Self-Improvement v. Individuation: Why Fixing Yourself Isn’t the Goal

Episode Transcript

Debra (00:01)
Hello everyone, welcome back to Jung On Purpose. I am Deborah Maldonado.

Dr. Rob (00:05)
I am Dr. Rob, welcome to the program.

Debra (00:09)
And we are with Creative Mind, we’re the founders, and we teach young in-depth coaching, either to train or to receive the coaching. And today we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite topic, self-improvement. And we’re going to talk about the difference between self-improvement and individuation. But before we begin, I do want to remind you, if you can check, if you’re subscribed to our podcast on your podcast services,

Dr. Rob (00:17)
That’s right.

Debra (00:36)
And then also there’s a link here in the corner if you’re watching us on YouTube to subscribe to our channel, Creative Mind. So the question we get, or I used to, you know, do love coaching, which that was a very emotional self-help junkie experience. A lot of people were really into growth and self-help and therapy and, you know, all the pop books that were out there. And one of the things I kept hearing from people

is this, I’m tired of working on myself. And I really felt that if you’re tired of working on yourself, that means you’re not really doing it. I would say right or wrong, but you’re not really doing it right or the way you should, that’s really going to fulfill you because personal growth should be a journey that is always opening you up and exciting and adding more to your life. It shouldn’t feel like a job.

And then once you’re done with that job and fixing this broken piece, then everything, your life will magically work out. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. That shifting that fixing the ego to really having a fully embodied living experience of who you are.

Dr. Rob (01:48)
Yeah, I like ending with this because you know, we early on in the series, we talked about the ego and why it resists change, the defense mechanisms. Then we talked about a little bit about complexes, which are kind of the backbone of human behavior, in the sense that they

They give us the patterns of our life and they help us survive. They have really good functional roles. The only problem is that we want to be free from conditioning as much as possible so that we can decide, have real agency, real free will in life instead of just following the old patterns. And then individuation.

I mean, to me, brings up a lot of deep questions like, are we all meant to individuate?

You know, this is hard stuff. know, for me, it’s still an open question. I can see the value of people individuating because they, they mean that means they, will have a sense of I’m the driver of my life, right? I, create my destiny. I’m not waiting for things to happen to me. I’m, I’m making them happen. That’s an empowered way of being in the

Debra (02:44)
Are we?

Dr. Rob (03:10)
And I, greatly appreciate my sense of agency in the world, whatever to the, you know, to whatever small level I have, it is the empowered sense of myself.

But we know it’s difficult and we know people often have built a lot of they have a lot of equity in their persona and their ego and their life in a limited way or the way it’s played out. So individuation and Jung often kind of addresses this in his own way.

He says it’s going to put you through a test. It’s going to test you in other words. It’s going to see what you’re made out of.

Debra (03:54)
It’s like the hero’s journey,

Dr. Rob (03:56)
Absolutely. And it’s not going to be easy. He says, I’m paraphrasing, but.

Debra (04:04)
But it’s

like, if you think about, I remember when I first started learning about personal growth and I just wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to just tell me, let me have an insight, let me get my life back on track. And you don’t want to use personal growth just to get stuff. And I think that’s the ⁓ thing is that if I just work on myself, then I’ll get the goodies.

And that’s a trap the ego loves to stay in. And generally, I mean, our society is all about cheap, easy, fast. And if it’s cheap, easy and fast, yes, that’s why some of these like magical techniques seem to get become very popular. And then they fade around because everyone’s looking for that, that secret thing that’s not going to make me go through too much to survive. And when we say it’s hard, it’s hard in a way that heavy catharsis.

It’s more hard because we’re really facing a lot of resistance from our ego. there’s, individuation is not about becoming a better persona, becoming better in your life, but it’s about becoming whole. And, wholeness always comes at a cost to something. The ego does not want to give up. And so the battle is not, ⁓ I have to face all these dark feelings and, and, go with my past and dig up.

the skeletons in my closet. No, the biggest challenge we have is realizing that we’re not the ego, because the ego is what causes all our suffering. But the ego has such a tight grip on us, and we relied on it so much, and it’s our comfort zone, that that is the challenge. So when we say it’s hard, it’s like taking away our training wheels when we had our bike.

that first time riding that bike and being wobbly, we’d rather go back to those training wheels. You all remember that? Please, can I just have my training wheels back? That’s what happens when we start individuating and we take the training wheels off. It’s very scary because now we’re consciously in control of our life and we don’t have to rely on those patterns anymore. But in some cases, the patterns have comfort.

I think a lot of times when I would do meditations with people about their future, I did a lot of relationship work in the beginning and they would cry when they would visualize them being in love. And they were like, why am I crying? know, because it’s just not a normal experience. We’re so used to being heartbroken that it becomes a habit. And it’s such a weird thing that the ego likes to cling to the familiar, even if it’s so irrational.

And so that’s where we’re really battling. It’s difficult because we have an ego. It’s not difficult because there’s scary things in our unconscious.

Dr. Rob (06:52)
That the more we resist something, the more we suffer, which kind of makes sense when we don’t resist things. We’re just present and we understand we have to get through these things and that

They’re challenging, but we’re not kind of dragging ourselves through it. We’re doing what we need to do and acting in non-attachment.

Debra (07:14)
So just want to pull back a little bit and talk about what is individuation and what Jung would say. And quite simply, he said the first part of life is building up this ego. So there’s nothing wrong or dysfunctional or broken about our mind because we have an ego and the ego is not the enemy. It’s very useful to have an ego. If we didn’t have an ego, we’d be in trouble. But the second part of life is about growing beyond the ego and knowing who we are in a

multifaceted way and the ego is really the ruler of the conscious mind and that first part of life. But there’s this whole unconscious world, not only our personal experiences that are unconscious and parts of ourselves, our shadow that we need to face complexes we talked about, but the collective unconscious, there’s this really well of resources and power and energy that is there to help us.

⁓ and live beyond the ego and really direct our life in powerful ways. But if we’re afraid to let go of that ego, we just can’t get there. And so that’s individuation is about realizing our whole personality, our whole psyche, the conscious and unconscious versus just let’s fix that little, little mask on the surface and get some, get some love, get some money and call it a day.

Dr. Rob (08:29)
Yeah, I mean, like you were saying, some of the easy traps to fall into is this self improvement, right? We have a lot of people think when we talk about the self or the true self that it’s some kind of shiny version of who you are, right? That it’s like the super person in you or the superhero in you. That’s not really what

the self means in, in the individuation process that young is talking about. It’s more like you were saying the complete self, the complete psyche. Like, ⁓ if you think about your conscious life, you’re living at this conscious level, making decisions, working, having relationships, et cetera. He says there’s more to us than that. Obviously.

Yeah, it’s, appears that this, this conscious world of this waking world is so important to us that that’s where we do stuff and, we create an experience, but that the, the unconscious is perhaps even more important that it sustains our conscious life and it balances out our conscious attitudes.

all unconsciously through dreams through intuition through emotion through symbolism, it feeds this world and creates it in a very direct way. So

Debra (09:59)
Well, would

you say that it really is creating your life? You think your conscious self, we talked about this in last episode, that your conscious self is making choices, but everything’s unconsciously being chosen for you. And then your ego makes up a story and a rationale for why you chose that route, why you chose that job, why you chose that partner, why you chose to invest in a certain thing that didn’t work out and why you chose to invest in something that did work out. and it’s, but unconsciously we’re just

we don’t we’re not really connected to our fate, unless we understand our unconscious mind. And how many times have we had dreams that we feel like are meaningless? No, that was a crazy dream. Meanwhile, the real life the waking life is so important and so real. But what’s really true is that the dream is actually more real than the waking life. And it’s really about coming together. It’s like having a conscious and unconscious, bringing that to consciousness. So we know more of ourselves and know

Dr. Rob (10:49)
E-E-E-E-

Debra (10:57)
the depth of who we are and the nature of ourselves, which is beyond just a human being, we’re a spiritual being. And so how do we access those other aspects and facets of ourselves? And if we looked at it even from a spiritual perspective, the soul doesn’t judge for good or bad. The soul is like there just to experience, it’s pure consciousness, it’s pure bliss. It’s not trying to improve itself.

Dr. Rob (11:26)
Yeah, that was certainly Jung’s criticism of modern society was that we had kind of painted ourselves into a corner by saying, you know, the the material universe, the way it appears to us is the ultimate reality. And everything else is fantasy or just, you know, wishful thinking, perhaps.

or mythology and religion and all that stuff. You know, the idea and materialism and scientism is that the physical material universe is the place to be and where things really happen. And he says that that’s a let’s say it’s giving us it’s given us a lot in terms of material success and material culture. But you see that

It leaves people empty because real meaning comes through symbols, through mythologies, through stories, through kind of our, our emotional connection to things and what they mean for us. And he says, without meaning, even if you have all the money in the world and all the material in the world without meaning, all that is just going to be useless to you.

Meaning, well, not only that, think meaning is why we love the world. it’s like, it gives us something that, yeah. And so meaning is that elusive quality that we all know what it means, but we don’t know how to generate it, how to create it.

Debra (12:52)
You’ll just want more.

to be alive.

Find it? Yeah.

Dr. Rob (13:15)
We don’t know how big how it’s created because it arises kind of in a spontaneous way that we often don’t choose it. But we see it and we understand it when we experience it and see it and feel it.

Debra (13:30)
Jung says that the achievements which society rewards are won are at the cost of the diminuendo nation of personality. So we diminish our personality to get these rewards that society says we need. And then that’s where we feel, because it’s not really us. It’s not who we are. And I think that…

Sometimes we go through hard times in life. Even as an entrepreneur, we have ups and downs in our business. You first start out and it’s tough. And then you look back and you’ve built something and you look back at those times where times of lean times. And instead of thinking those were bad and I never want to go back there, say, wow, I got so much. That was an incredible ride. If everything came easy to us and everything was always good.

we would never really understand the nature of life and the duality of life. And so it’s the same thing with ourselves. We have to look at all the parts of ourselves that we don’t like and love them and embrace them. And that’s really where we find meaning. We don’t only find meaning when we’re perfect and everyone praises us. We find meaning even when we look at ourselves with the toughest lens to really examine.

you know, what we need to do with our life and ourselves. Those ⁓ are really powerful experiences.

And so we’re not, again, not trying to improve it because the mechanism of self-improvement is really about building up a character that’s going to get achieved something out there. Relationships or success, those aren’t really who you are and you’ll end up being unsatisfied.

Dr. Rob (15:11)
Yes, so.

Debra (15:12)
And

they may be not even realizing it until your deathbed. You know, you may be blindly thinking everything is great. You see, you know, some people that have ⁓ great success. It doesn’t seem like it affects them, you know, or they’re just, you know, happy to be successful and they don’t have any problems, but we all have problems. We all have, we have to deal with a body that doesn’t stay well. We have to deal with sickness. We have to deal with death eventually and aging and all those things. So,

So the perfect life is really that it’s not what we’re taught by society as a perfect life. We’re with Instagram shows. We want to show on Instagram or on social media this ideal life. And so when we talk about individuation and the growth, one of the things that Jung talks about is that it’s not a linear process. That we have to

Really, it’s about the self who are true self, that big self is in the center of a mandala. And we’re constantly getting closer in different ways. So it’s a circumambulation. We’re always circling it and getting closer to it. But it’s not that one day we’ll be there and then everything will be fine. Like there’s like an end zone to it. It’s like almost like the petals of a flower unfolding and we’re seeing ourselves unfold. And so this is the way if you stop fixing yourself,

Then personal growth becomes interesting and inviting, and you’re moving toward the things that maybe you used to run away from that are actually gold. And it becomes more, it becomes boring when you’re not getting triggered. When you’re getting triggered, you start to get excited because you know there’s a transformation or you’re hitting a challenge. It’s approaching life in a very different way.

Dr. Rob (16:53)
Absolutely.

The way, ⁓ you know, students often asks us is, is young talking about enlightenment when he’s talking about, individuation and yes or no. Yes and no. ⁓ in some ways it’s similar because he’s talking about wholeness and transcending the ego, meaning not living in our sense of ego, our individuality, but living in the sense of

Connectedness connection to everything and everyone That’s very similar to what Eastern philosophy means by enlightenment in that there is no sense of you as an individual anymore your Everything you’re the you know pure consciousness in a sense

Debra (17:40)
So there’s the whole self that the conscious and unconscious on a personal level. And then there’s the collective self that’s everything on a conscious level and unconscious level that’s collective is you as well. And in Eastern philosophy Vedanta, they talk about the self, which is a little, think that’s where Jung got that term, the self. And it’s not like a true self in the world. It’s more everything. It’s like allowing everything in.

Dr. Rob (18:06)
Yeah.

Debra (18:06)
versus teasing what you want to take and what you don’t want to take the whole smorgasbord of human experience and loving every part of it because I really do really feel that their suffering leads us to change. It’s a system in us that’s telling us something’s off and they have to adjust. It’s not, it’s suffering and I did something wrong. It’s not. The suffering

that we mostly feel is that dissatisfaction and that lack of fulfillment. And so you listen to that and then get curious about what that means.

Dr. Rob (18:41)
Yeah. And the other side of the coin is that he, individuation, the way Jung means it is different than enlightenment because for Jung, it’s more about alignment with the self than transcendence, meaning that we’re not leaving our life for the monastery. We’re not, not for me,

Debra (19:01)
Wouldn’t that be nice just to go, I used to go to those Buddha

centers and I’d be like, oh, he’s so nice to the, was in the corporate world. I was like, it’d so nice to just sit in a nice, quiet little meditative place and talk to people.

Dr. Rob (19:12)
That would drive me crazy.

Debra (19:16)
Maybe for a moment. But yeah, out in the world is where this, it’s like a practical spirituality in a way.

Dr. Rob (19:25)
The world is spiritual. mean, that is the great lesson, right? That it’s not, the world is not going to hell. If you think the world is going to hell, you’re simply kind of, you know, like lending more energy to that, those ⁓ negative ideas. The world is a creative place. We’re here to create it and we are creating it. It’s simply that we’re doing it in an unconscious way.

Debra (19:27)
It’s our playground. Yeah.

Dr. Rob (19:54)
So the more conscious we become, then we can express, can align with the higher principles, with higher knowledge, with the collective unconscious, as Jung says, and participate in our creation of the world. Instead of just seeing it as, it’s happening to me and I’m just waiting to see what happens. No, you act.

through individuation. So it’s a different type of enlightenment. It’s that it’s one of collaboration with this cosmic consciousness, this intelligence.

Debra (20:35)
It’s like if you had, you you lived in your house with your parents your whole life and you were limited to their rules, their assumptions, the people around you from when you were younger. And basically just that was the world to you. And individuation is about uncovering, you know, outside of the house, like what else is here, not getting rid of the house, but expanding that sphere of awareness beyond just that personal.

tiny little piece and seeing a whole world out there that is vast. And what reminds me of this is there’s a movie called The Room and it was a true story, I think. And the woman was ⁓ being kidnapped by this man and had a baby with him and he was like, you know, had her locked away in this room for years and she had a little boy there. And so she created this whole world for him, like each corner of the room was a part of the world. And then when she finally got rescued,

She was like so excited and the little boy was terrified. He was so used to that room that he didn’t want to believe there was anything outside. Like he built his mind around that limited room. And so if you think about that idea, if you watch that movie, the whole, that’s how our ego is. It’s just, I’m so comfortable here. I know everything and no, no, no, there isn’t anything else out there. Cause his imagination hadn’t seen anything else. So.

what we’re seeing in individuation, we’re becoming aware of other parts of ourselves, just even on a personal level of our personality we didn’t know we had and gifts and talents maybe we didn’t know we had. But then we have to see the spiritual power that we didn’t know we had. So it’s really an incredible journey. And again, it’s not fixing yourself. Real change happens when we stop trying to change, when we’re not working on that ego and trying to…

⁓ fix ourselves or seeing anything in that judgmental way. even being willing to step out into the unknown of what it would be like to just be outside of ourselves and outside of the limited ideas we have and assumptions that drive our life, what would be possible? And that’s where rebirth happens and we get to really live our purpose. And we see this all the time with people who

can never leave that corporate job. That’s my steady income. used to getting money from someone else. And I just show up and I get my paycheck and you’re conditioned every day to show up on Monday, even though you’re not really happy because you feel like that’s the only place you can get money from. And then our clients leave the corporate world and they start their coaching business and they’re like, ⁓ I could create my own money. I didn’t know that was possible because we hadn’t done it before.

But the ego will resist and will cling to that job and cling to that way and resist change because it just hadn’t had the experience of anything else. so individuation allows us to have access to greater parts of our mind and expansive parts of our mind beyond just that ego thinking so that we can make those big changes in our life. Not to improve it, but to expand it and give us a more ⁓ complicated replica repertoire to participate instead of playing like two

Dr. Rob (23:33)
you

Debra (23:45)
two notes on a piano, we’re playing a concerto in our life.

Dr. Rob (23:50)
I love it. That’s, that’s what individuation is.

Debra (23:55)
Yeah, and it is a very spiritual ⁓ process, but it’s not religious. So we have people from all religions, all backgrounds. can actually, it doesn’t replace religion. If you’re very into your religion, you can incorporate it into whatever your faith is. It actually makes it even stronger.

So what would be the final word, Rob, about individuation, this idea of what is possible when we do this?

Dr. Rob (24:25)
Yeah, I think ultimately it is a calling. Many are called, a few are chosen. And then out of the people that are called and some that are, you know, actually want to do it often. It’s the people that persist and say, yes, this is meaningful and important for me. Although it goes against all my social training.

It’s something I have to do. It’s an inner calling, an inner devotion to something kind of beyond our everyday life.

Debra (24:58)
Wouldn’t you

say that it’s not like you don’t think, ⁓ I think I need individuation. Like something happens in your life where you’re like, I need to change. And individuation is the only thing that’s actually going to get you to what you want. So you find it. It finds you. You see one of our videos, or you read about Jung, the red book falls into your lap. Some friend is talking about Carl Jung, or you see a Jung quote, and it’s like calling you. And,

Like you said, that some people don’t answer the call. And I think you have to be ready for it. You have to want it that you’re willing to go through the resistance of the ego to make it happen.

Dr. Rob (25:33)
Yeah, it’s meaningful to you and therefore you’re willing to do whatever it takes.

Debra (25:39)
A commitment,

Dr. Rob (25:40)
to obtain it, to follow that path.

Debra (25:44)
Yeah. And like, again, you can go through your life and not individually and improve yourself and have a, you know, good life and, you know, but there’s, there’s some of you out there listening that are especially someone who’s a young in podcast that are thinking, I want I want it all like I want to have more than just the ordinary life. want an extraordinary life. And that’s what this gives you an extraordinary life.

So this was a great little series. We will see you next week with a new topic. But thank you all for joining us on Jung On Purpose. And we look forward to another deep topic for you. Take care.

Dr. Rob (26:18)
See you soon.