“Relax. You’re okay.”

I find myself wanting to write this at least five times a day in reply to reader emails.

I rarely do — or if I do, I’m sure to add some explanation or a few useful ideas.

But the point remains: what a lot of people now identify as “major life problems” are really the natural ebbs and flows of life. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down, and for some reason, we seem to have forgotten that that’s OK.

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The Conundrum

Let’s say you have low self-esteem and a general self-loathing about yourself. You believe everything you do sucks and that you’re more or less screwed in life. Wanting to stop believing such things only serves as more evidence of how screwed up you are. After all, if you weren’t such a fuck up, you wouldn’t have to spend all day wishing you didn’t feel like a fuck up, would you?

It’s a Catch 22. In external aspects of one’s identity, desire is useful. Want to run faster? Set a goal, then go out and achieve it. Want to start a business? There are measurable benchmarks you can reach, you just have to want it enough.

But want to stop being anxious and stop procrastinating on those goals? Well, then wanting to stop being anxious about them is likely to just make you more anxious.

The Challenge of Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance is the way out of the conundrum, but it’s counter-intuitive. Paradoxically, accepting that you’re just not a confident person and you’re always going to feel a little off around other people will begin to make you feel more comfortable and less anxious around others. You won’t judge yourself and you’ll then feel less judged by them as well.

Accepting that you have a tendency to get depressed and that some people are just happier than you and that’s fine will, ironically, make you a happier and more accepting person. After all, some of the most important people in history were depressives.

Many of us are inundated with so much information at all hours of the day that it’s easy to get a skewed vision of society. Everyone else is fit. Everyone else is happy. Everyone else is successful. Everyone else is getting dates and having sex. But for some reason, you’re not.

What sells TV time and what gets passed around the internet are the exceptional situations, the easy solutions, the magic pills for perfection. It’s human nature to always look for perfection or for something greater and better than ourselves. But when you’re presented with something greater and better than yourself over and over and over again, all hours of the day, all days of the week, it’s easy to internalize that there’s something wrong with you. Ironically, the self-help industry is a culprit here as well: you can eliminate all sadness and fear; you can be popular and loved by everyone; anyone can get rich and be successful and retire to a beach at age 35!

It’s just not true.

We’re all flawed creatures. And that’s OK.

I’ve come to accept that meeting new people is always going to take conscious effort for me. I’ve improved drastically in conquering my social anxiety over the years, but I’m just never going to be that naturally gregarious type who can talk to everyone in a room without thinking about it. That’s just not me.

I’ve accepted that even though my relationship with my family has improved a lot in the past 10 years, it’s never going to be great. And that’s fine.

I’ve learned that commitment — romantic or otherwise — will always make me a little bit uncomfortable. I’ve worked hard and overcome a lot of my irrational fears surrounding it, but I’m just never going to feel completely at ease with it. And that’s OK too.

I’m OK.

I get a lot of emails from readers. And a lot of them, particularly the younger people, lament problems that are so completely normal and healthy that I sometimes don’t even know what to say to them.

Most people get depressed at some point in their lives. Most people get dumped at some point and struggle getting over their ex. Most people feel insecure about their sexuality at some point. Everyone has family problems. Many people grow up in abusive situations. Tons of people have low self-esteem and dependency issues. Almost everybody wishes they were more successful and more motivated.

These things suck but they’re not new. And they’re definitely not unique.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not an excuse to do nothing about your problems. It just means that you should stop trying to be perfect. You never will be. Emotional issues never completely go away.

There’s an old Buddhist adage: “You are already perfect as you are, yet you can always be better.”

Perfection is not some endpoint you achieve, but rather the process of improvement itself. No matter how much you improve yourself and your life, there will always be room for more growth and less suffering. There’s no final goal. The perfect self we all envision does not actually exist. As Gertrude Stein said, “There’s no there there.” It never ends. What changes is your acceptance of your place in the process.

“I suck at this, but that’s OK. As long as I’m working on it, it’s OK.”

Perfection is the process of improvement itself. Perfection is the innate drive for endless expansion, growth, and completion. We’re already there and we’ve always been there. We’re okay. We can be better. But we’re okay.