Embrace the Messy Side of Self-Improvement
Can you accept being unskilled, uncomfortable, or less-than-picture-perfect?
I know that’s a tall order: Our tolerance for messiness and delayed results is at an all-time low. Plenty of online influencers present their lives as polished, packaged, and instantly viewable at the tap of a screen. Their aim? To give themselves a “glow up” in the form of a better self.
But what if, in our pursuit of efficiency, beauty and enlightenment, we’ve not only lost patience but also our connection to authenticity — to the messy, imperfect processes that reveal our genuine, illuminated selves? What if a “glow down” is the route to a more authentic version of you?
I know the allure of “optimizing” firsthand — I’ve been operating from a mission-driven mindset for much of my life. During my university summers in the early ’90s, I worked as a chef at Mt. Assiniboine Lodge, a historic backcountry lodge in the Canadian Rockies accessible only by a 27km hike, ski, horseback ride, or helicopter ride. (It’s North America’s first backcountry ski lodge.) Wanting to use my midday break to scramble up spectacular mountain peaks, I would get up painfully early to get a head start on breakfast. During my break, I’d escape to the alpine meadows and hike for 4 hours before returning to cook dinner.
The “top-of-the-world” views were exhilarating, but my drive for — ahem — peak experiences came at a cost. Crafting meals for 40 guests and staff meant early mornings and sticky dough, slimy squash innards, and chopping onions that brought tears. Before every pot of squash soup or tray of cinnamon buns came some chaos: garlic skins, carrot peels, maple syrup caramelized on cake pans, and endless bowls to scrub. And at this off-grid lodge, even cleaning was a process — hot water came from a spring-powered wheel heated by solar energy, and food scraps were hauled to Oink and Boink, two muddy pigs, our resident composters, living their best life in a messy pigpen paradise beneath glacier-tipped peaks.
Yet, there was beauty in this rhythm. The labour involved in cooking from scratch and orchestrating with a team of kitchen helpers illuminated for me a deeply satisfying connection — the one between effort and outcome.
But most cooking videos and social media posts filter out the mess, showcasing pristine counters, and neatly prepped ingredients, hiding the slow, imperfect reality behind it all. Pre-packaged meal kits make healthy eating easier and save time, but they strip away the process — the full-circle connection that turns effort into fulfillment. The truth? A truly delicious meal, like personal growth, emerges from the disarray: trial and error, adjustments, a pinch of salt here, a squeeze of lemon there, until you taste it and say, Wow, now that’s it.
Changing your swing (and perspective)
Our modern obsession with polish and perfection leaves little room for the messiness of the “middle” — where growth happens. A golf video that went viral on TikTok recently perfectly illustrates this: Professional golfer Georgia Ball uploaded a video of herself practicing a swing change at a driving range, when an older man chimed in with unsolicited advice. Despite Ball’s polite explanation — that she was intentionally working on her technique — he persisted, citing 20 years of golfing experience.
Ball’s TikTok sparked plenty of conversations about “mansplaining.” But when I watched it, I noticed that the impatience displayed in the video doesn’t seem exclusive to (older) men critiquing (younger) women — it’s something many of us internalize. We reprimand ourselves when we don’t immediately excel at something or when our efforts aren’t Instagram-worthy. But things can’t look pristine when we’re learning and evolving.
@Satya Doyle Byock, author of Quarterlife, talked about this video in a Substack post, and reflected on the deeper metaphor it presents. According to Byock, the video showed Ball “consciously deconstructing things in order to enhance her skill and improve her performance for the long term. It might look less than perfect at the moment, but she understood the larger picture.” To Byock, a “swing change” is “the perfect metaphor for creative and personal transitions. It’s not a crisis or depression, but it’s also not yet a sailing success.”
We need grace to be human — to try, to fail, to miss the mark — because getting it “wrong” is often an inevitable step en route to getting it “right.”
In fact, recent research studies also show that our brains learn better after being thrown off balance and then regaining it. These studies I reference below are in older adults- pay attention my Pink Zones people! :)
Avoid or Allow?
What do we avoid or deny that we’d be better off allowing to happen?
What if we embraced trial and error, rather than trying to transcend it?
Here, according to me, are some intriguing ways that embracing imperfection offers growth:
Personal conflict
Relationships often grow stronger after a rupture-repair cycle, including difficult but necessary conversations, expressing hard truths, or even time apart. Many therapists emphasize that conflict and disconnection shouldn’t be suppressed, since they’re inevitable. In fact, it’s in navigating the repair process — with open communication, empathy, and accountability — that we deepen trust and build resilience and true intimacy. Embracing (productive) conflict actually strengthens a bond, making relationships more dynamic and fulfilling.
Spiritual bypassing
Coined by John Welwood in 1984, “spiritual bypassing” describes the tendency to use spiritual practices as an escape hatch from difficult emotions, unresolved wounds, and real transformation. In a culture that often prefers quick fixes and analgesic relief with little side effects, spiritual bypassing fits right in. While mindfulness becoming mainstream in the West has undeniable benefits, it sometimes gets watered down and repackaged for easy consumption. Social media wellness slogans, in their gleaming paintbrush fonts, promise peace and enlightenment in one simple mindset shift.
But this approach often skips over the hard stuff. Think of the way fiber gets stripped from whole grain to make a fluffy white flour product that doesn’t require so much chewing — it gives us a quick sugar rush, but leaves us crashing later. By glossing over “negative” emotions like anger or shame, we’re denying what makes us human. True transformation isn’t delicate or tidy.
As Thich Nhat Hanh wisely said, “No mud, no lotus.” You need to wade through the mud of discomfort to nurture the roots of true happiness. So embrace the muck — because that’s where the magic of a full, embodied life blooms.
Microbes: A healthy immune system develops from exposure to bacteria and challenges.
From a naturopathic perspective, a well-functioning immune system isn’t built in a vacuum—it develops through natural exposure to bacteria and environmental challenges. The hygiene hypothesis suggests that early and diverse contact with microbes trains the immune system to recognize what is truly harmful and what is not. When this exposure is too limited, immune tolerance can weaken, increasing the risk of allergies and autoimmune conditions.
In Let Them Eat Dirt, microbiologists and father-daughter duo, Brett Findlay PhD, and Marie-Claire Areita, PhD, explore how embracing the natural microbial world—rather than over-sanitizing—helps build resilience from an early age. He also co-authored Whole-Body Microbiome: How to Harness Microbes - Inside and Out - For Lifelong Health with his other daughter, Jessica Finlay PhD, who specializes in health geography and environmental gerontology.
A side note: I met Brett and his pediatrician wife at a friend’s deck on a Gulf Island a few years ago and enjoyed his homemade mead from the stone fruit of homegrown trees. He practices what he preaches.
Slow Burn + Sweat
True satisfaction comes from embracing the journey, not just rushing to the finish. I’m thinking of the difference between heli-skiing and ski touring. I’ve also been lucky enough to cook in remote backcountry ski huts, slipping out with skins on the bottom of my skis hike up a mountain with the guide and group in between breakfast and dinner.
With ski touring, you spend hours climbing uphill—quads burning, breath fogging your sunglasses, sweat soaking through every swish swish. Then, you pause. Sip hot tea from a thermos. Take in the glistening champagne powder stretched out below.
The descent? Just minutes. But those effortless turns through untouched snow feel infinitely richer—because you earned them. The effort, the grind, the burn—it all closes the loop, leaving you both superhuman and deeply connected to your amazing body.
Natural Beauty (whatever that means)
The current trend of “natural beauty” is, let’s be honest, a bit of a cheeky oxymoron. Let’s not kid ourselves — that “effortless” glow we see on ads and social media is anything but. It’s the result of a fleet of products, perfect lighting, filters, and a sprinkle of meticulous editing magic.
This picture-perfect, “natural” ideal keeps us spinning in circles of self-criticism, comparison, and dissatisfaction when really, the kind of glow worth chasing is the one that comes from embracing the messy, unfiltered energy of being unapologetically yourself. The most compelling beauty isn’t about perfection; it’s about authenticity. It’s in the laughter lines that hold memories, the scars that tell stories, and the messy hair that shows you’ve been living life, not posing for it.
Like a “swing change” or the messy process of cooking from scratch, personal growth happens in the tangled in-between — not in the polished, airbrushed final product but in the raw, vulnerable moments when we’re inhabiting ourselves from the inside out.
Balance Training Reduces Brain Activity during Motor Simulation of a Challenging Balance Task in Older Adults: An fMRI Study
Lower Cognitive Set Shifting Ability Is Associated With Stiffer Balance Recovery Behavior and Larger Perturbation-Evoked Cortical Responses in Older Adults
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2021.742243
Are there some other ways you have experienced the upside of embracing imperfection? I’d love to hear!
Needed this one today!!❤️
Thank you for the reminder of how important the "mess" is, and for illustrating it in so many ways (I love that microbes are in here!)