[jtracy]

I don't beleive that you can't love what you want to improve. In fact you must. I want to have more money, for example. In order to do that I must love the amount of money I have and be very grateful for it. It is only when you are grateful for what you have that the Universe will want to give you something even better, and you can't be grateful for something you don't love.

What you need to do is to first of all accept who you are and then try to better yourself and overcome your deficiencies. It isn't a case of either/or.

I too am socially awkward. But I don't beleive for one minute that this is who I really am. It is the person who my childhood "education" from my parents has predisposed me to be. It is not my core personality, and I don't beleive it is anyone's. I think that almost by definition, the "real" you is the person you want to be. And the only thing preventing you from being that is your own beleifs about yourself.

I also beleive that doing things just because other people think you should is not being the real you. What you are looking for is friends that can love you the way you are, instead of the way they would prefer you to be. After all, they aren't going to be perfect either. It's really important to be seen as the real you, but that does involve removing the masks of bad self-beleifs and letting who you really are shine through.

I beleive that people always want to improve, because improvement is what life is all about. If you don't desire to improve, you aren't really alive. Improving yourself often doesn't mean adding new parts to yourself, it often is just a case of removing the mask of fear and negative beleifs about yourself, so that your real self can shine through.