re insecure. That you value other people’s opinion about you before yours. That you often shrink yourself to the size of your unforgiving uncertainty because you once tried loving without pretense and was judged, that, now you think until you become that perfect version of yourself, no one is allowed to see the potential you carry.
But that’s the paradox of self-exposure—you think you are simply allowing yourself to be, to exist in the warmth of who you are now, but what you’re really doing is you’re pausing your own life and potential over a blurred pursuit of waiting for someone or simply saying, “it isn’t the right time. When I reach a certain level, then I would.”
You never get to that level until you decide to act. You never achieve that version of who you want to become until you stop waiting and decide to act impulsively because love and life don’t owe anyone anything but yourself and that which exists inside of you. And understanding that means that you decide how you want to be perceived, not someone else telling you. Not the person you’re waiting for and certainly not the version of you that thinks it’s unworthy of a certain kind of self-love.
Real growth happens when you decide to improve because you deserve better.
