The Trap of the Self-Improvement Movement
March 2020: Covid-19 cases climbed ever higher, and the whole world seemingly shut down overnight.
Flights were cancelled, schools were closed, and people scrambled to organize their businesses to be run from home.
We all suddenly had more free time on our hands than we knew what to do with. With nowhere to go and no one to see, introverts rejoiced, and to-do lists were written.
Tasks that had been neglected for months were finally tackled. The garages and attics got cleaned out, the tires got rotated, the cars got washed…and Covid-19 raged on.
With no more chores left to do, we picked up hobbies. We finally learned how to bake bread. We gardened. With a lack of time no longer available as an excuse, we read. And read and read. And listened to podcasts.
And the self-improvement movement kicked into high gear.
It started out innocently enough. What harm is there in taking 15 minutes in the morning to meditate or journal, and surely everyone benefits from all of us delving into why we make the choices we make. But it seems self-improvement (or personal development/growth/whatever you want to call it) is all anyone can talk about these days.
Over the course of the year, personal development has morphed from the practice of developing healthier, more mindful habits to an all-consuming obsession with breaking ourselves down in order to be rebuilt, not into the best version of ourselves, but into something ‘optimal’.
Something bolder, braver, and brainier.
Indeed, it appears that the most optimistic purpose of personal development (to function as a happy, healthy society) has been lost to the business model that was created around it. It’s now less about striving for your personal best and more about competing to be the best.
People don’t value what they’ve learned through reflection nearly as much as they value their ability to out-fast, out-meditate and out-discipline each other.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself, but striving for perfection is a toxic, unreachable goal that is detrimental to one’s self-esteem and the exact opposite of what self-development ought to be about.
I finally started taking therapy seriously last fall and coupled it with reading all the most popular books that my friends swore by. I took all of the advice to heart. If it’s worked so well for so many people, surely there’s got to be something to it, right?
Early on, I bought dozens of notebooks and tried approximately 1200 journaling methods, stared at myself in the mirror and repeated affirmations, read all of the books, meditated, stretched in the morning and at night, went for walks, fasted, wrote letters I’ll never send and subscribed to all the trending podcasts. I ran steadily on the treadmill of self-improvement and kept a good pace. Some of these little rituals have been extremely gratifying; I’ve picked up some healthier thinking habits, have become more mindful of my bias towards negativity, and am more in touch with myself, but have I transformed into a beacon of peace and satisfaction?
Hell no.
More like a hamster spinning its wheel.
Why?
There’s just too much out there.
We’re constantly bombarded with ads, links, article suggestions and newsletters from authors who claim to have found the one and only morning routine to set the tone for a great day, the magical mantra to quiet down anxious runaway thoughts, the most effective workout no one is doing or the one stretch that will dissolve all aches and pains forever.
It’s tempting to click on a headline that makes such bold claims (particularly if you feel like your life is in shambles). In fact, I often do. Lately, I only get a few lines in before realizing how similar it is to the article I read yesterday.
The Internet is great for so many reasons, and while it’s all well and good to be sharing advice when you’ve found something that worked, anyone with a stable connection can dub themselves a productivity coach or self-improvement guru and begin touting their ‘treatment’. These authors present themselves as if they’ve achieved a sense of complete fulfillment, that every single personal flaw they’ve ever had has been addressed, cured and ticked off the ‘fix-it’ list. They swear you have the potential within you to ‘make it’ as well if you follow their recipe and use their secret ingredient.
It’s all the same message, with a slightly different spin: do what I did, and you’ll be fine.
Except there’s a keyword in self-improvement: ‘self’.
The Oxford English dictionary defines self as ‘a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others’.
As individuals, we have our own unique ways of being in the world, and what works for someone else might not work for you. We know this, yet when we don’t get the promised results, when our ‘manifested’ goals aren’t reached and our mind is still running amok, we immediately blame ourselves, assuming our perceived failure is yet more evidence of our flawed character, and we begin telling ourselves that we must be doing it wrong.
James Clear describes self-improvement as the improvement of one’s knowledge, status or character by one’s own efforts.
Read that again: your OWN efforts.
It took me far too long to realize that the reason I still felt shitty was because I was comparing my life to that of someone who was only showing me their highlight reel. Some people might find satisfaction in waking up and spending an hour navel-gazing, but they’re paid well to post photos of themselves navel-gazing and write all kinds of fluffy content about how satisfying it is to navel-gaze.
The rest of us don’t have that kind of time.
Is all of this to say that we’d be better off ignoring the advice and instead go at it on our own?
Yes and no.
No effort put into learning is a waste of time. Where we must be careful, though, is taking everything we read literally. Instead of reading self-help books like instruction manuals, we can think of them like guides.
When you go on holiday (remember those??) do you do every single thing in the tour book? Of course not, that would be exhausting. Those guides are written so that everyone can find something, not so that everyone can do everything.
So what can you do?
Try out strategies that interest you and tailor them to fit into your life. Keep the ones that work and ignore the rest, even if all the bloggers tell you you’re missing out.
