Popular Psychology “You Can Do It!” books, glossy magazines all about Self, New Age mantras, along with an endless progression of television commercials, pound out the message, You can have it all! You can be happy, successful, attractive, and vibrant. You can have passion in your work, all the while tapping into an effortless, endless wellspring of energy. It sounds sooo good! Yet if you can’t do it, after trying really hard, you may end up feeling like a self-help failure. All of this can leave you wondering, What’s wrong with me?

Sometimes the quest for self-improvement, rather than making us feel better, leaves us feeling worse. At first exhilarating, as we continue to search for self-improvement, it can actually increase our stress and feed the belief we’ve been trying so desperately to get rid of. That awful belief, I Can’t.

Part of the self-improvement mantra is manifestation. If I really really believe it, if I sharpen my intent, I will manifest whatever I desire. And if I don’t get what I want there must be something wrong with me.

When what you want doesn’t appear in the way you expect, what gets sharpened is an old agreement:
Somehow I don’t get it.

It will never happen.
I must be, in some way, defective.

Or perhaps you decide that all the “You Can Do It!” stuff out there is simply a quick way for some folks to make barrels full of money, and for most people it just doesn’t work.

One woman wrote me, “I have such a strong positive belief about my success as a novelist that occasionally I wonder if I’m deluded. Meaning, the risk and reward of having gone through a lot of savings, believing it will come back in spades . . . spiritually and with real life security. I’ve worked so hard, and enjoyed it, but I need the rewards and recognition to prove to my family and friends that I wasn’t crazy.”

What struck me about her letter was the comment: I have such a strong positive belief about my success . . . that occasionally I wonder if I’m deluded.

I have talked to many people who have wholeheartedly adopted the idea of I Can!, gone way out on a limb—financially, physically, emotionally—and feel that if success doesn’t come back to them in the way they expect it, they’ll be very disappointed! At they same time they wonder: Am I fooling myself?

There is a hidden fear in this pattern, a monster of sorts hiding in the closet. What if it doesn’t work out as expected?

If things don’t work out as expected these people are often more than disappointed, they’re devastated! Devastated because adopting the strategies found in personal growth manuals is a great strategy to avoid past pain.

Thinking that after all this time you have finally found something that will fix that real yet unnamed fear is intoxicating. Perhaps even a delusion because if you adopt the idea—I Can!—without ever changing the real beliefs you have about yourself, then the road to disappointment is well marked and heavily traveled.

If your pursuit of improvement rests on a bed of fear-based beliefs, it will only lead to more of the same. If the journey toward a higher level of functioning is driven by the engine of fear, then each turn in the road will be experienced through the same less-than outlook that initiated the trip.

Often the motive for self-improvement rests on one simple belief. A belief with agreements like:

I’m not okay as I am.
No one will accept me like this.
To be honest, I cannot accept myself like this either.

Buying into the myth of self-improvement is a protective story we tell ourselves that is a thin veneer easily torn by distress, disappointment, or perceived failure. The myth of self-improvement is self-rejection because its seed is the belief, I’m not.

I’m not is often the real belief driving us to change, a belief undeniably propelled by the engine of fear.

Everyone wants to be recognized for their achievements and acknowledged for the work they do, and hear that they are on the right track. We want to be nurtured, get compliments, and be treated with respect.

We want it, but we don’t need it. When we need it, we act from desperation and become powerless hunting for the prize of acceptance and recognition. Any program of self-improvement that is infected with self-defeating beliefs, driven by an engine fueled with fear, is an all-out treasure hunt for the prize.

Instead of looking for the prize, be the prize. Loving yourself without judgment, without limits, is the gift you give yourself when you become the prize you have been seeking. Being the prize makes you compelling, draws more opportunity than you ever thought possible, and spawns beliefs that will take you exactly where you want to go.

The push to change is inevitable. We are alive and life is evolving and ever expanding. Life exists embracing the marriage of opposites, cleanly and without conflict.

Is it possible to rest in complete self-acceptance, totally comfortable with who you are, breathing out in total surrender to what is, and then with the next in-breath, be charged with the desire to create something different—an evolution of life?

Rather than toiling to improve what you believe is flawed, recognize and change the stories you tell about how you are not enough. You can’t get any better than you are, you can’t go to the store and buy what’s missing, but you can always take a different action by believing something else about yourself. Something else that nourishes you and feels right. Self-love and dedication to the prime directive of not-fear are so much easier to adopt than being sharply focused on the often fruitless pursuit of self-improvement.

Instead of being obsessed with improvement, try cleaning up the stories you have about how you should be. Get rid of descriptions of better, worse, right, wrong. Use the integrity of your emotions to guide you into making decisions on how to proceed. Build a conscious framework of agreements that supports what you want to achieve. Let your engine for change be the engine of love, self-love, rejecting the lie that you are the special one who just can’t do it, no matter how hard you try.

The ideas, practices, and advice found in personal growth writings are often wonderful and inspiring wisdom. Use them as a gift to yourself, not because you need to be fixed, but because you want to awaken and experience the pleasure of life in its fullest expression. Use them because you have decided you deserve only the best. Do it because it feels good!

Devour inspiring wisdom as an expression of the affirmation of Life that needs no improvement but is always changing, creating, and evolving, as it always has.

As it always will.

This article is an excerpt from Ray Dodd’s New Book, Beliefworks , available now from Hampton Roads Publishing, and is copyright 2006 Ray Dodd. All rights reserved.