Is Self-Improvement a Voluntary Hobby?

So I've been thinking about self-introspection? The question mark explains it all. There are people who are extremely confident in their abilities and people who are extremely self-deprecating, and each believes every word of what each says. What if you are the latter working towards the former? I guess it's difficult to really say you're either one or the other. It's clearly not a black and white thing. Kind of like a stomachache. You definitely can point out when it's there. You can't as easily point out when it's on its way out. You can feel ok, even great! However, your stomach could not be hurting but once it starts and diminishes once, you suddenly become more reluctant to assure your good health right away. It could come back. And all you remember is the discomfort. Anyway, time to cut the tangent to the quick.

photo courtesy of Biomatch

The point is if someone points out a fault, you are going to question their validity and then either fix to correct the offending party in their incorrect statement or yourself in your incorrect behavior. But besides these external markers of self-improvement, we are also continually judging ourselves and holding ourselves to certain standards. So at any given time, we're working to improve ourselves, being, as it may, on perpetual trial by both the outer and inner worlds at any given time. So when do we just want to throw our hands and give up? At what point does it just feel like we are making too many people upset and not enough people happy, including ourselves, our harshest critics? In that case, at what point should we stop judging ourselves so harshly and just enjoy ourselves, as we are, on any given day? I think an emotionally healthy person usually does enjoy his or her self on any given day. But then, when is the time to think of improving?

Working in an environment of constant editing and revision, these thoughts often turn to the idea of self. After all, scrapping a product and revamping it completely is never out of the question.