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Intentionally developing yourself is powerful, but not all sunshine and rainbows. Here are 11 uncomfortable realizations you will have on the path of self-improvement.
Read also: Drop out
1. Noticing Your Lack of Passion
Looking at other people and seeing how passionate they are about their careers or hobbies is very uncomfortable if you lack that passion.
You suddenly notice that you are doing things just because you thought you should do them.
But there is no deeper joy or feeling of fulfillment behind your actions.
If you are also not striving towards something that’ll make you feel more passionate, it can make you wonder if you are living life the right way at all.
2. Being Incredibly Envious of Others
As you improve yourself, you become aware of all the things you want: Financial Freedom, Confidence, Passion, Deep Friendships, Unique Experiences, and more.
This awareness can bring an intense feeling of envy whenever you encounter someone who has those things.
Noticing your envy will be an especially uncomfortable realization if you have been acting negatively on it.
Envy is not inherently bad. In fact, it can be a powerful source of inspiration that guides you towards things that are meant for you.
However, envy can become toxic if you get lost in it and try to bring down the people it applies to.
3. Feeling alone and distanced from friends and family
Before you dedicated yourself to personal development, you grew at a similar pace and direction to the people around you with whom you share many experiences.
As soon as you start dedicating your time to self-improvement, you jumped off the designated track and forged your own path.
Somewhere along the way, you will make the uncomfortable realization that you have distanced yourself quite a bit from the path your family and friends walk on.
You don’t have the same interests and mindset anymore and struggle to understand them or find shared conversation topics.
You suddenly realize how alone you are on your self-improvement path, and you crave new close friends.
4. Questioning your religion/beliefs
Many of our beliefs are shaped in childhood through our family and society.
Developing yourself means questioning those beliefs and, at times, having the uncomfortable realization that they are ill-founded and require change.
5. Feeling ashamed of your faults
Have you ever looked back on your past actions, past outfits, or past writing and felt embarrassed by it?
Back then, you might have been doing your best, but you could do much better nowadays since you’ve grown.
This feeling of regret can turn into painful shame if you weren’t even doing your best, but you’ve only now become aware of your faults at work.
You’ll need to work through this shame and forgive yourself while also ensuring you’ll be better the next time around.
6. You realize you haven’t lived much yet
There are more things to do in this life than you’ll probably ever have time to do.
That’s why it can be an especially uncomfortable realization to notice that you are basically spending every day the same way.
You realize that you are not living life to its fullest despite that being your wish.
But at this point, it might seem hard to break out of the patterns you’ve created, and you might also currently lack the financial means to experience your bucket list.
7. You realize the goals you’ve been chasing won’t satisfy you
You’ve spent all this time, effort, and these tears pursuing goals that you were sure would make you happy.
But then, through the course of your self-improvement, you learn more about your values in life, and your goals change.
Suddenly, you are faced with the uncomfortable realization that you’ve been wasting all this time and effort on an empty shell of a goal.
You have to work through the pain and redirect your focus better later than never when this happens.
8. You feel like you’ve wasted a lot of your time
Now realizing the power of self-improvement, you regret not having started sooner.
It feels like you’ve wasted a lot of time being a lesser version of yourself and chasing the wrong goals.
Read also: 15 Ways to Spend Your Time Wisely | How to Use Time Better
9. You don’t know your future self and shouldn’t force a decision on it
Some students decide early on that they want to become a doctor/lawyer. They put a gruesome amount of effort into school so that they can go to med/law school later on.
After years and years of effort, they finally get to med/law school only to realize that this is not what they expected it to be.
But they’ve already invested so much into this dream, so many students keep going.
Fast forward a few decades, and many find themself stressed and passionless in a demanding job that sucks out their lives.
The lesson here is that you should be wary of following through on decisions you made a long time ago.
I’m sure five years ago you would have never been able to guess the kind of interests and passions you have nowadays.
So why would you expect yourself to make decisions that you will still be happy with five-ten years down the line?
Doing something just because your past self thought it’s the right thing to do is almost the same as letting your life be directed by a stranger.
Yes, you might need to abandon your current trajectory, but that is still far better than ending up somewhere that makes you unhappy.
10. Your success relies on luck as much as on hard work
Nobody likes being told that they got lucky with their success. Especially not when they did indeed put in the hours of hard work to reach their goal.
Still, somewhere along the line, as you get over your limiting beliefs and amass more and more success, you will accept the uncomfortable realization that luck has aided you.
You’ve grown up in the right place at the right time, been granted an education, a supportive family, and relative financial stability that many people on this earth do not have.
I know I’ve also gotten incredibly lucky to discover a podcast when I was 19 that introduced me to entrepreneurship and a very affordable online course.
And that’s only one small stroke of fortune that probably altered my life forever.
But don’t worry, I am not telling you that all of your success is down to luck. Plenty of people grew up extremely privileged but amount to very little in life because they don’t put in the hard work.
Success requires both hard work and luck!
Read also: The Unfair Advantage Book Review | 11 Lessons + Quotes
11. Living life to the fullest requires suffering
Nowadays, the online world is always talking about being high vibe and positive. Especially in the law of attraction community, there is the misconception that you need to be happy as much as possible to attract your dream life.
Let’s be real for a moment. If you felt happy all the time, you wouldn’t feel happy at all.
What even is happiness? We can only really define happiness in comparison to negative emotions.
Our moments of darkness make the light all the much sweeter.
Perhaps even more important is the immense motivation we get from painful times.
Why would you want to go through the trouble of becoming a better self if not to stop feeling incapable, useless, underaccomplished, stressed, sad, burned out, and passionless?
Humans are more strongly motivated to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.
So as uncomfortable it is to realize that you will never live a perfectly happy and content life all the time, at least you are now in a position to appreciate your life for what it is.
This uncomfortable realization will ironically lead to more gratitude and happiness. You will feel less disappointed when your chase for ultimate happiness inevitably fails. And you will be kinder with yourself when you can’t uphold the unrealistic standard of being high vibe all the time.
Don’t aim for happiness. Aim for gratitude and the realization of your potential!
Do you have any further uncomfortable realizations to share with your fellow Felicity Seekers?
What has been the hardest realization you had to accept?
Until next time!
