Just a butterfly among the leaves. Photo by Ed Edelman.

Who doesn’t want to be a better person? I sure do. From the time I was small—and this was no doubt influenced by the Puritan culture of upstate NY where I grew up—I strove every day in every way to be better and better.

This is okay, but only up to a point. That point being, where the message and motive becomes, “I’m not good enough. And that’s why I have to get better.”

Years ago I read a wonderful book: Stop Improving Yourself and Start Living. Love it! It was one of the earliest things I’ve read that talked about just letting yourself be.

We can get addicted to self-improvement. Self-improvement is great. If we’ve got problems, we need to overcome them. We all require diversity to live. It’s a need of the human mind. It’s fun to explore new ways of learning and being.

But only up to a point. That point being, when we keep trying the next right thing, falling for shiny object syndrome, hoping some person, program, book or seminar will be the thing that fixes our broken little selves, once and for all.

Here’s why we need to slow down sometimes: We are not broken. God don’t make no junk, as the poster says. We are beautiful creatures striving for health, peace and harmony. We all also seem to be dealt a fair amount of pain. I don’t know why it should be so. But there it is. As Pema Chodron says in The Places That Scare You, we have to sit still and be with the hurt, neither running away from it nor acting out from it.

Just letting ourselves be, in other words.

Sometimes it’s okay to close the self-help book, skip the recovery meeting, say no to yet another compelling offer of a perfect-your-life workshop, and just let ourselves be.

Go through our day, in other words, not looking for more tools to perfect ourselves, but using the tools we have. And using them gently, lovingly, kindly, thoughtfully.

Maybe even going outside for a bit and just being a big ole bump on a log.