Improvement Junkie

Look in the mirror and ask yourself how many ways could you improve yourself. The answer would be that there is no limited amount of ways that you could make improvements. You could spend your entire life doing nothing else but making improvements.

I love the idea of improving yourself. But there comes a time when you just have to step back and say, "This is good enough."

I was watching a program the other day about female bodybuilders having an addiction to getting bigger and bigger. I think the program coined the term "biggorexia," a condition where you think you're not muscular enough. It's of course the very opposite of anorexia where a woman thinks she isn't skinny enough.

These female bodybuilders pump steroids so that they could get huge muscles. They are always at the gym, always watching their diet, and always looking for ways to improve on their already-well-define musculature. To them, their bodies aren't good enough. They need more muscles!

As a result, they lose almost everything that defines them as women. They look and sound like men, they have no more periods (probably a blessing in some ways), and their boobs disappear. Plus, they don't have a life anymore. Their whole world evolves around making improvements to their bodies.

Now, what if these women would have been satisfied with a body that was lean and tone and left it at that? What if they would have been satisfied at just losing weight? What if they would have been okay with simply looking better in their clothes? What if they had already said to themselves, "Okay, this body is good enough?" They would have been thoroughly happy! But instead, whenever they look at themselves in the mirror, all they could see are flaws that they need to fix.

Making improvements in your life is good -- but you need to make improvements when it's necessary. Sometimes, you just have to say that it's good enough.

One male fitness instructor at the gym is absolutely skinny without an ounce of fat on his body. He told me that he was trying to lose weight! He showed me his stomach, and man, you couldn't get a stomach any flatter than that! But he was talking about getting rid of his "love handles." I'm scratching my head wondering why he feels he needs to lose anymore weight!

Well, when he looks at his body, all he sees are improvements he needs to make when he ought to have been satisfied with what he already has.

If you think about it, you could spend all day making improvements on any one thing. There will NEVER be a limit as to what improvements you make. But the more time you spend making improvements, the less time you'd have to enjoy life!

Really, who else cares about all the improvements you need to make besides you? While everybody else is going on with their lives, you're spending all of your life trying to get better and better at something. You're wasting away precious moments trying to get things "just right." Let me tell you: in the end, all the needless improvements you made to yourself won't even matter. If you have good health, good relationships, and an overall good attitude, then you could make it through life without making additional improvements.

Think about selling your house. Really, you could spend all year updating and adjusting things in your house hoping that by doing so you would make a better profit. But in the end, all that really matters is that the house is livable. All the many adjustments that you made may not even increase your chances of making a better profit, and you just might lose money with all the needless changes. Just imagine spending $40,000 on upgrading ONE bathroom and not getting any of that money back!

Limit yourself as to how many improvements you want to make in your life. What are the FEW things that you really want to change? Focus on those FEW things, because those few things might make life easier for you. Don't waste your life obsessing about what you are not, or what you don't have. Get yourself to a point where you could say, "Okay, this is good enough. Let me enjoy life now." Improve what is necessary and leave the rest alone. Nothing is perfect in life, so don't try to make yourself perfect.