Yes, you read that right. I am no long interested in striving to be my “best self”. You may be wondering, well why? Isn’t becoming our best self the goal? Perhaps, but I have discovered something even better than being my best self – my favorite self.
Let’s take a step back. From a young age we are told over and over again to achieve, achieve, achieve. You must get good grades so you get into a good college. You must dress and act a certain way to ace the job interview. You must make x amount of money to truly be successful. Do you know what all this so called achievement has gotten me? A seriously limiting, and sometimes debilitating, life long relationship with perfectionism.
Ah, perfectionism. We all know nothing is truly ever perfect, but perfectionists, well, we don’t really care. We will try with all our might to get it just right. Spend an extra hour painting the same square inch over and over, just to end up liking the first version best and scraping the whole thing. Perfectionism (along with BFF anxiety – we’ll save her discussion for a later date) has led me to 1) not complete projects I was originally excited about, 2) not start projects at all, 3) believe my creative pursuits were never good enough, and 4) become burnt out because I was always trying to be my best self. This might just be a Mary thing, but I have always equated my best self with perfection. If something I created was not perfect by my standards, then I clearly wasn’t trying hard enough to be my best self. What a load of crap.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Ask anyone I grew up with and they will agree that I was high achieving kid with all kinds of potential. Excuse me, but I was only doing all that because that’s what other people (ahem, adults) wanted from me. Had it been up to me I would have been daydreaming in a field with a coloring book and some crayons.
At this point you may be thinking, well Mary, your best self and your favorite self are basically the same thing. Maybe at the surface they’re in the same genre, but dig a little deeper and you will find that your favorite self is who you really are when you remove other’s expectations of you. People expect you to be your best self. Your best face forward, on your best behavior, sharing your best ideas, etc. But what if your best is not your favorite? Will you be as committed to your best idea as your favorite idea? Will your best fill you with fire while you burn the midnight oil because you cannot fathom leaving it alone? Probably not.
Perfectionism aside, what does being your best self even mean? I certainly cannot define it for myself, so why would I let society, and social media in particular, tell me how to achieve this lofty goal? What I can define, however, is my favorite self. The woman who sleeps in wrinkled sheets, drinks far too much coffee, would rather be home than at a party, has a small but mighty friend group, is a little hot-headed but only because she cares so deeply, and will always and forever live a vast and thrilling life inside her own head. Defining my favorite self, knowing what is authentic to me and what is not, is actually quite simple. It’s a gut feeling and it doesn’t always align with who the world thinks I’m supposed to be. And that is the most freeing thing imaginable.
So, rather than have other people tell me I should strive to be my best self, I’m going to pointedly ignore them and go on with my favorite self. The replacement of just this one word has been a game changer for me. Try it out for yourself and see how you feel. Perhaps you’re not a perfectionist, so you don’t feel the same pressure with the term best self. That’s totally okay – I am not here to bash on what works best for you. But if you too have always found that “best” extinguishes rather than motivates, try working with your favorite self instead. Here’s to you and your new found favorite self.
COMMENTS