When are we self-developed enough? 💌

Notes on putting two sugars in your coffee.

I sat with a good friend recently, deep in conversation in one of Barcelona’s many old traditional cafés. Life was bustling around us, although we had no idea. Our eyes were locked and our brows were furrowed with a mix of presence and concern. Our voices were lowered over our coffees; he was tearing at a second sugar sachet while I played with my packet, unopened.

‘Eres goloso,’ I smiled, breaking our English and breaking the tension. 

‘You have a sweet tooth.’ 

The truth is my tooth is far sweeter than his, he just doesn’t much care for the taste of coffee. But coffee was required as my friend was in the midst of one of life’s inevitable, temporary bumps in the road and we were talking candidly about his situation; chewing over the ins and outs of how he was feeling as he attempted to figure out, among the f*ckery that is life sometimes, what would be the right thing to do.

He suddenly paused in both his contemplation and his sugar-stirring efforts to look up at me, weary. After a few seconds, through a deep, laboured exhale he said: ‘Jen, I am exhausted from improving. From trying to follow the right path. From trying to follow the right advice.’

My first instinct was to gently encourage him not to give up. To tell him it was going to be OK, to keep going. Because his life is unrecognisable from previous versions he has lived, for the better. Day in and day out, he’s showing up and putting in the work. 

In a rare turn of events I hesitated in my response, considering the situation at hand, the sum of what he has been through in the years before I knew him, and what he has since been able to accomplish through his own volition, with very minimal guidance from the likes of partners or family members or mentors to shape him, to model himself against or to encourage him in the way I was scrambling to as I looked into his tired, searching eyes. 

As I contemplated what could possibly be the most helpful thing to say, all I could think was: ‘You know what, my friend? I hear you. I’d be exhausted too.’

Which is exactly what I said.

Because in that moment, he didn’t need advice. It wasn’t about improvement, or making the right decision. It wasn’t about finding the way. 

It was about simply being. It was about acceptance.

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This friendship of ours, it’s a unique one. We connect, obscurely and profoundly, as two deep-feeling, high effort people who have walked slightly unconventional paths. We are very different individuals from very different backgrounds, but there are synergies within these differences that bring us together and grant us incredible depth in our conversations. These are depths that I always crave, but particularly right now in my current existence of new connections. We mercifully got past the often tedious: ‘Where are you from?’, ‘How long have you been living here?’ chat in about 20 seconds before leaping into something much more meaningful, and haven’t looked back.

By virtue of being exactly who we are at this point in our lives, and being completely interested in and accepting of who the other is at this point in their lives, our curious friendship has expanded both of us.

But on this day at least, he was tired of expanding. Tired of developing himself. Tired of trying.

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Self-development is a bit of a buzzword du jour, but it is something that I really do love. I have endless notes and bookmarks in various places about motivation and discipline and self-improvement and Getting Things Done (which is also the name of a very popular productivity book, and I have that too).

I subscribe to podcasts from Rich Roll.

I read newsletters from James Clear.

I’ve written about my favourite Peloton hype woman who pushes me week after week with her tough-love mantras to expand beyond my self-imposed labels and limitations.

Self-development isn’t any kind of elitist concept, despite the way it is often marketed. It is simply the idea of improving ourselves through new skills - be them emotional, professional, or practical. The idea that we are continual works in progress and that we can continually learn new things and expand our minds if we take it upon ourselves to do so is something that speaks to me, even if it makes a lot of people do a big ol’ eyeroll and want to have a big ol’ lie down in front of Netflix.

There is a sense of autonomy to it that a certain type of person may not enjoy, but to me there is possibility in this. The possibility of one day deciding to learn to play the bagpipes aged 54 should I choose to. I don’t see that for my future to be honest but you know, never say never. More importantly, there is possibility in this responsibility that we all have to basically not be awful to each other because our thoughts, behaviours and responses are a product of our experiences, rather than a truth. We can renew. How exciting.

My interest in self-development has without question helped me to get physically stronger. It has helped me to manage my time better, and to produce better work. It has helped me to break old patterns and adopt new habits. But more than that it’s helped me to be a nicer, more thoughtful, calmer person - one who is (mostly) able to take another person’s lived experience at face value, without framing it through the lens of my own. I’ve learned how to actively listen; how not to project my own scars onto others.

These are some of the most important skills I have developed, and it is beyond me why I spent so many years trying to identify poems written in iambic pentameter or memorise the periodic table, when an hour or two of this would have done younger Jen quite a few favours. 

With my friend’s words bouncing around my head in the last few weeks since he uttered them it made me ponder, in this age of being hyper-connected content absorbers, in this world full of filters and popping bottles and doing it for the ‘gram, whether a different kind of messaging - the messaging about striving to become our best selves - is pushing us in an equally unhelpful direction towards equally impossible ideals.

Where does self-improvement meet self-acceptance? 

Arguably my own greater self-acceptance has come as something of a by-product of self-development. They’re in no way mutually exclusive. But where within these messages are we allowed to be, complete with the less harmful of our flaws and imperfections while we just exist for a minute? 

Is there a point at which we can say we are developed enough? 

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My instinct tells me that’s up to us to decide. Which leads me to wonder, with the continual pressure to be doing more, producing more, being better… how on earth we figure out which of our traits and flaws need to be changed, worked on, evolved from… and which we can accept - not least because they’re perhaps not even flaws at all?

Is it ok for me to accept that I will leave most things until the last minute, but with that I work like lightning under pressure? And you know, my house is always tidy, I’ll always look after everyone around me and I will always be hopeful. Is my friend allowed to accept that he will always take his coffee sweet, and that he will likely have a more skeptical view of the world, but with that he approaches people and situations with a level of discernment that has often been helpful, if not completely necessary? He also has the discipline to stick to the most gruelling daily routine, and he will also show up willing to fix your toilet or dress your wounds when you wreck your feet in ill-fitting shoes.

As I’ve jumped back into the world after my own pretty exhausting few months, I’m trying to do accept that it’s OK to momentarily do less work while I fly about and celebrate the various milestones of friends and family, which is the main reason I’ve been working so hard for so long. It is a magical thing to be able to do, and for months all I’ve wanted is to feel secure enough to allow more space to play. But now that I have it, I feel instinctively guilty because I’m playing according to my own rules. I feel guilty for prioritising running in the beautiful spring air over content creation. I feel guilty for sleeping in after three months of gruelling early mornings and late nights. I feel guilty for daring to sit on a flight without opening my laptop. Is it OK to accept that this is just me; that I’m a doing-too-much kind of person? Is it OK to accept that I find it hard to switch off? 

Because it’s so easy to accept those around us for who they are. I could within a few seconds reel off a long list of reasons why my friend is doing just fine. Yet it’s so much harder to see this for ourselves.

But I can see that I have my health, and my career. That I haven’t been born into a war zone. I know the exquisite simplicity of a perfectly wobbly inside of a freshly-cooked Spanish tortilla. And perhaps the greatest vision of all, I currently have all 10 toenails because at this precise point in time I haven’t lost any to running or hiking.

My life is bloody miraculous, actually. As am I. As is he. As are you.

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And so my friend’s acceptance of his current situation was, in that moment, nothing to fight against. There was time for him to gather himself and figure out a plan to move forward another time. He did. There was time to get back to his routines and his ambitions another day. He did. He does.

But our conversation has stuck with me. I sat thinking about it yesterday, on my way back to Barcelona from Madrid, where I witnessed two very special people get married this weekend after watching two equally special people get married last week in England. I sat, simply being, enjoying the view from the top of the double decker train that I was FREAKING DELIGHTED to board at Atocha Station. Without an educational podcast in my ears or my Spanish homework open or my work time tracker ticking away I sat, enjoying the ride, with my tired feet and my champagne headache and my untouched inbox, thinking about the fun I’d had and the love I’d witnessed and the hugs I’d given as the beautiful Spanish countryside whizzed by.

Sat there on that train, I was more than enough. It was more than enough.

It was two sugar sachets in your coffee kind of sweet.