The best version? Why not just be yourself?
Patience, grasshopper. There’s still time to work out who you really are. Or maybe you already know.
If I had a dollar for every time I’d recently heard about people striving to be a better version of themselves, how to be a better version of yourself or the importance of being a better version of yourself, I wouldn’t be here.
I’d be sunning myself on the poop deck of a yacht off Cap d’Antibes in the south of France, self-confident, probably self-possessed and definitely self-satisfied as a conflicted but not unhappy lesser version of myself.
Perhaps each new year and its attendant annual tsunami of personal introspection and promise of reinvention have promoted this need for better versions. Fair enough.
But the push to hunt for and trap your better self has become ubiquitous and entered the language, as close to meaningless as, say, don’t cry over spilt milk or money can’t buy you happiness (except if it affords you a yacht off Cap d’Antibes).
It’s everywhere, this quest. Just a few weeks ago The New York Times ran a big feature on American Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps. The headline? “Michael Phelps journals to find the ‘best version’ of himself.”
Here’s an extract:
“There is an easy answer for why Phelps, the most decorated and accomplished Olympian of all time, knows these idiosyncrasies about himself: He writes down even the most minuscule details of his day in a journal, then reads over his entries later on, viewing it as a tool to better understand himself.”
He told the reporter: “I have to be the best version of myself and give myself that chance.”
Let’s not be curmudgeonly. Any attempt at personal betterment, physical and mental self-improvement, the positive recalibration of interpersonal relations, any voluntary gesture towards a richer and more meaningful contribution to community, be it via philanthropy or volunteerism, has to be encouraged and applauded. Hear, hear.
The better version lobby, however, seems to be suggesting that there are in fact numerous categories of human beings, of ourselves, running around at any given moment like chooks in a henhouse – dodgy versions, naughty versions, weak versions, lazy versions, addicted versions, inauthentic versions and confused versions.
And somewhere out there is the ever-elusive admired, polished, pristine version, like the Golden Ticket in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory or winning Powerball numbers.
So how do we find our better version? What is it? What does it even look like? And, most important, where is it?
Business and self-help guru Tony Robbins recommends we sit down with ourselves and have a conversation to discover our better self.
As Robbins says, to uncover your best version you must uncover your “you-ness”; that is, the passions, interests and values that define you in the world. Then you must “have a conversation with yourself just like you’d have on a first date” and “pretend that your ideal self is sitting there”.
Who do you enjoy being around, you need to ask yourself. What sort of activities take your fancy? What impact would you like to make in the world?
So I did that. I took myself on a date. (Nothing fancy, movie and a gelato.) And asked the hard questions.
“Who are you?” I queried.
“Your better self.”
“I had no idea my current self didn’t come up to scratch.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself. It prevents you from finding your better self.”
“But isn’t that you? And aren’t you here with me on this date? Doesn’t that mean I have found you?”
“You have yet to find the better you. Which is me. I may be sitting opposite you. But it does not mean you’ve found me.”
This pretzel-like philosophical shift in our conversation reminded me of that great 1970s television show Kung Fu, in which the bald and blind Master Po, a precursor to modern influencers such as Robbins, dished out advice to the young Kwai Chang Caine.
His pearls of wisdom are still with me. Or perhaps they were stolen by my better self.
For example:
Caine: Is it good to seek the past, Master Po? Does it not rob the present?
Master Po: If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.
And my favourite: “What do you hear?” asked Master Po. “I hear the grasshopper,” answered Caine. Wisely.
I began having a terrible suspicion that maybe the better version of myself was a grasshopper. Why not? Grasshoppers are critical to the environment in that they prevent the overgrowth of certain plant species, they fertilise the earth with their excreta, and at a stretch they’re high protein and can be eaten by humans.
“I am not a grasshopper,” my better self said impatiently on our date. “I am everything you could be. I’m the successful you, the satisfied you, the outstanding you and everything you could be if you weren’t so stubborn and sarcastic and sceptical and deliberately closed off from the flow of your times, which is to strive, strive, strive for betterness.”
I wanted to tell this shiny new me that betterness wasn’t a word, but who can argue with the zeitgeist?
Robbins also says this: “When you determine to find your ideal self, you’re essentially raising the bar – for yourself and the people you know. Your ‘old self’ will resist this due to feelings of insecurity and fear of the unknown. Resist the urge to cling to the familiar … and embrace a can-do attitude.”
“But Grasshopper,” I asked myself, “what if I quite like my old self? And what if people I know don’t want their bar raised by me?”
“When you take the pebble from my hand, you’ll know it’s time to leave,” my better self said.
“Pardon?”
There is no shortage of people such as Robbins and other experts who clearly have found the better version of themselves and are happy to “pay forward” (another hip saying at the mo) and help you find yours.
Take this from an article in Forbes headlined: “6 Powerful Ways to be a Better Version of Yourself”. These include “Smile more” (“Smiling tricks your mind into a sunnier disposition”) and “Keep a journal” (“Life is short, so keep a log”).
Confused and vulnerable, my less-better self, in search of allies, found some lonely voices on the internet, such as writer Lian Angelino, whose frankness on this issue was like a welcome ice bath.
“If there is one thing that bothers me about the self-help industry, it is the idea that there is such a thing as ‘the best version of yourself’,” Angelino writes. “I find it a scary idea that there’s an entire sector built on convincing you that there’s something wrong with you, that any discomfort you feel is a fatal flaw that needs fixing. It diminishes the complex experience of being a human. It leaves no room for the messiness that comes with being human.”
Ah, the dear, blessed messiness of life.
I wanted to memorise this entire quote and recite it to my flaky better self on our next date. Or have it tattooed on my posterior. But would that upset the better version of myself? Just a couple of dates in, might my better self actually dump me?
It’s exhausting, this better version search.
For days now I’ve followed Phelps’s lead and I’ve been journalling about everything I’ve eaten and thought and what shoes I’ve worn and what feelings I’ve had about grocery shopping and doing the dishes, and I’ve gone on several dates with myself to try to get to know the better version of me even though I’m not sure I’m willing to get into a committed relationship with the pre-eminent me and I’m pretty pooped.
I think that during the prolonged search for my best version, the lesser version of me could’ve gone for a surf or sat still and read a book or played a game of pool with some old buddies or chess with one of my kids. Wouldn’t that have been worth it, too?
For some reason I can’t get this distant voice out of my head.
Patience, Young Grasshopper.
