Don’t Go for Self-Improvement to Live the Good Life...What Then?

“As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others.” — Stephen Covey

Something strange happens in October. The energy shifts.

The noise of summer fades, the light begins to soften, and something in us starts listening differently. We start asking quieter questions. Not “What do I need to accomplish, not what do I need to improve?” — but, “Am I living in alignment with the person I actually want to be?”

Most people aren’t suffering from cluttered closets or too many emails. They are suffering from self-betrayal — living busy, successful-looking, constantly-in-motion lives while quietly abandoning what matters most on the inside.

No one says, “I betrayed my deepest values this year.” They say, “I feel exhausted.” “I feel flat.”

Just last night, John and I were driving to dinner with friends, both in noticeably sour and drab moods. Nothing dramatic had happened — just that vague misalignment that makes the world feel gray.

Yet within twenty minutes of being with friends — of hearing honest stories, real worries, witnessing sincere gratitude, of acknowledging friends who had died, of hearing a heart-felt-daddy-song to a daughter played at her summer wedding, of sharing childhood stumbles, hearing of meaningful challenges being tackled — something in both John and me changed.

We laughed. We teared up. Our whole nervous systems softened. Driving home, we did a post-mortem on the evening and realized what had happened. We had let our distractions go - released our petty grievances with ourselves and with life, and returned to our values. We came back to life the moment we stopped abandoning what mattered.

Here is the problem as I see it. It is not doing too much...which we often claim is the issue. It’s doing things that are not aligned with who we truly are. Forgetting ourselves.

And here’s the hopeful part: research keeps saying the same quiet, radical thing — transformation doesn’t begin when we improve ourselves. It begins the moment we stop abandoning ourselves, our values — even in tiny, imperfect ways.

Across cultures and psychology fields, five values repeatedly show up as nutrients for a flourishing life. I offer them not as moral rules, but rather as health-giving principles for the nervous system:

• Compassion — I care about others, not just myself.

• Integrity — I live honestly, without hiding what matters to me.

• Growth — I stay open, curious, willing to deepen and widen and lengthen and sharpen my awareness.

• Courage — I show up for what I care about even when it’s uncomfortable.

• Connection — I choose embracing our common humanity over impressing and dominating others.

When even one of these is chronically starved, something in us shrivels. When they’re nourished — even clumsily — people visibly come back to life. Some even credit the return to their values with healing their bodies from life-threatening illnesses.

So if you think you might be in the same boat as most of us humans:

Ask yourself daily, "Which of those five values did I live in my words and actions today? How did I honor it? (Small counts. Micro counts.) Where did I drift into self-betrayal — and what two-degree correction might make tomorrow to help me come alive?

Maybe we don’t need to fix our whole life. We just need to stop silently abandoning ourselves to distractions and meaningless external pulls and pressures. The opposite of self-betrayal is not self-improvement. It is self-respect.

One of my coaching mentors never asked clients, “What did you achieve this week?” She always asked, gently, “Who were you being this week?”

Not to shame, but to awaken clients. So that in the quiet moments they might finally be able to say, I like the person I am when no one is watching. I am at peace.

Sometimes coaches help clients access their values by discussing their most meaningful compliments. One of the moving ones for me was that someone said to another person, "June is the most real person I ever met." That comment has kept me going for many moons. And I want to claim it.

May this season — with its soft light, its turning leaves, its quiet permission to release — be not a season of striving, but a season of returning to what matters. To what is true, to what is already inside of us, waiting to be honored. Our real selves.

How might we journey together to The Good Life by living more closely to the five values (compassion, integrity, growth, courage, and connection) which universally help us humans flourish?