Becoming the best version of yourself. That's what I'm going to talk about today. There is a lot of attention and an entire industry for becoming the best version of yourself. There are entire vacation trips dedicated to becoming the best version of yourself, but those actually go more into becoming a better version of yourself as well.
In Thailand, for example, it is popular for men to take some kind of martial arts vacation. The martial arts are used, for example, to become better at self-discipline, gain meaningful friendships and gain more holistic balance[1].
For women, it is often more about detox trips, which include yoga.
Then you also have magazines that encourage women to become the best version of themselves through fitness and embracing their femininity (or what magazines think is femininity)[2].
So in both of these cases, external factors are determining what constitutes "the best version of yourself," rather than you determining it yourself.
In addition, this is quite a statement: "The best version of yourself."
First, that statement presupposes and suggests many things. Namely, that there is another version of yourself, somewhere a better version as well. Second, it suggests that you are not the best version of yourself right now, as if you are a loser.
The best version? Compared to what or who? What are you better at? And just a version at all, what does that mean? You're doing it, so you're doing something?
I can totally relate to that, but so there are a few things that bother me, like that you are not the best version of yourself right now. That you're always just less than the best.
Feeling unhappy often comes from comparisons, such as with others or with what you could have been. You should have started exercising, you should have gone ...
Then you actually start torturing yourself spiritually. Chastisement, Christians had a band of nails. They would put those around their leg and then the blood would run down your leg. People thought that was totally crazy, but a lot of people now have a nail band in their head.
Then they go and drive themselves crazy.
Because when you put one of those bands of pins on your leg, you really only think, "Fucking hell what a pain." Then you don't think about how you should have exercised, "If only I had strived for my best version now. You don't. With that physical self-flagellation, you're totally in the here and now.
With mental self-flagellation, you will drive yourself crazy.
Therefore, pursuing the best version of yourself is something that makes you unhappy. It's that simple.
After all, there is always a best version. At some point you're 80 and that best version is gone and you don't feel good at all.
"Yeah, that best version was when I was 45 and the rest of my life was just shit."
So what do you really mean by being the best version? What do you want to be better at?
"I just want to be better at communicating with my partner."
This is much more convenient because you can practice that and then get better at it.
In a way, the aforementioned vacation does combine the physical rack (the actual fighting) with the more mental rack.
For example, I want to become a better crossfitter. So I go crossfitting often and I have a personal trainer.
So you can strive for better and I like that. And so that's also much more convenient.
So I do it because I like it.
So if you're going to beat yourself up every time because you're just not the best version of yourself, that's just wasted time. There's no benefit to you at all. To numb this feeling, I went into drinking and drugs and that only confirmed the feeling that I was a loser and blah blah blah.
So it doesn't work.
The pursuit of better is more convenient.
A better father, what does that mean? That I free up more time for my boys. What does that mean? That I connect with 1 of them for 15 minutes once a week?
Now you may think that's not much, but it's already better than nothing.
Striving for something is already more satisfying if you make it, even if it's just 5 minutes, and so you become a better father. Overall, you then become a better version of yourself. So is that the best version of yourself? Yes, because it is better than the previous one!
So it's helpful to break down the best version of yourself into pieces and consider what you want to get better at.
What am I doing now? Instead of who am I now.
What do you want to get better at? What do you want to get better at?
Then go do something about it.
So I hope I never become the best version of myself. That would be crazy, because everything after that is less.
Like artists who say they have yet to make their best record. Who keep creating, who keep inspiring, who keep evolving. Just like painters who have yet to make their best painting.
Delightful!
Then at 85, you're still slathering paint in your studio. You don't want to be at your peak now, do you?
But you may want to strive for better in certain contexts. For example, in sports, music, your work or in your relationship(s).
Yes then you also sometimes lie aimlessly binge-watching, but you are better because you still made the connection with your children before binge-watching. Then you have become better.
Be sure to listen to this podcast as well:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/2657020-de-beste-versie-van-jezelf-bullshit?play=true
There are many life ideologies or religions that want to help you become a better version of yourself. The Bible has the 10 commandments that you can follow. Buddhism tries to keep you in the here and now, and humanism has 7 rules to help you become the best version of yourself.
These are:
- Harness the power of positive consequences.
- Learn by observing.
- Give and receive behavioral feedback.
- Replace the golden rule with the platinum rule.
- Embrace and practice empathy.
- Distinguish managerial behavior from leader behavior.
- Go from self-actualization to self-transcendence.
A few points may need some additional explanation. For example, point four is that you treat people not according to how you want to be treated, but according to how they want to be treated. And point seven deals more with seeing yourself as part of a big picture[3].
If you want to learn by observation, the best way to do this is to surround yourself with people who inspire you[4]. Who are already doing what you want to do. This is also something that has worked well for me. Both for my work and for crossfit.
So you have a few points you can use to become a better version of yourself. You can do this in small steps, and you can use the 7 points as a guide to becoming a version of yourself that will improve your life's happiness.
Now, of course, there could be anything going on in your life that makes it difficult for you to do this. Which makes it hard for you to reward yourself, which makes it hard for you to observe, which makes it hard for you to look at your own behavior and so on.
Hypnosis can then help you resolve what you are suffering from. Namely, you then suffer from blocking beliefs. If you want to do something or think that something is useful, but you somehow cannot bring yourself to do it, then something is wrong.
Maybe it's already obvious to you what the problem is. That's very good news, because then you can be helped quickly with simple techniques to, for example, easily link a positive consequence to the behavior you want to improve for yourself.
Is it still a little more vague for you? Don't know exactly why something is holding you back, but clearly have a sense that something is holding you back? Then regression, for example, can help you. With regression, you gradually go back to the first moment when you felt you couldn't do something, that you didn't do something you know is good for you.
Then you can revisit this moment with your current knowledge and do something that will remove that blockage, so you can become a better version of yourself step by step from that moment on.
Want to learn more about how this works? Then come to the free online master class on hypnosis.
Or enroll directly in one of our training courses to learn these techniques to help yourself or others.
Sources:
[1] https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/8995022
[2] https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/59968#
[3] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01608061.2015.1031427?journalCode=worg20
