ESSAY NO. 1 | I Do Not Want to Become My Best Self

On self-improvement, perfectionism, and the exhausting idea that the person we are today is merely a draft.

There is always another version of me waiting somewhere in the distance. She wakes earlier. She drinks more water. She exercises consistently, answers messages on time, reads instead of scrolling, finishes everything she starts and has somehow developed the sort of morning routine that requires both a journal and an aesthetically pleasing glass of lemon water. She is emotionally regulated but never emotionally unavailable. She has boundaries without becoming difficult, ambition without becoming exhausted and confidence without ever appearing arrogant. She is financially responsible, physically healthy, intellectually curious, spiritually grounded and apparently capable of keeping every drawer in her house organized. I have spent an unreasonable amount of my adult life trying to catch this woman. Increasingly, however, I find myself wondering whether I actually want to.

The idea of becoming our "best self" has become so ordinary that we rarely stop to consider what it implies. Somewhere between wellness culture, productivity culture, therapy language, fitness culture and the endless machinery of social media, the self became a project. There is always something to optimize. Our bodies can be leaner, our homes calmer, our relationships healthier, our attachment styles more secure, our morning routines more disciplined and our careers more intentional. Even leisure has become suspiciously productive. We meditate to become more focused. We exercise to live longer. We take vacations to prevent burnout so that we can return to work refreshed. We develop hobbies and are immediately asked whether we have considered selling what we make. Rest itself has acquired a résumé.

None of this is an argument against growth. There are parts of ourselves that deserve examination. People should learn from mistakes, leave destructive patterns, develop emotional maturity and make choices that create better lives. But there is a difference between believing we are capable of change and believing that the person we are at this exact moment is perpetually inadequate. The first contains possibility. The second can become a way of living in permanent dissatisfaction.

Psychology has spent decades examining one version of this problem through research on perfectionism. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis covering 416 studies and more than 113,000 adults found that what researchers call perfectionistic concerns, including distress over mistakes and perceived discrepancies between expectations and performance, showed meaningful associations with depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Perfectionistic striving itself had smaller associations with distress, suggesting an important distinction: having high standards is not necessarily the same thing as continually experiencing yourself as failing to meet them.

That distinction interests me because much of contemporary self-improvement seems built around discrepancy. We are constantly shown the distance between who we are and who we could theoretically become. There is the body we have and the body we could have. The income we earn and the income someone our age claims to earn online. The apartment we live in and the immaculate kitchen being renovated on our screen. The morning we actually had and the morning routine of a stranger who apparently wakes naturally at 4:45 a.m. We have unprecedented access to examples of how nearly every component of a human life could supposedly be improved.

The result can be an odd form of prosperity in which nothing ever feels finished.

Researchers studying high-achieving university students have found something particularly revealing about this sense of discrepancy. In one study, students who experienced greater gaps between their expectations and perceived performance did not necessarily spend more time working than other high achievers. They did, however, report greater anxiety and poorer psychological well-being. The problem was not simply effort. It was the experience of never quite being good enough despite the effort already being made.

More recent longitudinal research adds another dimension. A 2024 study following university students examined perfectionism alongside what researchers called self-image goals, goals centered on constructing or defending a desirable image of oneself. Perfectionistic traits and perfectionistic self-presentation were associated with these self-image goals, while self-image goals themselves were linked with poorer mental and physical health, loneliness and social anxiety. It is difficult not to see something familiar in this. We no longer simply have to live a life. We are increasingly invited to produce a version of ourselves that demonstrates that we are living correctly.

There is a peculiar cruelty in this because the finish line can always move. Lose twenty pounds and perhaps you should build muscle. Earn more money and perhaps you should create passive income. Learn to establish boundaries and perhaps you should investigate whether those boundaries are actually avoidant attachment. Heal one childhood wound and the internet will happily identify three others before lunch. The vocabulary changes, but the premise remains remarkably consistent: there is something wrong with you that the next practice, purchase, realization, routine or transformation may finally correct.

I have begun to wonder how much of what we call self-improvement is actually self-rejection with excellent branding.

This is especially complicated because criticism of self-improvement often produces an immediate objection: if we simply accept ourselves, won't we become complacent? If I stop being dissatisfied with myself, why would I ever change?

Research on self-compassion suggests that assumption may be backwards. In a series of four experiments, psychologists Juliana Breines and Serena Chen found that responding to personal shortcomings with self-compassion did not reduce motivation to improve. Participants encouraged toward self-compassion showed greater motivation to address weaknesses, make amends after wrongdoing and, following failure on a difficult test, spend more time studying. Acceptance did not make them passive. In several contexts, it made improvement more likely.

Perhaps we have confused cruelty with discipline for longer than we realize.

There are changes I have made in my life because I hated something about myself, and there are changes I have made because I cared enough about myself to want something different. From the outside, the behavior can look identical. Exercise can come from disgust or affection. Leaving a relationship can come from punishment or self-preservation. Working harder can come from curiosity and ambition or from the terror that without achievement we are nothing. The action does not always reveal the relationship beneath it.

That relationship may matter more than the optimization industry admits.

I am increasingly suspicious of any philosophy of living that requires me to remain dissatisfied in order to remain ambitious. I do not want to hate today's body into tomorrow's body. I do not want to despise today's work while building tomorrow's career. I do not want to treat the woman I am now as administrative scaffolding surrounding the impressive woman who will eventually replace her.

And I no longer want every experience to become useful.

I want to read books that do not improve my professional knowledge. I want to make things that never become products. I want conversations that cannot become content. I want meals whose nutritional value is not the most interesting thing about them. I want afternoons that accomplish nothing measurable. I want hobbies I am mediocre at and have no intention of mastering. There should be regions of a human life where productivity cannot follow us.

Perhaps this sounds like a small rebellion. Increasingly, I think it is not.

A culture obsessed with optimization has difficulty understanding pleasure without productivity. We have learned to justify rest because it improves performance, sleep because it improves cognition, walking because it increases longevity, friendship because social connection improves health. These things may all be true. But friendship should not require a health outcome to be worthwhile. Neither should sleep. Neither should pleasure. Neither should an afternoon.

Sometimes the value of being alive is simply being alive.

I still want to grow. I still have ambitions. There are habits I would like to change, things I want to learn and versions of my life I have not yet reached. But I am trying to stop imagining that somewhere at the end of those accomplishments is a final, perfected woman who will justify all the imperfect women who came before her.

There is no best self waiting for me.

There is the self I was at twenty, who knew things I have forgotten and misunderstood things I now know intimately. There is the self I am today. There will be another woman at sixty, seventy or eighty, if I am fortunate enough to meet her. Each will gain something the others did not possess and lose something another once carried easily. None of them will be definitive.

Maybe that is what makes a life a life rather than a completed project.

I no longer want to spend decades chasing a woman who remains permanently ten steps ahead of me. I would rather become acquainted with the person who has been here the entire time: unfinished, occasionally contradictory, still learning, still changing, and already alive.

She has waited long enough for me to stop treating her like a rough draft.

EDITOR’S NOTE

This essay is part of a five-part editorial series from Bruja Magazine examining the quieter tensions of modern life: our obsession with self-improvement, the expectations placed upon women, the complexity of identity, the lives we imagine but never live, and our cultural desire for closure. Across five essays, the series draws from psychological research, cultural observation, and personal reflection to consider what happens when we stop searching for simple answers to complicated human experiences. This is Essay No. [1] of 5.

Sources & Further Reading

Breines, Juliana G., and Serena Chen. “Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2012.

Nepon, Taryn, Gordon L. Flett, and Paul L. Hewitt. “Perfectionism, Self-Image Goals and Compassionate Goals in Health and Mental Health: A Longitudinal Analysis.” Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 2024.

Smith et al. “The Relationships Between Perfectionism and Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 2023. The review included 416 studies and 113,118 participants.

Research on discrepancy perfectionism among high-achieving university students, published in Personality and Individual Differences, found greater discrepancy associated with greater anxiety and poorer psychological well-being.