Feeling Good is NEVER Enough

I asked my students what they spent their time on. A majority of them admitted that they checked Instagram posts and reels most often. I decided to sign up for an Instagram account after receiving this answer. I thought it would be effective to post something on Instagram to connect with my students. However, my experience with Instagram was a bit shocking. The majority of posts are advertisements. For non-commercial posts from people, most men do not own a shirt and women seem to have gluteus works done by Cardi B's plastic surgeons. Furthermore, pictures and reels that showed people tended to be extremely filtered that they looked almost like animated characters instead of real people. I wondered how my students, who are mostly in their late teens to early 20s, felt as social media such as Instagram seemed to popularize certain body types and superficial aesthetic. If I felt intimidated by all the shirtless men on public display, were my students under the pressure to conform to popular societal standards of how one should look and act? As many types of social media platforms are rife with users internationally, is the global society putting unrealistic expectations of how one should look on social media users such as my students, who are quite impressionable, and creating this superimposed idea that being an authentic oneself is not enough?

A study tracked 1,500 teenage girls for 13 years and found that those who had plastic surgeries during the 13 years tended to feel good about their bodies very briefly with the outcomes of their surgeries. However, compared with girls who did not have any plastic surgeries, those who had procedures done reported a statistically significant tendency toward suffering from anxiety, depression, eating disorders, alcohol/drug use, and self-harm or para-suicide. About five to ten percent of the study's participants who had undergone the knife became particularly unsatisfied with their looks and constantly found flaws in their own body images. Therefore, feeling good is NEVER enough as the feeling is fleeting. Even though I have not conducted any studies to determine if the results of this study can be generalized to when people who receive "likes" for their posts or reels on Instagram, I wonder if the effects are the same. The temporary feeling good of receiving "likes" does not last as one always wants more "likes" unless one can be one's true self and practice unconditional self-love.

In last week's post, I discussed the first step of finding one's true identity was to go small and stay consistent. The second step of discovering one's true identity is to PRACTICE unconditional self-love. The questions is what is unconditional self-love and how can one achieve it? There are two parts to unconditional self-love. For some religions, a supreme being or God exhibits unconditional love where the divine being loves all humans without a condition attached to it. Furthermore, self-love is a constant action that helps one support and appreciate one's physical, psychological, and spiritual path of identity discovery. Therefore, unconditional self-love allows one to accept all of one's strengths and weaknesses without judgment and conditions to receive love. That is, true self-love does not require one to change, but that "no change is needed" approach allows one to change if one chooses to do so. How can one achieve unconditional self-love? May I recommend the following approaches?

First, be mindful of how you think, feel, and need. Does one think, feel, and need based on one's own aspirations or what one perceives others want? In this polarized world, one can never make some happy without offending some others. Therefore, know that you are the only person who knows how to truly take care of yourself, not anyone else. Remember the popular analogy to put on your own oxygen mask in a flight emergency before helping others? You can only be mindful of yourself before you can be the person who can extend that care to others. This is not to say that one must be perfect to be able to provide service to other. This step is to ensure that you take care of the most important person in your life: yourself.

Second, act on what you need, not want. Do people want to be popular? Most of us do as being popular is tied to our social status. Our social status is then tied to how successful we are in employment and relationships. Essentially, being popular matters to one's survival. However, it is highly improbable that one can completely achieve what others want us to do. Instead of worrying about what others want us to do, do what you need to take care of yourself by daily activities such as eating balanced meals, participating in proper physical exercise, getting sufficient hours of sleep, and relationship-building through social interactions and intimacy.

Third, be authentic. Many of us have been taught in a young age to be nice. Parents ask a child on the first day of school to "play nice." The idea of being nice is that people will like us and make us popular. This ties to the second step of practicing self-love mentioned in the last paragraph. However, no matter how "nice" a person is, the popularity is not guaranteed. The society seems to have misplaced the value of being authentic and replaced it with being "nice." This is similar to the scene of "Into the Woods" where Prince Charming told the damsel that he was raised to be charming, not sincere. Thus, to achieve self-love, one must say no and set boundaries instead of trying to "play" nice.

Fourth, choose who you want to be around and with. On January 18, 2023, Maria Branyas Morera became the oldest woman alive at age 115. People asked her about her secrets of her longevity. Maria said that she cut all toxic people off her life and said no to more interviews since she wanted peace and tranquility. How often does one allow people who do not value one's worth to remain in one's life? We constantly fear that if we cut people who we consider "friends" out off our lives, then we will not be liked or loved even though these so-called friends constantly bombard us with uninvited and sometimes intentional vitriols. In order to cultivate true unconditional self-love, eliminating toxic people is absolutely necessary as they are energy and esteem vampires that latch onto you and hinder your pursuit and practice of true self-love.

Finally, forgive yourself and live intentionally. When you truly love someone, do you constantly criticize and blame the one you love? However, we often self criticize and blame. We are very good at finding faults in ourself, yet we are very capable of allowing us to forgive others. In order to unconditionally love oneself, one must forgive and forget about one's own shortcomings. This does not mean that one needs not to seek improvement. Instead, thinking and talking negatively about oneself does not help one in the path of improvement if one believes one needs to. Instead of being weighed down by self criticism, live intentionally by accepting and loving oneself regardless of what happened in life. One can only control and live intentionally in the present moment. Holding unto the past that is always beyond control and being intimidated by the fear of the never predictable future prevent one from living life to the fullest.

Mathematically, a one percent improvement (e.g., joy, reading, wealth-building) daily will have a compound effect of more than 37.8 times of a better self in a year. Applying this mathematical understanding that if you increase your self-love by one percent daily, you will love yourself 37.8 times in one year if you practice the suggested steps. Even if you only do it for 30 days without interruption, the result is 1.31 times better in self-love. The secret is to go small and consistent as I suggested last week. I encourage all of us to apply both Steps 1 and 2 in the pursuit of one's true identity and use them simultaneously. Step 1, start small and consistent on each intentional action daily. As one embarks on this journey of identity self discovery, proactively practice Step 2 with the ACTIONS of unconditional self-love by the aforementioned suggested approaches. Make sure you celebrate in your own way whenever you have any small achievement. Every small action of unconditional self-love is your personal declaration that you are the most important person in your life to love. Let's all accept and appreciate who we are as we refine ourselves to our true identities.

Jason Chen, PhD