Lately I've been noticing how often I swing between two very different mindsets.
On one end, there's self-acceptance. The idea that this is just how my brain works, that I'm allowed to have limits, that not everything needs to be fixed or optimized or pushed through. That maybe I don't need to keep trying to become a "better" version of myself all the time.
And then, almost immediately, something else creeps in. The part of me that still believes I should be able to handle more. Be more patient. Be more present. Be less reactive. Be… easier.
It's hard to tell where growth ends and self-rejection begins.
Because some of the things I want to change are valid. I don't want to snap at my kids when I'm overstimulated. I don't want to feel constantly on edge in situations that are supposed to be normal. I don't want to keep repeating patterns that don't feel good.
But at the same time, I'm starting to realize how much of that "improvement" mindset was built on the assumption that I should be able to tolerate everything. And I can't. Not without a cost.
That's the part I'm still figuring out. Where is the line between accepting my limits and using them as an excuse not to grow, and pushing toward growth as a form of self-rejection? Or maybe the better question is whether that line even exists in the way I've been thinking about it.
Because the more I understand my brain, the more it feels like self-acceptance and self-improvement aren't actually opposites. They just don't happen in the same order I expected.
For a long time, improvement meant pushing through. Ignoring the discomfort, overriding the reaction, trying to become someone who could handle more. Now it's starting to look different. More like noticing what drains me. More like adjusting instead of forcing. More like choosing where my energy goes instead of pretending I have unlimited access to it.
And if I'm honest, that doesn't always feel like growth. Sometimes it feels like doing less, handling less, tolerating less. Which is uncomfortable in its own way. Because a part of me still equates "doing less" with falling behind some earlier version of what I thought I was supposed to be.
But another part of me is starting to question whether the version of myself I was trying to improve was actually sustainable in the first place.
I don't have a clean answer here. Just the ongoing tension between wanting to accept myself as I am and still wanting to change.
Maybe the work isn't choosing one over the other. Maybe it's learning how to hold both at the same time, without using one to cancel out the other.
Talk soon,
Tara
CEO of Chaos & Co.