Amen.

Also, I was peeping in your window :)

I've made a conscious choice to live a life of Areté — an ancient Greek word that means virtue or excellence but has a deeper meaning.. “constantly striving to reach your highest potential.”

And yes, I wasn't planning on dying at all either.. but that's a whole OTHER story *laugh*

ps. you look great for your age, MacLeod.

Me, I'd probably just take the easy way out and do what you hint at in your reply — to become less of a perfectionist and accept me with all my faults instead, hehe..

Actually, I've decided to live longer than your pithy 150 years — some time ago I decided to become immortal. There's no way for anyone to prove to me that I'm not. :) So now since I have such a long future ahead of me, I take things a bit easier.

Take care, my friend…

These are all excellent questions. I'll see if I can provide some excellent answers.

I'll start with ultimate goal. For the last couple of years it's been "healthy relationship" (which mostly worked — although, of course, every relship has two people, so it's never quite that simple). Initially though, it was all about getting my finances sorted — my $$ were messed up because my head was messed up about $$. This has taken a bit longer than anticipated (lots of family history to wade through). As I've stepped along the journey though, the goal has become more spiritual in nature — essentially, "inner peace", ie, imperturbability, ie, zero negative emotions. Yes, this is possible. And, yes, I see it get much closer each day. A "finger in the air" guess is that I have maybe 5% of the negative emotions I had two years ago. A lot of the time I am simply ecstatically happy. I do realise this sounds unreasonable or impossible.

I accept myself a LOT more than I ever have before. I'd say completely, but I have a nagging feeling I've missed something small. I'll clear it today, then I will :)

You are completely right. Accepting yourself is a very important step to take. Amusingly, this is often much, much harder to do than say. For me, due to perfectionism, an inbuilt negative slant (much both reduced these days), it's been a particularly long journey.

Now, hardest question for last. Being happy (although yes, you were just talking about being happy with myself).

What I've learned as I've gone along is that being happy is more than just "not having any negative emotions". You can go from –10 to 0 (which I've been doing), but that doesn't take you to +10 (happy). Part of this is being a very problem focussed kind of guy (instead of solution focussed). Part of this is having a "focus on/look for what's wrong" attitude (and yes, problem/wrong are subtly different) — upbringing & habit there.

Ironically, even just focussing on what's right, instead of wrong will take you a long way to being happy. It occurs to me as I write this that I haven't spent very much time at all working on changing this, & I should have — would have made everything else much easier — but even then, it wasn't until I realised that I was clinging onto my pain that I also realised how easily I could let go of it — so, part of me was deliberately making things harder on myself. If that makes sense.

Also, once I got on this journey, I also realised "I can change ANYTHING". So, a lot of it is less about not being happy with myself, and more about

If I could live without this, would I?

and often the answer is yes. Then, once you clear out negatives, you start asking:

If I could live with this IN my life, would I?

and you start putting in positive stuff.

If you COULD have perfectly mature, perfectly balanced, calm, happy, fun relationships with every person you meet, would you choose to?

If you COULD be perfectly abundant (with zero effort), would you choose to?

IF you COULD be peaceful, blissful, and perfectly present in every moment, would you choose to?

It's less about not being happy with myself. More about seeing these as worthwhile, and previously damn near impossible goals that are now (with this new technology & tools — eft, releasing, raw, etc) quite achievable in a very finite timeframe.

Since the basic life expectancy (without major medical breakthroughs) of people our age is 125–150, this means at least another 100 years of life (barring accident). I figure it's well worth spending a little time to live another 100 years feeling so, SO much more wonderful, every moment of every day.

I realise it's a process everybody does to some degree, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I accept you for who you are already, faults and all. It's what makes you You.

Just so you know. :)

Of course, I don't necessarily accept ME for who I am — like I said, we all go through the journey in our own ways. I think I just answered my own question.

A more specific question then, is "do you have an ultimate goal in mind, when you'll stop self-improving?"

re EFT, I suggest following the link on the right hand side — that's a site I put up for busy people — to explain the basics of EFT as quickly as possible. Have a play with that, see if it makes sense to you. If not, come back and shout at me :)