Tag Archives: Self-Improvement

Finding Yourself: You Alone Are the Way

It’s the season for believing. The magic of Christmas is all around us, if we will believe in it. Friends, punks, readers of all ages, what we need more than anything is to believe in ourselves.

Trust yourself. Work to know yourself.

To know the you that is the real you.

Not what others tell you about you, but only what you tell yourself.

Because you are the way.

When Jesus said, “I am the way,” he was roleplaying with his disciples to show them what they should believe about themselves. Each one of us is the way, the truth, and the life. Each of us can repeat Jesus’s words for ourselves.

No one can choose your path for you. You are the way.

Look at yourself in the mirror and say, believe, speak into existence, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”

No one can choose your path for you, especially not your parents, friends, experienced leaders, school people, therapists, or well-meaning uncles.

They don’t know the real you or your way. You are your own way.

You may ask why I bring up Jesus’s words if all you need to know is yourself. For those who find comfort in Christian things, wise and self-satisfied thought-and-feeling leaders, like myself, need to find ways to make Jesus’s words say what we want.

Plus, it’s Christmas. The babe of Bethlehem did not speak at the time, but the sentimentalism we feel in Christmas can inspire us to believe anything. Don’t you agree?

(Between you and me, a quick read of the gospels will show you the primary message is that you’ve got this. Jesus knew, like so many of us do today, that you are all you need to be you.)

Banish the hesitation you may have about what you are able to do, and do that thing you long to do. Believe you can, and you can.

Do you believe in Santa Claus? He will be real for you.

Do you believe in mansions? Minecraft awaits.

Do you believe you’re a fish? Man, yeah!

You brought yourself into existence by your own mighty will and now you’re the awesome fill-in-the-blank you are today.

But who am I to tell you anything? You don’t need my words. You have your own.

Your way. Your truth. Your life.

Until it’s over and you return to the dust from which you came and your words waft away like a fume of stink.

Love Yourself Above All Else

Aimee Byrd based her book No Little Women on the charge that Christian women were being led astray by shallow or false teachers who wrote books and studies for a churched female audience. Prime examples of this threat come in the form of charming, intelligent authors who use Christianized batons to beat the drums of self love.

Writer Alisa Childers reviews a new book by one such author, Rachel Harris, entitled, Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be. Naturally, it’s a New York Times bestseller (hopefully by honest sales) and currently #3 in three Amazon.com categories. Childers notes how much she likes Harris’s style and some of her stories, but despite the Christian words here and there, the themes do not point to Jesus. She preaches loving yourself above all else.

“You are meant to be the hero of your own story.”
“You, and only you, are ultimately responsible for who you become and how happy you are.”
“You should be the very first of your priorities.”

The answer is always something like picking yourself up by your bootstraps and striving and trying . . . Anything but surrendering your life to Jesus and placing your trust in him alone.

Self love is big message for Christian women today. You can see it everywhere, and of course it has its place. But Jesus never talked like this. He urged us to seek His Kingdom before ourselves and to remember we are blessed when we have nothing but our Lord to rely on. If we could tune those drums up a bit, we might be able to hear a message of loving yourself enough to love Jesus most.

‘Stand Firm,’ by Svend Brinkmann

Stand Firm

There are people you like, public and private, not because you agree with them particularly, but because you’re both against the same things.

That’s kind of how I feel about Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze, by Danish author Svend Brinkmann.

Brinkmann argues that this whole modern self-improvement thing, with all its books and seminars and courses, has resulted not in greater happiness, but in greater frustration, because we’re never “improved enough,” and we’re constantly made to feel guilty about our many failures to “live in the moment,” “think positively,” etc.

Taking his cue from some tenets of classical Stoicism, Brinkmann recommends a new program, whose bullet points are:

1. Cut out the navel-gazing.
2. Focus on the negative in your life.
3. Put on your No hat.
4. Suppress your feelings.
5. Sack your coach.
6. Read a novel – not a self-help book or biography.
7. Dwell on the past.

That reads as parody, and in fact the book is often funny. But there’s a serious point too. What Brinkmann calls “liquid modernity” – the “flexible” approach to life that the self-help gurus require – is murderous to the soul. We need a place to stand. That requires some negative thinking and a focus on our duties to others rather than just to ourselves. We live in community with others, and we often need to deny our own “needs” in order to maintain our relationships.

I found it interesting that Brinkmann appealed to Stoic philosophy rather than to Christianity in his quest for a backward-looking discipline through which to resist liquid modernity. It reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full, which also looked to Stoicism for a similar purpose. I don’t know whether this choice reflects an unthinking modern prejudice against the riches of Christian thought, or just a (probably well-founded) assumption that if you talk about Christianity, people today won’t listen to you. I think the book is diminished by the choice, but I can’t argue that my way would improve sales.

I don’t agree with all the guidelines recommended in Stand Firm, but I enjoyed reading it and consider it a tonic for our times. And the English translation is first-rate. Recommended.