When Is a Desire to Improve Driven by Shame?

For so many years of my life, I was in a constant, driven state of wanting to do more and be more. I strove for excellence and felt intense shame and blame about anything I detected, or anything others pointed out to me, that seemed like a flaw.

I eventually discovered that this need to improve was driven by a constant need to make myself more lovable, more valuable, or worthy.

This is one way shame can hide inside a deep desire to improve ourselves. It keeps pushing us toward a better version of ourselves.

With that mindset comes a focus on the future. In a day, in a month, when I lose 20 lbs, when I finish this project, then I’ll be good enough. For example, when I have my own business or when I make myself worthy enough to be loved by others.

As I began to see this connection, I became curious about what kept driving this need to be better, which is a particular type of flight energy. It can feel like you’re racing toward a better and improved future version of yourself.

Flight can show up as a way of wanting to jump out of who we are today and jump into a place where we can finally be okay.

For me, I had this inner need to continually improve because I couldn’t believe that I was already good enough.

For some of us, the energy that drives the desire to improve can be relentless. Have you ever noticed that you were striving for a goal, achieved it, and now you have moved the goal posts further forward?

It is natural to want to grow, learn, and improve. But when it becomes driven, and when it feels like there is very little room to accept ourselves as we are right now, then this becomes our source of pain and struggle.

Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology, said: “At the moment we accept ourselves exactly as we are right now, is the very moment we are capable of change.”

My invitation to you is to see if you recognize this pattern in your own life. If it isn’t there, congratulations. If it is, no worries. There is an antidote.

It starts with noticing and naming this flight energy of pushing toward a better you. It can be a sense of contraction and tension, or a feeling that you have to get through this moment and get to a better you.

Next, place either two hands on your heart, or one hand on your heart and one hand on your cheek. Allow yourself to take 3 slow, full, out breaths.

As you move toward regulation, can you allow yourself to be aware of the background flight energy and at the same time continue relaxing the body?

Not to fight it or make the drive go away, but to allow the drive or flight energy to be there without contracting around it.

The moment that we can do that, we begin to break this pattern of being driven into the future. The more we can land here and access the always available presence that we are, the more we can rewire the tendency to have our lives driven by this flight to improvement.

We can learn to rest in presence, and in our ability to be in life right now rather than living in this never-ending trance of improvement.

I invite you to try this process and see how it lands for you.