The Exhausting, Exhilarating Problem With Always Wanting to Be Better

Last night I was on the phone with my best friend. We're both rule-followers at heart — the kind of people who find comfort in structure.

*"It fucking helps to improve,"* I almost yelled, somewhere between passion and exhaustion.

Improvement is my life's mission. I don't entirely know why. But unless I consciously tell myself to stop, researching how to get better at something is just my autopilot.

I'm working on how to be better at loving.

Better at listening.

Better at being a good friend.

Better at having clarity in my communication.

Better at balancing my social, personal, professional, vocational, and intellectual selves.

Better at saying Yes.

Better at saying No.

Better at cooking. At drawing. At patience — especially when I want to stop looking at footage and just call it good enough.

Better at receiving someone's pain without immediately reaching for a solution.

Better at transitions. At flexibility. At going with the flow.

Better at owning my experiences and seeing value in myself.

People like us are curious, driven, and ambitious. We love learning. Striving to improve is a gift.

But!

Did you feel it coming?

Here it is: sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop improving and just *be* inside something. To remember how to play. To experience a moment completely free of agenda. To feel your body. Hear your thoughts. Smell what's around you. And look at someone you've known for a long time — like you've just met them and can't believe your luck.

That same day my husband asked what I was planning to teach for my art class.

I've been leading a class focused on creative thinking and self-expression. Last session. I told him I was going to lay out each student's best work and ask them to pick something they loved and develop it further.

"Do you think that's complex enough, or too vague?"

He looked at me. "Why don't you just have fun? Isn't this your last class?"

That's when it hit me. I was doing the improvement thing again — now with my students.

So instead, I led a guided meditation to music. The same way we opened our very first class together three months ago.

When they finished, I asked them to place that day's work next to everything they'd made since the beginning.

The growth was undeniable. Each student had developed something entirely their own — clarity in storytelling, intentionality in composition, a broader visual language through color and line.

We never would have found it if we hadn't spent time just enjoying the act of drawing.