The Anti-Glow-Up: Why Your Best Self Isn’t a Checklist

After some casual scrolling on social media, the internet has kindly informed me that I’m not keeping up with the self-optimization I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m starting my mornings too late to “win the day.” I’m not always nailing my daily protein intake. I didn’t meditate, nor did I sit down to process any emotions in my journal. My skincare routine doesn’t have enough steps in it for me to look forever young. Also, my purse doesn’t match my shoes.

Everywhere we look, we get bombarded with tips and hacks for becoming our best selves. All the things we need to fix and all the things we need to do in order to get there.

What Does “Being Your Best Self” Actually Mean?

Can someone please clarify this for me? Is it what’s best for me, or what I’m told the best version of me should look like?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for self-improvement and growth. Tony Robbins talks about growth as more or less a human need, how we need to feel progress and have goals to work towards. That’s what that nagging feeling of wanting something more is, and it’s perfectly normal—necessary, even! But with the constant external input about what is “better,” it stops being about what’s better for us personally. It pretty much turns into a competition over who is better at being better, and your best is never quite good enough.

When Self-Improvement Becomes a Competition

From what I have seen, the more superficial “best self” competition has a couple of rules:

• Results have to be visible. If nobody can see it, it doesn’t count. Other people should be able to weigh in on whether you’ve become better or not.
• It usually means adding or doing more. Better habits, specific products, a certain lifestyle. There’s always something MORE to do or to have.

Setting goals and reaching them is great, and the moving goalpost isn’t the problem. The problem starts when the constant chase makes us feel worse or when we’re doing it for other people rather than our own well-being. It doesn’t help that the internet treats self-improvement as a virtue: the more you work on yourself, the better a person you must be.

So I think we sometimes need to stop and ask: Am I doing things that support my own values, or following a set of choices that are more based on the opinions of others?

There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Version of Your Best Self

So being our best self isn’t about specific standards, a specific career path, or specific habits. It’s about building a life that supports the person we want to be right now. Maybe that’s being a better wife, a better friend, or a better mother. Maybe it’s simply being happier.

When I competed as an athlete, I went to bed when other people went out, I chose to be very strict about my food, and I planned training sessions even while we were on vacation. But it didn’t feel like a sacrifice because all those choices supported who I wanted to be then.

Since becoming a mom, I train less and have decided to take a step back in my career. From the outside, that can look like going backwards. But as my life and priorities changed, I made choices that I felt helped me be and feel “better” at this time. And it will very likely shift again, because priorities do. That doesn’t make any version necessarily better or more virtuous than the other, because the changes I made were still based on my core values—the things I truly find important.

For example, I highly value my health and believe it’s an important investment, but that doesn’t mean I need to train like an elite athlete or be THE BEST at it. I value spending time with my husband and son, but that doesn’t mean every single free moment has to be for them. I’m very much a homebody and enjoy being at home, so I choose not to go out much. Does that mean I’m missing out or worse off than someone who likes to go out? No, we are just different… that’s all.

The Anti-Glow-Up: Choosing Depth Over Self-Optimization

For me, that’s what choosing depth means. Being our best self is about living in line with our values and what serves us, not about looking better from the outside or living by a series of “shoulds.”

When we feel unhappy, it’s often because deep inside we know we’ve drifted too far from those values. So it’s worth checking: Are the goals and values I’m working towards truly mine, or are they what I feel is expected of me?

3 Questions to Help You Live According to Your Values

A few questions to start with:

• Where does most of my time and energy go right now?
• Is that because it matters to me, or because I’m afraid to be judged if I don’t do it?
• What would I do more of, or less of, if nobody was watching?

That doesn’t mean we’ll love every change we make or find it easy. I have a client who doesn’t enjoy exercising that much; it’s not really her thing. But she does it anyway, because she knows that with her condition, her body will decline quite quickly and she won’t be able to stay as active as she wants to be. Exercise is part of her routine because she values independence and quality of life, not because she wants the best body social media says she should have. Her reasons come from deeper values, and the improvements in her strength and body shape are simply the icing on the cake.

Not every step towards our values will feel good 100% of the time. But the more we shift our actions and habits in line with what we truly care about, the more content we’ll be in the long run.

That’s my anti-glow-up. It may not look very fancy from the outside, but it feels a lot better on the inside. And I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel a lot more like my best self. Plus, it goes great with any matching outfit. —Marlene