July 10, 2025 • 49 mins
Does chasing your "best self" ever feel like an endless race? You're constantly striving, optimizing your routines, and learning new skills, yet sometimes a quiet exhaustion creeps in, or you wonder if you're truly any happier. It's as if the very pursuit of perfection leaves you feeling perpetually inadequate. In today's episode, we're diving into the hidden costs of this modern obsession with betterment: when personal growth can go too far.
Things we discuss:
• The deep-seated desire to grow and reach our potential
• The impact of societal pressures and the booming self-improvement industry
• Understanding the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• When toxic over-striving is disguised as discipline
• Self-improvement burnout
• Actionable ways to cultivate sustainable growth
If the non-stop quest for "more" sometimes leaves you feeling depleted, this episode is for you.
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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode as we of course.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Break down the psychology of our twenties. If you have
read the title of today's episode, you will know exactly
what we're talking about. And what we are talking about
is the tricky trap of self improvement when it goes
too far. Whether there is such a thing as too
much self help content, and whether it is beneficial to
(00:59):
constantly be chasing something better for ourselves or improving our lives.
Let me firstly begin by addressing this. The irony is
not lost on me that you are tuning into what
is in essence a self help podcast, and yet we
are talking about the downfalls of self help. Right. You know,
(01:21):
I have literally written a self help book. It is
titled Person in Progress. Like there is probably not a
more self helpy title for a book out there than that.
And a lot of what I speak about on this
podcast is really geared towards knowing yourself better, knowing your
brain better, knowing your psychology, elevating ourselves. And yet in
(01:43):
the background, personally, I have become a little bit disenfranchised
with this kind of approach to our lives, with this
feeling that there is constantly something that we need to improve,
we need to fix, we need to work on. Personally,
you know, I think I have taken self improvement way
too far in the past, and I've fallen into trap
of thinking that if I just wake up at five AM,
(02:04):
if I just quit caffeine, if I just do as
many meditation retreats as possible, if I read that book,
if I only listen to motivational podcasts, my life will
be better and I will finally uncover the secret to happiness.
Guess what, None of those things have ever made me happier,
and none of those things have ever made me more successful,
(02:26):
because none of those activities were actually a problem to
begin with. All of those efforts were really just a
distraction for something deeper. And yeah, it has made me
a little bit disillusioned with this space and in a
more broader sense this industry that has been built around
this space. I read this quote the other day that
(02:47):
really summarizes it for me. You can't self help your
way out of a life that isn't aligned with you
to begin with. And I, for one, have really been
discovering how that is true. And so today I want
to bring my thoughts to you guys to consider. I
want to talk about the nuances of self improvement from
the perspective of someone who is loosely and by accident
(03:10):
kind of based their base their career in this space,
and as someone who can also openly really point to
the downsides and point to the fact that there is
a lot of information out there that is suffocating and
unhelpful and not very useful. This is obviously not going
to be a strictly anti self improvement episode, per se.
(03:32):
Far from it. I think I would be shooting myself
in the foot and I would literally be burning my
career to the ground if I just sat here and
hated on self improvement, because I do think that there
are parts of it that are incredibly important and healthy.
What I really want it to be is a bit
of an investigation into when it can go too far
and who benefits from us not being happy with what
(03:55):
we have. I also want us to kind of redefine
self improvement and recognize that it's not just about external actions.
It's definitely not just about consumption. It's not about perfection.
Self improvement should really be based on self discovery and
living a good balanced life and beyond that are really
happy and fun life. And I think that that is
(04:17):
something that has kind of been lost in the flurry
of self improvement information and books and speeches that we
have been exposed to recently. So I am very excited
for this episode. I'm very excited to kind of give
you guys a peek behind the curtain as someone who
operates in this space and operates in this industry, and
(04:38):
kind of reveal what authentic self improvement content looks like
when it's just trying to sell you something and so
much more. I just hope that today's episode kind of
challenges your assumptions and gets you to really think about
what real personal growth means to you, and also maybe
think about whether the amount of self improvement content you
(04:59):
are assuming has become harmful. You know, that's a question
that you guys have to answer for yourselves. But I
hope I give you the tools to at least think
about it without further ado. Hopefully you can sense my
excitement and maybe my fear in doing this episode. But
let's get into it to begin, Let's really dig into
(05:23):
a fundamental question here. What is so powerful about self
help content? What is so powerful about self improvement content
that compels us to buy, listen, engage in it as
often as we do. To understand this, To understand this
innate drive many of us have towards self improvement, we
(05:45):
have to dig deep into an area called humanistic psychology,
which essentially focuses on human potential and the mechanisms behind
personal growth. Specifically, we have to understand this concept of
our actualizing tendency. So our actualizing tendency was first identified
(06:07):
by an American psychologist called Carl Rogers, and he basically revealed,
discovered believed that humans, every single one of us, have
an innate drive to fulfill our unique potential. We each
have a drive to grow, to become fully functioning, to
be successful in one form or another. Within every single
(06:27):
one of us, there is a seed that wants to
become a tree. This process is so natural, inherent instinctual
to us since the time we are born. You know,
our body wants to grow bigger and stronger. Our limbs
want to elongate, our bones want to gain mass, and
the same for our minds and our emotional realm as well.
(06:48):
We want to learn more, we want to strive, we
want to thrive, we want to be successful, we want
to find our purpose. Now this looks different obviously across
different cultures, people, personalities. Some people strive for gold medals.
Some people strive to push themselves physically. Other people strive
to be a better member in their community, or to
be inventive, creative, to understand themselves more. But basically, at
(07:13):
the end of the day, what this theory really says
is that we need something to work towards, otherwise we
feel incomplete. So this idea is actually beautifully complemented by
another theory that you probably know of called Maslow's hierarchy
of needs. It's that famous pyramid that I'm sure you've
seen many times, But the theory behind it is that
(07:34):
human motivation isn't random. It actually follows a pattern that
extends from a very baseline level of simple needs to
a high level need to self actualize. So to really
just break down this pyramid that I'm sure you've seen
many many times. At the very bottom of this pyramid
that we need to achieve before we achieve anything else
(07:55):
is our physiological needs, food, water, sleep, shelter. These are
things that allow us to survive. Once those needs are
reasonably met, we then want to achieve safety needs, feeling secure,
having stability, personal security. Once we have that comes loving
and belonging. We want connection, we want friends, we want family,
(08:17):
we want a sense of community, and then we can
seek out esteem needs, so self respect, achievement, recognition from others.
Those things can only be pursued if we have all
of those things that have come before. That is not
the top of the pyramid, though, the top of the pyramid.
The thing at the very top, the pinnacle of this
pyramid is self actualization. This is the ultimate human desire
(08:41):
what Maslow says every single one of us is working towards.
It is the drive to become everything that we are
essentially capable of becoming. It really centers on our drive
to find something that we're good at, to find purpose,
to live a life that feels really meaningful, and so
our ardent of an obsessive pursuit of self improvement can
(09:04):
actually be seen as a direct manifestation of this inherent
human need to climb Maslow's ladder, to aim for that
profound internal sense of fulfillment and personal conquence. So from
the humanistic perspective, we're really drawn to growth and self
improvement because it satisfies this inner longing for meaning. If
(09:28):
we are improving, it means that our life has purpose.
It means that there is something bigger than us that
we can achieve and feel satisfied with. There's also the
secondary element of this, which is that simply accomplishing something,
working hard, being rewarded for that naturally just feels really
really nice that you delayed gratification and sense of pride,
(09:48):
Like it's a really good feeling to say I wanted
this thing, I went after it, and I got it.
When we learn a new skill, when we run a marathon,
when we overcome a child lenge, like, there is an
inherent reward to that that really fuels growth and fuels
further efforts to improve. And it's this drive to engage
(10:11):
in things from the inherent satisfaction that they bring that
researchers call Intrinsic motivation. Now, this is the third concept
you really have to understand if you want to understand
why you love self improvement. Intrinsic motivation is basically the
purest form of motivation because it doesn't rely on others,
It doesn't rely on external things. It is the joy
(10:34):
and the satisfaction that we derive purely from what we
get out of something and from enjoying the process. When
this is our reason for pursuing self improvement goals, When
we benefit mainly because of how something makes us feel competent,
makes us feel successful, makes us feel like we have control,
self improvement is primarily a beneficial thing. This is the
(10:58):
space in which self improvement is really beneficial and in
which I think all of us can benefit from having
something that we want to achieve and having something that
we do feel compelled to work hard for for our
own satisfaction. And so what happens when this natural striving
for improvement becomes unhealthy? How does it become unhealthy is
(11:21):
maybe a better question. It becomes unhealthy mainly because of
external factors. This inherent drive for growth is a very pure,
positive thing. But when it becomes competitive, when it becomes
a way that we want to prove our self worth
to others, it turns very nasty and toxic. So people
(11:41):
who really criticize self improvement and the self improvement industry,
their main argument is that this approach to life is
too simplistic and would have us derive our entire worth
entirely from what we can achieve from our ability to
push ourselves from our ability just to meet our goals,
rather than the fact that we have worth purely for existing. Basically,
(12:05):
what they're saying is that self improvement has become twisted
and toxic because in this current day and age, it
isn't about what you can do for yourself, and it
isn't about how you can improve how you feel about yourself.
It's basically how you can improve how other people see you. Often,
the push for self improvement stems from societal conditioning rather
(12:29):
than a purely innate drive. In today's very hyper connected,
achievement focused world, there is an unspoken pressure to constantly
be optimizing because of how that will make you appear
to others, because it will allow you to get ahead,
because it will allow you to kind of beat the competition.
Just before we talked about how the purest form of
(12:49):
motivation is intrinsic motivation. On the flip side to intrinsic motivation,
we have extrinsic motivation, and this is really what we're
talking about here, extrinsic motivation. When that takes over, it
means that we only do an activity for an external
reward or to basically avoid punishment. So we lose weight
(13:10):
to impress or attract someone, We run a marathon to
post it on social media. We pursue our artistic passion
purely because we think it's going to make us famous.
We want a promotion simply because we want to prove
that people who doubted us were wrong. The difficulty with
relying purely on extrinsic motivation is that we actually fall
(13:33):
out of love and we forget the reason why we
started something to begin with. Basically, we tell our brain
the only reason to improve ourselves is if other people
acknowledge that we have improved, if other people acknowledge that
this is worthwhile. And so suddenly what was something that
we once genuinely enjoyed doing, felt passionate about doing, wanted
(13:55):
to do for ourselves, turns into a chore. It turns
into a discipline, access size. Sometimes it even turns into
an activity that we use to kind of punish ourselves.
It also turns into something that can be profited off of,
and this is where the self improvement industry really steps
(14:15):
in as a major factor and a major motivator that
intensifies our drive to improve in a negative direction. Think
about it. This industry is worth forty two billion dollars,
and the only reason it's worth that much is because
it excels at identifying insecurities, identifying our desire for betterment
(14:38):
and to impress others and for control, and then offering
us a seemingly very perfect solution. This industry is constantly
putting forward aspirational figures that have very curated, perfect lives
that are then paired with something that you can buy
to have that life yourself, and it's very hard to
(14:59):
res It's that glossy, beautiful, perfect packaging. You know, if
you see someone who is in a perfect relationship, who
has a perfect body, who has perfect skin, a perfect routine,
of course you're going to want that. Because we have
that natural aspirational drive. This industry really does thrive because
it does meet a genuine human need for progress, right,
(15:22):
that's not a bad thing. People do want to feel
good about themselves. It has become toxic in recent years
because it's often completely unrealistic what it's telling you is possible.
It demands complete personal transformation that is actually very hard
to achieve and very costly to achieve. The other thing
(15:42):
is that there's a powerful kind of feedback loop at
play here. Our desire for growth and improvement creates demand,
and the industry supplies it, and then it intensifies our
dissatisfaction with ourselves and our insecurity is to drive even
more demand so that we want their supply. So this
(16:02):
is why we often feel like the bar keeps moving.
This is why we often feel like we are chasing
an ideal that's just not reachable. It's because the moment
that we perhaps achieve the dream life that is being
sold to us, well, they can't make money off of
you anymore. You know, you're no longer a customer, and
(16:24):
so the bar does have to keep getting higher so
that there is still demand for what they're putting out.
What I mean by this is that it's not just
feeling like Nowadays, having a good life isn't just feeling
full and feeling happy and having a job that brings
you purpose. It's also having a skincare routine. And once
you have the skin care routine, it's also having a
(16:46):
really good nighttime routine that involves taking a certain supplement
or that involves a certain eyemask, and once you achieve that,
they go okay, well, actually that's not going to make
you happy. The next thing is that you have to
have the perfect body, and then once you have that,
then we actually need to give you this. There is
no end goal here. There is always going to be
a deficit in your life that a product or a
(17:10):
thing that you can buy will seemingly fulfill and make
better for you. The thing that a lot of people
in this industry have actually gotten really good at, and
I think this has become the tricky thing, is that
they mix the perfect lifestyle with occasionally actually talking about
failure and with occasionally showing themselves as imperfect so you
(17:33):
feel like they're more like you. And by doing that
they also really stoke this sense that hey, maybe I
can actually be like this person. Have you noticed this.
I've noticed this a lot recently. Is there are a
lot of you know, self improvement individuals who will only
talk about failure in the context of it making them better.
(17:56):
They will only talk about the imperfections in the context
of helping them love themselves more. They will only talk
about hard things in the context that they have learned
or they have overcome that hard thing. There is never
this discussion of like, oh, sometimes this is just hard
and this doesn't have a solution and you have to
(18:18):
just sit in the suckiness of life. There is always
a butt, there is always an and there is always
some philosophy or some book or something that you can
then do that they have done that will fix your problem.
The thing is, though you can't buy your way into
(18:41):
a more fulfilling life, you can't buy your way into happiness.
One of you guys, one of the listeners, actually messaged
me about this and I thought what you shared was perfect,
so I'm going to share it here. They gave the
most beautiful summary. If you could buy your way to
self improvement and to perfection, rich people would have no problems,
(19:01):
and yet they do, and in turn, some of the
happiest people have the least. Because this process that we
are all aiming for isn't about what we can buy
isn't about a product, isn't about what we can achieve
for others. It's about personal introspection and there is no
market price for that. There is no thing that can
(19:22):
fast forward that process. You actually just have to do
the hard work. There's an important question that really emerges
from this as well, which is self improvement actually making
us more self centered because it's subtly becoming more about
improving social standing and appearances and the external impression we
have rather than how we feel when no one else
(19:43):
is around. And I think the answer is yes, I
do think that self improvement has made us think about
ourselves way too much. Self help is mainly a Western
idea that makes most of its money in Western countries
like the US, like the UK, like Australia, Canada, where
we know psychologically that a lot of societies are more
(20:04):
individualistic rather than collective. The thing is, though human happiness
and joy fundamentally has community and its center. We were
built to not care about ourselves as much as we
care about others and the collective. And we were built
as well to be loved, to belong, to be cared for,
(20:27):
to care for others, and when we are entirely focused
on self improvement, we obviously have less space to think
about how we could be a better neighbor. We have
less space to think about how we could give back.
We have less space to think about whether we are
available to our friends and our families, to think about
whether we are a good sibling, we are a good partner,
we are a good daughter, whatever. It is. One of
(20:49):
the most robust studies on human happiness ever done, ever conducted,
was a longitudinal study from Harvard and they looked at
people cross their lifespan and they found that more than
personal achievements, more than appearance, the biggest predictor of whether
you were happy was meaningful relationships. Yet, when you know
(21:12):
self improvement becomes hyper individualized, it can erode that for
a lot of people. It can mean that we aren't
focusing on what really matters. Now. Of course, there's a
difference between being self focused, being self obsessed, and being selfish.
And you guys know, even I'm an advocate for being
selfish sometimes and just saying I've got to lock in
(21:33):
and focus on myself because I want more for me.
I need to do this for me, I need this
sense of fulfillment. But how long can naturally last before
you look around and realize, you know, in the pursuit
of becoming the best version of me, I'm actually no
longer a nice person to be around. I'm no longer
someone who's fun. I'm no longer someone who actually is
joyful and enjoys any part of this. Where does that
(21:57):
lead us? Well? I want to introduce you to the
content of self improvement burnout and why it has become
way more common than you may think after this shortbreak.
To stay with us, something that I think is becoming
more and more common is that we are becoming burnt
(22:17):
out not by things we have to do, but by
things that we feel we need to do in order
to be successful and impressive. In that way, sometimes self
care has kind of turned into a weird form of
mental self harm. I have this thing that I do
what I'm feeling overwhelmed, where I look at my to
(22:39):
do list because I realize that a lot of stress
obviously comes from my to do list, but it typically
comes from things that actually don't deserve to be on there.
And I will look at my to do list and
I'll break it down into things that I have to do,
things that I would like to do, and things that
are like complete extras, almost entirely pointless or optional. And
anytime I I'm stressed, I can guarantee you that that
(23:03):
extras list, that optionals list, that would like to list
has become full of things that I feel like I
have to do to impress others, or that I feel
like I have to do to be my very best self,
when actually they're kind of robbing me of a lot
of joy, things like, Okay, today I need to take
in everything shower today, I need to do at least
(23:26):
twenty thousand steps today, I need to do my two
workouts today, I need to meal prep. And yes, those
things would be nice, and yes I'm sure those things
would better me as a person, But actually in that moment,
they're not. They're just creating more stress, and there's no
self improvement actually happening in those moments. It's all like
(23:46):
self flagulation and self sabotage. This is what I call
self improvement burnout. It's a specific kind of exhaustion that
happens when you're constantly pushing yourself, You're constantly striving for more,
you're not taking breaks, you're not reflecting because you are
too caught up in this idea of a perfect life
and these outside goals that aren't actually really helping you
(24:10):
be successful in that moment, your body and your mind.
You are on a machine. You are not a machine
that is designed for endless optimization without periods of recovery
and decompression. In fact, a study that I read recently
essentially concluded that every single one of us needs at
least three and a half hours of downtime a day
(24:31):
to maintain optimal brain health and to actually feel well
rested and to feel good in ourselves and our body.
Some estimates would even tell you that you need more
than that, you need four or five hours. This is
how much time our very ancient bodies and minds would
have been used to in the past. This is what
(24:51):
they were designed to experience, compared to today in a
modern context, where every single hour of our day seems
to counted for. You know, you have to work for
eight to ten hours, then you have to do exercise,
and you have to commute, and you have to focus
on some outside activity that you're invested in, and you
have to see your friends, and you have to do chores,
(25:12):
and all of that does actually accumulate, and it means
that we actually don't function as well as we could. Essentially,
I'm making the argument that we need more space to
simply just exist rather than do. If chasing self improvement
becomes as very rigid, unyielding master, it could completely strip
(25:33):
away the joy that you're meant to have about your
life in the first place. You know what we need
to talk about here. We need to talk about how
self improvement can turn into an obsession with tracking metrics
rather than with how we're feeling. You know, there are
apps for everything these days, for your steps, for your food,
for your sleep, for your productivity. They're helpful for accountability,
(25:55):
but they're also a little bit of a trap. If
every aspect of your life is optimized and measured like
you do lose joy. Numbers become the goal. If working
out only becomes about hitting a certain number of calories burned,
do you even enjoy the movement? If writing only becomes
about hitting a word count, are you actually making your
(26:17):
best work? And are you actually connected with creative flow?
And this is where toxic self improvement can often disguise
itself as discipline. We might tell ourselves no pain, no gain,
You know, I just need to push through this. Nothing
good comes without hard work. Yes, sometimes that's true, but
sometimes discipline is actually just creating unhealthy internal pressure. That
(26:42):
means that when you finally get to the goal, you
don't even enjoy it because you've sacrificed so much that
the process of getting there has brought you zero happiness.
Discipline is a very important part of life. Discipline is
what brings great things into the world and does allow
you to meet your goals. But I really like to
(27:04):
follow the idea of an eighty twenty split. There are
going to be periods of your life or you are
working really hard towards something I think about, you know,
my final year of high school, or my final year
of UNI, or even sometimes when I was writing my
book or when I'm working. There are really busy periods,
and sometimes you do have to lean into the fact
(27:25):
that there is a higher goal that you are really
excited about that you want to work hard for. You
also need that twenty percent to ground you, and you
need that twenty percent to be able to look around
and remain attached to the life you have right now.
It's very easy to get lost in the pursuit of
discipline because it's so romanticized. But a lot of people
(27:47):
who I see occasionally who are quite disciplined actually don't
have very interesting lives, and they actually aren't really interested
in anything other than their goals. And perhaps that's what
they want for their life. And I'm not someone to
judge them or tell them not to do that, But personally,
for me, I don't want to get to the end
(28:07):
of my life and look around and realize that I
spent my whole life disciplined and trying to improve myself
and trying to optimize, and I actually am going to
end up in the same place as everyone else. Is
life really about how much you can optimize your time
or how much you can enjoy your time? We also
have to be cautious of the fact that sometimes discipline
is a sneaky way that our brains can rationalize extreme
(28:30):
behaviors in the name of a goal. If you are
someone who was quite obsessive, if you are someone who
finds they really struggle with perfectionism, they have to do
things perfectly or they can't do them at all, you
should kind of maybe approach discipline with a little bit
of caution, because it's a slippery slope. It's one I
found myself on where what starts with wanting to be
(28:53):
productive comes with being unable to quit even when the
thing you're pursuing is no longer making you happy, even
when your life is kind of falling apart. External goals
that you put one hundred and twenty percent of yourself
into are actually, at the end of the day, you know,
really great distractions for deeper dissatisfaction. It's a great way
(29:14):
to never actually look at your life and contemplate what
would truly make you happy and what is maybe under
the surface that you need to unpack when you aren't
able to hide behind constant goals, when you can't hide
behind constant explanations, or something bigger than yourself that you
need to achieve. Here's another subtle, bit insidious trap that
self improvement content can sometimes trick us into over intellectualizing
(29:38):
and consuming without actually making changes, consuming instead of applying,
watching but never learning, thinking that we're doing something about
a problem or in insecurity that we have when we're
actually not really engaging on a deeper level. I think
this is especially common when we excessively consume self help
(29:59):
content and rather than apply it because we think that
it's fixing something in our brain when we bury ourselves
in podcasts like this one, or books or seminars or
online courses, and we're gathering vast amounts of information and
psychological insights but never actually implementing them into actionable steps.
The thing about this is that it can feel productive,
(30:20):
it can feel like you're doing something meaningful, but again,
it is a form of false discipline, or a form
of procrastination, or perhaps the substitute for real work. You
know all the strategies, you know how to improve productivity,
you know how to improve your relationships. But having knowledge
and doing something about it are completely different things. Sometimes
(30:43):
I feel like there's a certain kind of person who
and I used to be this, who consumes a lot
of self help content and becomes kind of like a
knowledge hoarder rather than a knowledge applier. And I think
sometimes the reason that I at least did it and
some other people may do it is because it feels
like if we just know a little bit more, if
we just know a little bit more we have to
know everything, then we can finally act. Then we can
(31:06):
finally make a decision about what the right thing is
to do, but it just ends up being mental clutter.
Like you just end up being more confused. That is why,
you know. On my podcast, I always try to give
you guys good tools that you can actually apply to
your life, that are accessible and realistic, so that what
you're hearing isn't just information, it's things that you can implement.
(31:28):
It's not just a you know, it's not just clutter.
This is kind of a nice place to actually shift
gears and talk about what is a healthy approach to
self improvement. We kind of have already talked about it.
I just want to give you a few more steps
to identify when it is healthy versus unhealthy. A truly
healthy approach to self improvement thrives on, firstly, clarity around
(31:52):
what you actually want to do and why you actually
want to do it. Is this goal that you've set
intrinsically or extrinsic motivated? Is there a genuine problem here
or are you just searching for something wrong in your
life as a proxy for something deeper that you don't
actually want to address. A truly healthy approach is one
(32:13):
that is quite honest, one that is quite honest about
your intentions, your motivations, what you are actually capable of
and is honest about the outcome. This big thing that
you may want, it probably won't completely change your life.
It probably won't make you the most successful, best version
of you if you haven't done the deeper internal work
(32:36):
in a practical way, through therapy, through really knowing yourself,
through experience, through testing yourself first. I think it's also
important that you know what your enough point is. You
know what you're really working towards, before you start a project,
before you start a new workout routine, before you start
(32:57):
a goal, before you start you know a new career trajectory.
For example, if you have a lofty goal of wanting
to be fitter and healthier, you need some kind of
end goal for that where you're going to allow yourself
to sit back and just be happy. This really counteracts
(33:17):
the idea that we have to constantly be getting better.
You also need to have points where you can reflect
and look back and see how far you've come. And
sometimes having smaller goals or having an enough point for
the current phase of your goal is really crucial so
that you are constantly not just on a path that
or not just raising the bar in yourself, not just
(33:38):
on a ladder that never ends. You're actually able to say, Wow,
I'm really proud of how far I've come. I'm really
proud of where I am at right now. Maybe I
don't need to get better, Maybe I don't need to
improve from here. This is where I always imagine myself.
This also requires, you know, setting realistic expectations based on
your actual resources, not based on someone else's resources, not
(34:01):
based on anyone else's commitment or energy levels or time.
What are you actually capable of? Realistically, if you plan
three runs and you run three times, that's a success.
Don't beat yourself up for not running five times like
someone else if you know running five times a week
was never realistic. Please be careful with not setting parameters
(34:25):
that can be achieved by people who don't have full
time jobs, don't have the same kind of financial stresses
that you may have, have entire teams behind them, have
personal assistance. Just because you can't meet that same level
as them doesn't mean you are failing. They wouldn't even
be able to meet that same level if they didn't
(34:47):
have the resources that they had. When you are comparing
yourself to someone online who seemingly has everything together and
is the most efficient, productive person out there. Take a
second and think about what you are not seeing, which
is the amount of help that they receive, the amount
of people that are on their teams, on their side,
(35:09):
the luxury that is afforded to them by wealth, by significance,
by having a platform. All of that does stack up.
And just promise me that even if you have big goals,
which of course are important, and which you are allowed
and should have, just take a break every now and
again and do something purely for the heck of it.
Do something that serves no greater purpose, that has no meaning,
(35:32):
that has nothing to do with success, nothing to do
with productivity, nothing to do with your current goal. Just
do it. Do something just because you want to, Like,
take a day off, just because you want to go
see a movie at two pm, just because you want
to do something fun in a mango in the shower,
like I don't know, just go to the dog park
and just like lie and it comes from the dogs,
(35:54):
just because you want to, Like I also want to stress. Again,
life is not just about optimization. It's also about enjoyment.
You will lead and you will find yourself constantly miserable.
If the only thing you ever enjoy or feel proud
of doing is something that only comes from pushing yourself really,
really hard. There are so many just like simple things
(36:16):
that require no work to feel good about, that require
no effort to enjoy. Make sure you have a good
mixture of those things as well. Okay, we're going to
take a short break, but when we return, I have
a couple listener questions before we wrap up, so stay
with us. Okay, welcome back to our discussion on self improvement?
(36:39):
Can it go too far? Has it gone too far?
We're going to talk through some more interesting questions that
you guys sent me on the topic of self improvement,
starting with this question, which I thought was just a
really nice, lighthearted one to begin with. What it's some
actually good and worthwhile self improvement resources that you personally use.
I really like this question because you know, obviously, working
(36:59):
in the space like I do, still engage in self
help content quite a bit, and I still find it
really useful to give me a different perspective and interesting.
A couple of books that I really love, The Alchemist.
I think this book is self helpy without being too
self helpy, and I love it. The Four Agreements also
kind of like another spiritual coded book that I find
(37:24):
really interesting. The Untethered Soul is another one I tend
to prefer like more spiritual books for my self help books,
just because I spend so much time in the science
with this podcast, I genuinely think I would read at
least or at least look at fifty plus academic articles
every single week, so I get enough from that. When
(37:45):
I engage in self help reading, I want something that's
a bit more introspective and light I guess, not light,
but a bit less scientific. I also really like personal memoirs.
I think that personal memoirs are a really great place
to start slash go to if you are kind of
sick of, you know, reading the same old self help
(38:05):
books all the time. The Book of Joy is another
one that I really really like. It's about happiness, it's
about humanity, it's about gratitude, it's about what it means
to live a good life, which I think is something
we could all benefit from. I also really like the
Dare app. It's like a meditation anti anxiety app that
(38:25):
I find really useful, and it's practical and it will
get straight to the heart of your problem immediately, especially
if you're someone who's dealing with anxious thoughts or dealing
with how to approach fear. Also a podcast that I love.
Two podcasts that I love. I love solgam by Victoria
Hudgens The Daily Victorian on Instagram. She has actually been
(38:47):
on the podcast before. I just love how she intersects spirituality, philosophy,
and psychology. I think that is so powerful. Do You
Fucking Mind? By Alexis Fernandez is also another part podcast
that I adore. She is also a personal friend of
mine and she is a neuroscientist. I love getting content
from people who know their shit, and I love getting
(39:10):
content from people who are experts but also have a
lot of empathy rather than just like a one track
mind when approaching topics like this, I like people who
are willing to see different sides of something and willing
to open the door to a discussion or two different
ways of approaching it, rather than just being like, this
is the best way to go about something and there
(39:31):
is no other alternative. So those are kind of my
favorite resources. This next question, I really love when is
the right time to be disciplined versus when do I
know that I need to take a break? I think
you need to take a break when you don't even
care about the outcome anymore, when you're thinking more about
how other people will view you more than how this
goal will change your view of yourself. When it's becoming suffocating,
(39:54):
when it's overwhelming everything else, when there's nothing about it
that you even lightly enjoy, When when you just feel
like you need a break, is when you need a break.
You know, discipline, it's incredible, it's a great skill. We
need it to follow through. It can't be your whole life.
Make sure you have some spontaneity and some fun. There
was kind of a second part to this question, which
(40:15):
is how to know when you've consumed enough self help content?
So not just how to know when you've pushed yourself
too far in terms of a goal, but how to
know when you've overwhelmed yourself with more answers than you need.
I think you know that you've consumed too much self
help content when you can't trust yourself anymore, when you
(40:36):
always need someone else to give you the answer, to
provide reassurance or an explanation, rather than just being prepared
to learn, to experience and to try things out and
make mistakes. When you're intellectualizing and gathering information rather than
doing things, you're missing out on the most crucial part
of learning, which is of course experience. There is only
(41:00):
so much someone can tell you. There's only so much
guidance someone can tell you before you have to go
out there and try it yourself and feel it yourself.
It's like someone can describe to you the most beautiful
tasting cake, but you're not actually gonna enjoy the taste
of it until you try it yourself. Someone can, you know,
tell you the most amazing way to get something out
(41:23):
of life, like the most amazing mindset shift. You're not
going to actually know what that feels like until you
commit to trying it. Also, when you feel like you
don't know what to think anymore and it's making you
more confused rather than bringing you clarity, that's when I
think you really need to take a step back and
just like read something different, watch something different, enjoy like
(41:45):
your guilty Pleasure TV show, watch them Love Island. Like
there's no police that's going to come around and be
like you're brain rotting and you're consuming things that aren't intellectuals,
So like we're taking away that self improvement badge from
you like you're not a fully demids human, Like, shame
on you. No one's going to do that. It's actually
good to let your brain be kind of gilly and
(42:07):
kind of lizarity every now and again. This is a
question that I really really thought was important to bring
up here because we didn't necessarily cover a lot of
it in the episode, so hopefully I can give it
some airtime here. How does the self improvement industry harm
or influence our perceptions of chronic illness? I have been
thinking a lot about this question since I first came
(42:30):
across it in my Instagram DMS. I think the biggest
issue is that the self improvement industry is so focused
on productivity and so focused on personal responsibility that it
kind of implies that wellness is always within our control,
and it kind of implies that everyone should be capable
(42:52):
of doing the same things when that is not the case.
And just because your abilities are different doesn't mean your
worth life us. Just because you can't wake up at
five am and then you know, go to bed at
twelve and work as many hours as possible and do
six workouts a day, like, just because you can't do that,
doesn't mean you're a failure, right, It just means that
(43:13):
your body is different. And I think the wellness space
in particular, and particularly like the fitness space self improvement space,
it's really focused on productivity and doing as much with
your hours as possible. And often that muchness means a
lot of effort and a lot of time and not
(43:35):
a lot of rest. And if you are someone who
struggles with exhaustion or has a kind of physical impairment,
or if you're someone who has a different brain to
someone else, like that's not always going to be possible
for you. It doesn't mean that this person and people
who are able to do that are better. I think
it can also lead to a lot of shame or
(43:56):
guilt or a sense of failure that you're not able
to work hard enough to heal yourself. You should be
able to heal yourself through your mindset. If your mindset
is strong enough, you can overcome anything, including a chronic condition.
And it's like that's literally ridiculous, Like no, like, no
matter how powerful your mindset is, no matter how productive
(44:18):
and efficient and powerful your mental state is, like, so
there are just things that aren't possible and that doesn't
mean that you are giving up. It just means that
you understand your limits, and that in itself is actually
a lot more powerful than just saying yes to everything
and being someone who can stretch themselves so thin that
(44:41):
they become exhausted and actually take their health for granted.
I think this space just sometimes really dismisses the realities
of chronic illness, and it really oversimplifies, It really oversimplifies
and focuses more on mindset than it should, and it
kind of sidelines the voice of those whose conditions don't
(45:02):
fit into the industry's neat you know, like before and
after success stories, or don't fit into this narrative that
you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, like
you could if you wanted to. But do you want
to and is it actually the best thing for your health?
And should you force yourself to make yourself less well
(45:22):
just to prove something to someone else, just to prove
that you have worth because you can meet their standards,
the standards that weren't set with you in mind. No.
So I think it is actually a really big issue,
and I think it's one that I really should do
a whole episode on how self improvement and the self
help space sidelines the voices of people with chronic illnesses,
(45:42):
not just mental health issues, but physical disabilities and so
much more because it is something that feels largely invisible.
So thank you so much for that question. I'm going
to do a whole episode on it, I think, so
we'll talk about that more later down the line. I'm
going to answer this final question, and I love this question.
(46:02):
I love this question because it's a little bit different
to what we've talked about. This person says, I don't
get the hate with the self improvement space. Is it
really that bad to want better for myself? I don't
think it's toxic to work hard, and I don't think
that discipline is an evil word. I also agree with you, Actually,
I think that you are totally right. It's not bad
(46:23):
to want better for yourself. It's actually amazing and it's
great that you've been able to identify something that or
a collection of things that you think will make your
life better. But I do think the reason you believe
this is because you have the right attitude. Everything that
you are saying sounds like you meet all the kind
of all the checklists, all the categories for someone who
(46:46):
approaches self improvement positively. You're doing it for intrinsic reasons,
You're self motivated, you're doing it to align with your purpose,
and it sounds like you're not falling into a toxic
trap with discipline, which means that it's amazing for you,
and it means that you are really focused on elevating
yourself from an authentic position. I think I've laid out
(47:06):
all the reasons that it becomes toxic, but just to
reiterate them, it really becomes toxic when it's not for us,
when it's for someone else, when we're not doing it
for inherent enjoyment or or to prove to ourselves something,
and when it's dominating our entire lives so that there
is space for nothing else. Nothing is ever entirely one
(47:28):
thing or another. The same can be said about self improvement.
There are such beautiful parts of it, and I continue
to have goals that I want to strive towards. I
continue to have things about my life that I do
think could be better, but I also don't let that
take away from the appreciation that I have for the
things of my life that are already great. And I
think that is the healthy space to be in and
(47:48):
it sounds like you're in that healthy space as well.
So congratulations, Thank you so much. If you have made
it this far, I want to hear your thoughts about
self improvement in the comments below. If you agreed, if
you didn't with something that I said, even better, what
are your thoughts? How do you know when it's going
too far in your life? But also I want you
to share a piece of content a self improvement project, book,
(48:13):
podcast series, seminar. Whatever it is that you think is
actually a genuinely positive beacon of light in the space
and that you think people should be engaging in. What
are the positive examples of self improvement that you consume
or that you see that you think others could benefit
from knowing from as well? So thank you again for listening.
(48:34):
Make sure that you are following along wherever you're listening
to this podcast on Apple, on Spotify, on the iHeartRadio app.
I don't know where you're listening from, but make sure
you hit that follow slash subscribe button. Make sure that
you leave a five star review as well if you
feel called to do so, and share this episode with
a family member, with a friend with a colleague with
your followers if you think that this is a discussion
(48:55):
that needs to go further than just you and I.
I think that it's something we need to talk about more,
and I hope others agree with me, so I'd love
for you to be able to share it and bring
more people's attention to this. As always, as we wrap
up our episode, I want to remind you all to
stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, and as always,
we will talk very very soon. Thanks for joining me.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode as we of course.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Break down the psychology of our twenties. If you have
read the title of today's episode, you will know exactly
what we're talking about. And what we are talking about
is the tricky trap of self improvement when it goes
too far. Whether there is such a thing as too
much self help content, and whether it is beneficial to
(00:59):
constantly be chasing something better for ourselves or improving our lives.
Let me firstly begin by addressing this. The irony is
not lost on me that you are tuning into what
is in essence a self help podcast, and yet we
are talking about the downfalls of self help. Right. You know,
(01:21):
I have literally written a self help book. It is
titled Person in Progress. Like there is probably not a
more self helpy title for a book out there than that.
And a lot of what I speak about on this
podcast is really geared towards knowing yourself better, knowing your
brain better, knowing your psychology, elevating ourselves. And yet in
(01:43):
the background, personally, I have become a little bit disenfranchised
with this kind of approach to our lives, with this
feeling that there is constantly something that we need to improve,
we need to fix, we need to work on. Personally,
you know, I think I have taken self improvement way
too far in the past, and I've fallen into trap
of thinking that if I just wake up at five AM,
(02:04):
if I just quit caffeine, if I just do as
many meditation retreats as possible, if I read that book,
if I only listen to motivational podcasts, my life will
be better and I will finally uncover the secret to happiness.
Guess what, None of those things have ever made me happier,
and none of those things have ever made me more successful,
(02:26):
because none of those activities were actually a problem to
begin with. All of those efforts were really just a
distraction for something deeper. And yeah, it has made me
a little bit disillusioned with this space and in a
more broader sense this industry that has been built around
this space. I read this quote the other day that
(02:47):
really summarizes it for me. You can't self help your
way out of a life that isn't aligned with you
to begin with. And I, for one, have really been
discovering how that is true. And so today I want
to bring my thoughts to you guys to consider. I
want to talk about the nuances of self improvement from
the perspective of someone who is loosely and by accident
(03:10):
kind of based their base their career in this space,
and as someone who can also openly really point to
the downsides and point to the fact that there is
a lot of information out there that is suffocating and
unhelpful and not very useful. This is obviously not going
to be a strictly anti self improvement episode, per se.
(03:32):
Far from it. I think I would be shooting myself
in the foot and I would literally be burning my
career to the ground if I just sat here and
hated on self improvement, because I do think that there
are parts of it that are incredibly important and healthy.
What I really want it to be is a bit
of an investigation into when it can go too far
and who benefits from us not being happy with what
(03:55):
we have. I also want us to kind of redefine
self improvement and recognize that it's not just about external actions.
It's definitely not just about consumption. It's not about perfection.
Self improvement should really be based on self discovery and
living a good balanced life and beyond that are really
happy and fun life. And I think that that is
(04:17):
something that has kind of been lost in the flurry
of self improvement information and books and speeches that we
have been exposed to recently. So I am very excited
for this episode. I'm very excited to kind of give
you guys a peek behind the curtain as someone who
operates in this space and operates in this industry, and
(04:38):
kind of reveal what authentic self improvement content looks like
when it's just trying to sell you something and so
much more. I just hope that today's episode kind of
challenges your assumptions and gets you to really think about
what real personal growth means to you, and also maybe
think about whether the amount of self improvement content you
(04:59):
are assuming has become harmful. You know, that's a question
that you guys have to answer for yourselves. But I
hope I give you the tools to at least think
about it without further ado. Hopefully you can sense my
excitement and maybe my fear in doing this episode. But
let's get into it to begin, Let's really dig into
(05:23):
a fundamental question here. What is so powerful about self
help content? What is so powerful about self improvement content
that compels us to buy, listen, engage in it as
often as we do. To understand this, To understand this
innate drive many of us have towards self improvement, we
(05:45):
have to dig deep into an area called humanistic psychology,
which essentially focuses on human potential and the mechanisms behind
personal growth. Specifically, we have to understand this concept of
our actualizing tendency. So our actualizing tendency was first identified
(06:07):
by an American psychologist called Carl Rogers, and he basically revealed,
discovered believed that humans, every single one of us, have
an innate drive to fulfill our unique potential. We each
have a drive to grow, to become fully functioning, to
be successful in one form or another. Within every single
(06:27):
one of us, there is a seed that wants to
become a tree. This process is so natural, inherent instinctual
to us since the time we are born. You know,
our body wants to grow bigger and stronger. Our limbs
want to elongate, our bones want to gain mass, and
the same for our minds and our emotional realm as well.
(06:48):
We want to learn more, we want to strive, we
want to thrive, we want to be successful, we want
to find our purpose. Now this looks different obviously across
different cultures, people, personalities. Some people strive for gold medals.
Some people strive to push themselves physically. Other people strive
to be a better member in their community, or to
be inventive, creative, to understand themselves more. But basically, at
(07:13):
the end of the day, what this theory really says
is that we need something to work towards, otherwise we
feel incomplete. So this idea is actually beautifully complemented by
another theory that you probably know of called Maslow's hierarchy
of needs. It's that famous pyramid that I'm sure you've
seen many times, But the theory behind it is that
(07:34):
human motivation isn't random. It actually follows a pattern that
extends from a very baseline level of simple needs to
a high level need to self actualize. So to really
just break down this pyramid that I'm sure you've seen
many many times. At the very bottom of this pyramid
that we need to achieve before we achieve anything else
(07:55):
is our physiological needs, food, water, sleep, shelter. These are
things that allow us to survive. Once those needs are
reasonably met, we then want to achieve safety needs, feeling secure,
having stability, personal security. Once we have that comes loving
and belonging. We want connection, we want friends, we want family,
(08:17):
we want a sense of community, and then we can
seek out esteem needs, so self respect, achievement, recognition from others.
Those things can only be pursued if we have all
of those things that have come before. That is not
the top of the pyramid, though, the top of the pyramid.
The thing at the very top, the pinnacle of this
pyramid is self actualization. This is the ultimate human desire
(08:41):
what Maslow says every single one of us is working towards.
It is the drive to become everything that we are
essentially capable of becoming. It really centers on our drive
to find something that we're good at, to find purpose,
to live a life that feels really meaningful, and so
our ardent of an obsessive pursuit of self improvement can
(09:04):
actually be seen as a direct manifestation of this inherent
human need to climb Maslow's ladder, to aim for that
profound internal sense of fulfillment and personal conquence. So from
the humanistic perspective, we're really drawn to growth and self
improvement because it satisfies this inner longing for meaning. If
(09:28):
we are improving, it means that our life has purpose.
It means that there is something bigger than us that
we can achieve and feel satisfied with. There's also the
secondary element of this, which is that simply accomplishing something,
working hard, being rewarded for that naturally just feels really
really nice that you delayed gratification and sense of pride,
(09:48):
Like it's a really good feeling to say I wanted
this thing, I went after it, and I got it.
When we learn a new skill, when we run a marathon,
when we overcome a child lenge, like, there is an
inherent reward to that that really fuels growth and fuels
further efforts to improve. And it's this drive to engage
(10:11):
in things from the inherent satisfaction that they bring that
researchers call Intrinsic motivation. Now, this is the third concept
you really have to understand if you want to understand
why you love self improvement. Intrinsic motivation is basically the
purest form of motivation because it doesn't rely on others,
It doesn't rely on external things. It is the joy
(10:34):
and the satisfaction that we derive purely from what we
get out of something and from enjoying the process. When
this is our reason for pursuing self improvement goals, When
we benefit mainly because of how something makes us feel competent,
makes us feel successful, makes us feel like we have control,
self improvement is primarily a beneficial thing. This is the
(10:58):
space in which self improvement is really beneficial and in
which I think all of us can benefit from having
something that we want to achieve and having something that
we do feel compelled to work hard for for our
own satisfaction. And so what happens when this natural striving
for improvement becomes unhealthy? How does it become unhealthy is
(11:21):
maybe a better question. It becomes unhealthy mainly because of
external factors. This inherent drive for growth is a very pure,
positive thing. But when it becomes competitive, when it becomes
a way that we want to prove our self worth
to others, it turns very nasty and toxic. So people
(11:41):
who really criticize self improvement and the self improvement industry,
their main argument is that this approach to life is
too simplistic and would have us derive our entire worth
entirely from what we can achieve from our ability to
push ourselves from our ability just to meet our goals,
rather than the fact that we have worth purely for existing. Basically,
(12:05):
what they're saying is that self improvement has become twisted
and toxic because in this current day and age, it
isn't about what you can do for yourself, and it
isn't about how you can improve how you feel about yourself.
It's basically how you can improve how other people see you. Often,
the push for self improvement stems from societal conditioning rather
(12:29):
than a purely innate drive. In today's very hyper connected,
achievement focused world, there is an unspoken pressure to constantly
be optimizing because of how that will make you appear
to others, because it will allow you to get ahead,
because it will allow you to kind of beat the competition.
Just before we talked about how the purest form of
(12:49):
motivation is intrinsic motivation. On the flip side to intrinsic motivation,
we have extrinsic motivation, and this is really what we're
talking about here, extrinsic motivation. When that takes over, it
means that we only do an activity for an external
reward or to basically avoid punishment. So we lose weight
(13:10):
to impress or attract someone, We run a marathon to
post it on social media. We pursue our artistic passion
purely because we think it's going to make us famous.
We want a promotion simply because we want to prove
that people who doubted us were wrong. The difficulty with
relying purely on extrinsic motivation is that we actually fall
(13:33):
out of love and we forget the reason why we
started something to begin with. Basically, we tell our brain
the only reason to improve ourselves is if other people
acknowledge that we have improved, if other people acknowledge that
this is worthwhile. And so suddenly what was something that
we once genuinely enjoyed doing, felt passionate about doing, wanted
(13:55):
to do for ourselves, turns into a chore. It turns
into a discipline, access size. Sometimes it even turns into
an activity that we use to kind of punish ourselves.
It also turns into something that can be profited off of,
and this is where the self improvement industry really steps
(14:15):
in as a major factor and a major motivator that
intensifies our drive to improve in a negative direction. Think
about it. This industry is worth forty two billion dollars,
and the only reason it's worth that much is because
it excels at identifying insecurities, identifying our desire for betterment
(14:38):
and to impress others and for control, and then offering
us a seemingly very perfect solution. This industry is constantly
putting forward aspirational figures that have very curated, perfect lives
that are then paired with something that you can buy
to have that life yourself, and it's very hard to
(14:59):
res It's that glossy, beautiful, perfect packaging. You know, if
you see someone who is in a perfect relationship, who
has a perfect body, who has perfect skin, a perfect routine,
of course you're going to want that. Because we have
that natural aspirational drive. This industry really does thrive because
it does meet a genuine human need for progress, right,
(15:22):
that's not a bad thing. People do want to feel
good about themselves. It has become toxic in recent years
because it's often completely unrealistic what it's telling you is possible.
It demands complete personal transformation that is actually very hard
to achieve and very costly to achieve. The other thing
(15:42):
is that there's a powerful kind of feedback loop at
play here. Our desire for growth and improvement creates demand,
and the industry supplies it, and then it intensifies our
dissatisfaction with ourselves and our insecurity is to drive even
more demand so that we want their supply. So this
(16:02):
is why we often feel like the bar keeps moving.
This is why we often feel like we are chasing
an ideal that's just not reachable. It's because the moment
that we perhaps achieve the dream life that is being
sold to us, well, they can't make money off of
you anymore. You know, you're no longer a customer, and
(16:24):
so the bar does have to keep getting higher so
that there is still demand for what they're putting out.
What I mean by this is that it's not just
feeling like Nowadays, having a good life isn't just feeling
full and feeling happy and having a job that brings
you purpose. It's also having a skincare routine. And once
you have the skin care routine, it's also having a
(16:46):
really good nighttime routine that involves taking a certain supplement
or that involves a certain eyemask, and once you achieve that,
they go okay, well, actually that's not going to make
you happy. The next thing is that you have to
have the perfect body, and then once you have that,
then we actually need to give you this. There is
no end goal here. There is always going to be
a deficit in your life that a product or a
(17:10):
thing that you can buy will seemingly fulfill and make
better for you. The thing that a lot of people
in this industry have actually gotten really good at, and
I think this has become the tricky thing, is that
they mix the perfect lifestyle with occasionally actually talking about
failure and with occasionally showing themselves as imperfect so you
(17:33):
feel like they're more like you. And by doing that
they also really stoke this sense that hey, maybe I
can actually be like this person. Have you noticed this.
I've noticed this a lot recently. Is there are a
lot of you know, self improvement individuals who will only
talk about failure in the context of it making them better.
(17:56):
They will only talk about the imperfections in the context
of helping them love themselves more. They will only talk
about hard things in the context that they have learned
or they have overcome that hard thing. There is never
this discussion of like, oh, sometimes this is just hard
and this doesn't have a solution and you have to
(18:18):
just sit in the suckiness of life. There is always
a butt, there is always an and there is always
some philosophy or some book or something that you can
then do that they have done that will fix your problem.
The thing is, though you can't buy your way into
(18:41):
a more fulfilling life, you can't buy your way into happiness.
One of you guys, one of the listeners, actually messaged
me about this and I thought what you shared was perfect,
so I'm going to share it here. They gave the
most beautiful summary. If you could buy your way to
self improvement and to perfection, rich people would have no problems,
(19:01):
and yet they do, and in turn, some of the
happiest people have the least. Because this process that we
are all aiming for isn't about what we can buy
isn't about a product, isn't about what we can achieve
for others. It's about personal introspection and there is no
market price for that. There is no thing that can
(19:22):
fast forward that process. You actually just have to do
the hard work. There's an important question that really emerges
from this as well, which is self improvement actually making
us more self centered because it's subtly becoming more about
improving social standing and appearances and the external impression we
have rather than how we feel when no one else
(19:43):
is around. And I think the answer is yes, I
do think that self improvement has made us think about
ourselves way too much. Self help is mainly a Western
idea that makes most of its money in Western countries
like the US, like the UK, like Australia, Canada, where
we know psychologically that a lot of societies are more
(20:04):
individualistic rather than collective. The thing is, though human happiness
and joy fundamentally has community and its center. We were
built to not care about ourselves as much as we
care about others and the collective. And we were built
as well to be loved, to belong, to be cared for,
(20:27):
to care for others, and when we are entirely focused
on self improvement, we obviously have less space to think
about how we could be a better neighbor. We have
less space to think about how we could give back.
We have less space to think about whether we are
available to our friends and our families, to think about
whether we are a good sibling, we are a good partner,
we are a good daughter, whatever. It is. One of
(20:49):
the most robust studies on human happiness ever done, ever conducted,
was a longitudinal study from Harvard and they looked at
people cross their lifespan and they found that more than
personal achievements, more than appearance, the biggest predictor of whether
you were happy was meaningful relationships. Yet, when you know
(21:12):
self improvement becomes hyper individualized, it can erode that for
a lot of people. It can mean that we aren't
focusing on what really matters. Now. Of course, there's a
difference between being self focused, being self obsessed, and being selfish.
And you guys know, even I'm an advocate for being
selfish sometimes and just saying I've got to lock in
(21:33):
and focus on myself because I want more for me.
I need to do this for me, I need this
sense of fulfillment. But how long can naturally last before
you look around and realize, you know, in the pursuit
of becoming the best version of me, I'm actually no
longer a nice person to be around. I'm no longer
someone who's fun. I'm no longer someone who actually is
joyful and enjoys any part of this. Where does that
(21:57):
lead us? Well? I want to introduce you to the
content of self improvement burnout and why it has become
way more common than you may think after this shortbreak.
To stay with us, something that I think is becoming
more and more common is that we are becoming burnt
(22:17):
out not by things we have to do, but by
things that we feel we need to do in order
to be successful and impressive. In that way, sometimes self
care has kind of turned into a weird form of
mental self harm. I have this thing that I do
what I'm feeling overwhelmed, where I look at my to
(22:39):
do list because I realize that a lot of stress
obviously comes from my to do list, but it typically
comes from things that actually don't deserve to be on there.
And I will look at my to do list and
I'll break it down into things that I have to do,
things that I would like to do, and things that
are like complete extras, almost entirely pointless or optional. And
anytime I I'm stressed, I can guarantee you that that
(23:03):
extras list, that optionals list, that would like to list
has become full of things that I feel like I
have to do to impress others, or that I feel
like I have to do to be my very best self,
when actually they're kind of robbing me of a lot
of joy, things like, Okay, today I need to take
in everything shower today, I need to do at least
(23:26):
twenty thousand steps today, I need to do my two
workouts today, I need to meal prep. And yes, those
things would be nice, and yes I'm sure those things
would better me as a person, But actually in that moment,
they're not. They're just creating more stress, and there's no
self improvement actually happening in those moments. It's all like
(23:46):
self flagulation and self sabotage. This is what I call
self improvement burnout. It's a specific kind of exhaustion that
happens when you're constantly pushing yourself, You're constantly striving for more,
you're not taking breaks, you're not reflecting because you are
too caught up in this idea of a perfect life
and these outside goals that aren't actually really helping you
(24:10):
be successful in that moment, your body and your mind.
You are on a machine. You are not a machine
that is designed for endless optimization without periods of recovery
and decompression. In fact, a study that I read recently
essentially concluded that every single one of us needs at
least three and a half hours of downtime a day
(24:31):
to maintain optimal brain health and to actually feel well
rested and to feel good in ourselves and our body.
Some estimates would even tell you that you need more
than that, you need four or five hours. This is
how much time our very ancient bodies and minds would
have been used to in the past. This is what
(24:51):
they were designed to experience, compared to today in a
modern context, where every single hour of our day seems
to counted for. You know, you have to work for
eight to ten hours, then you have to do exercise,
and you have to commute, and you have to focus
on some outside activity that you're invested in, and you
have to see your friends, and you have to do chores,
(25:12):
and all of that does actually accumulate, and it means
that we actually don't function as well as we could. Essentially,
I'm making the argument that we need more space to
simply just exist rather than do. If chasing self improvement
becomes as very rigid, unyielding master, it could completely strip
(25:33):
away the joy that you're meant to have about your
life in the first place. You know what we need
to talk about here. We need to talk about how
self improvement can turn into an obsession with tracking metrics
rather than with how we're feeling. You know, there are
apps for everything these days, for your steps, for your food,
for your sleep, for your productivity. They're helpful for accountability,
(25:55):
but they're also a little bit of a trap. If
every aspect of your life is optimized and measured like
you do lose joy. Numbers become the goal. If working
out only becomes about hitting a certain number of calories burned,
do you even enjoy the movement? If writing only becomes
about hitting a word count, are you actually making your
(26:17):
best work? And are you actually connected with creative flow?
And this is where toxic self improvement can often disguise
itself as discipline. We might tell ourselves no pain, no gain,
You know, I just need to push through this. Nothing
good comes without hard work. Yes, sometimes that's true, but
sometimes discipline is actually just creating unhealthy internal pressure. That
(26:42):
means that when you finally get to the goal, you
don't even enjoy it because you've sacrificed so much that
the process of getting there has brought you zero happiness.
Discipline is a very important part of life. Discipline is
what brings great things into the world and does allow
you to meet your goals. But I really like to
(27:04):
follow the idea of an eighty twenty split. There are
going to be periods of your life or you are
working really hard towards something I think about, you know,
my final year of high school, or my final year
of UNI, or even sometimes when I was writing my
book or when I'm working. There are really busy periods,
and sometimes you do have to lean into the fact
(27:25):
that there is a higher goal that you are really
excited about that you want to work hard for. You
also need that twenty percent to ground you, and you
need that twenty percent to be able to look around
and remain attached to the life you have right now.
It's very easy to get lost in the pursuit of
discipline because it's so romanticized. But a lot of people
(27:47):
who I see occasionally who are quite disciplined actually don't
have very interesting lives, and they actually aren't really interested
in anything other than their goals. And perhaps that's what
they want for their life. And I'm not someone to
judge them or tell them not to do that, But personally,
for me, I don't want to get to the end
(28:07):
of my life and look around and realize that I
spent my whole life disciplined and trying to improve myself
and trying to optimize, and I actually am going to
end up in the same place as everyone else. Is
life really about how much you can optimize your time
or how much you can enjoy your time? We also
have to be cautious of the fact that sometimes discipline
is a sneaky way that our brains can rationalize extreme
(28:30):
behaviors in the name of a goal. If you are
someone who was quite obsessive, if you are someone who
finds they really struggle with perfectionism, they have to do
things perfectly or they can't do them at all, you
should kind of maybe approach discipline with a little bit
of caution, because it's a slippery slope. It's one I
found myself on where what starts with wanting to be
(28:53):
productive comes with being unable to quit even when the
thing you're pursuing is no longer making you happy, even
when your life is kind of falling apart. External goals
that you put one hundred and twenty percent of yourself
into are actually, at the end of the day, you know,
really great distractions for deeper dissatisfaction. It's a great way
(29:14):
to never actually look at your life and contemplate what
would truly make you happy and what is maybe under
the surface that you need to unpack when you aren't
able to hide behind constant goals, when you can't hide
behind constant explanations, or something bigger than yourself that you
need to achieve. Here's another subtle, bit insidious trap that
self improvement content can sometimes trick us into over intellectualizing
(29:38):
and consuming without actually making changes, consuming instead of applying,
watching but never learning, thinking that we're doing something about
a problem or in insecurity that we have when we're
actually not really engaging on a deeper level. I think
this is especially common when we excessively consume self help
(29:59):
content and rather than apply it because we think that
it's fixing something in our brain when we bury ourselves
in podcasts like this one, or books or seminars or
online courses, and we're gathering vast amounts of information and
psychological insights but never actually implementing them into actionable steps.
The thing about this is that it can feel productive,
(30:20):
it can feel like you're doing something meaningful, but again,
it is a form of false discipline, or a form
of procrastination, or perhaps the substitute for real work. You
know all the strategies, you know how to improve productivity,
you know how to improve your relationships. But having knowledge
and doing something about it are completely different things. Sometimes
(30:43):
I feel like there's a certain kind of person who
and I used to be this, who consumes a lot
of self help content and becomes kind of like a
knowledge hoarder rather than a knowledge applier. And I think
sometimes the reason that I at least did it and
some other people may do it is because it feels
like if we just know a little bit more, if
we just know a little bit more we have to
know everything, then we can finally act. Then we can
(31:06):
finally make a decision about what the right thing is
to do, but it just ends up being mental clutter.
Like you just end up being more confused. That is why,
you know. On my podcast, I always try to give
you guys good tools that you can actually apply to
your life, that are accessible and realistic, so that what
you're hearing isn't just information, it's things that you can implement.
(31:28):
It's not just a you know, it's not just clutter.
This is kind of a nice place to actually shift
gears and talk about what is a healthy approach to
self improvement. We kind of have already talked about it.
I just want to give you a few more steps
to identify when it is healthy versus unhealthy. A truly
healthy approach to self improvement thrives on, firstly, clarity around
(31:52):
what you actually want to do and why you actually
want to do it. Is this goal that you've set
intrinsically or extrinsic motivated? Is there a genuine problem here
or are you just searching for something wrong in your
life as a proxy for something deeper that you don't
actually want to address. A truly healthy approach is one
(32:13):
that is quite honest, one that is quite honest about
your intentions, your motivations, what you are actually capable of
and is honest about the outcome. This big thing that
you may want, it probably won't completely change your life.
It probably won't make you the most successful, best version
of you if you haven't done the deeper internal work
(32:36):
in a practical way, through therapy, through really knowing yourself,
through experience, through testing yourself first. I think it's also
important that you know what your enough point is. You
know what you're really working towards, before you start a project,
before you start a new workout routine, before you start
(32:57):
a goal, before you start you know a new career trajectory.
For example, if you have a lofty goal of wanting
to be fitter and healthier, you need some kind of
end goal for that where you're going to allow yourself
to sit back and just be happy. This really counteracts
(33:17):
the idea that we have to constantly be getting better.
You also need to have points where you can reflect
and look back and see how far you've come. And
sometimes having smaller goals or having an enough point for
the current phase of your goal is really crucial so
that you are constantly not just on a path that
or not just raising the bar in yourself, not just
(33:38):
on a ladder that never ends. You're actually able to say, Wow,
I'm really proud of how far I've come. I'm really
proud of where I am at right now. Maybe I
don't need to get better, Maybe I don't need to
improve from here. This is where I always imagine myself.
This also requires, you know, setting realistic expectations based on
your actual resources, not based on someone else's resources, not
(34:01):
based on anyone else's commitment or energy levels or time.
What are you actually capable of? Realistically, if you plan
three runs and you run three times, that's a success.
Don't beat yourself up for not running five times like
someone else if you know running five times a week
was never realistic. Please be careful with not setting parameters
(34:25):
that can be achieved by people who don't have full
time jobs, don't have the same kind of financial stresses
that you may have, have entire teams behind them, have
personal assistance. Just because you can't meet that same level
as them doesn't mean you are failing. They wouldn't even
be able to meet that same level if they didn't
(34:47):
have the resources that they had. When you are comparing
yourself to someone online who seemingly has everything together and
is the most efficient, productive person out there. Take a
second and think about what you are not seeing, which
is the amount of help that they receive, the amount
of people that are on their teams, on their side,
(35:09):
the luxury that is afforded to them by wealth, by significance,
by having a platform. All of that does stack up.
And just promise me that even if you have big goals,
which of course are important, and which you are allowed
and should have, just take a break every now and
again and do something purely for the heck of it.
Do something that serves no greater purpose, that has no meaning,
(35:32):
that has nothing to do with success, nothing to do
with productivity, nothing to do with your current goal. Just
do it. Do something just because you want to, Like,
take a day off, just because you want to go
see a movie at two pm, just because you want
to do something fun in a mango in the shower,
like I don't know, just go to the dog park
and just like lie and it comes from the dogs,
(35:54):
just because you want to, Like I also want to stress. Again,
life is not just about optimization. It's also about enjoyment.
You will lead and you will find yourself constantly miserable.
If the only thing you ever enjoy or feel proud
of doing is something that only comes from pushing yourself really,
really hard. There are so many just like simple things
(36:16):
that require no work to feel good about, that require
no effort to enjoy. Make sure you have a good
mixture of those things as well. Okay, we're going to
take a short break, but when we return, I have
a couple listener questions before we wrap up, so stay
with us. Okay, welcome back to our discussion on self improvement?
(36:39):
Can it go too far? Has it gone too far?
We're going to talk through some more interesting questions that
you guys sent me on the topic of self improvement,
starting with this question, which I thought was just a
really nice, lighthearted one to begin with. What it's some
actually good and worthwhile self improvement resources that you personally use.
I really like this question because you know, obviously, working
(36:59):
in the space like I do, still engage in self
help content quite a bit, and I still find it
really useful to give me a different perspective and interesting.
A couple of books that I really love, The Alchemist.
I think this book is self helpy without being too
self helpy, and I love it. The Four Agreements also
kind of like another spiritual coded book that I find
(37:24):
really interesting. The Untethered Soul is another one I tend
to prefer like more spiritual books for my self help books,
just because I spend so much time in the science
with this podcast, I genuinely think I would read at
least or at least look at fifty plus academic articles
every single week, so I get enough from that. When
(37:45):
I engage in self help reading, I want something that's
a bit more introspective and light I guess, not light,
but a bit less scientific. I also really like personal memoirs.
I think that personal memoirs are a really great place
to start slash go to if you are kind of
sick of, you know, reading the same old self help
(38:05):
books all the time. The Book of Joy is another
one that I really really like. It's about happiness, it's
about humanity, it's about gratitude, it's about what it means
to live a good life, which I think is something
we could all benefit from. I also really like the
Dare app. It's like a meditation anti anxiety app that
(38:25):
I find really useful, and it's practical and it will
get straight to the heart of your problem immediately, especially
if you're someone who's dealing with anxious thoughts or dealing
with how to approach fear. Also a podcast that I love.
Two podcasts that I love. I love solgam by Victoria
Hudgens The Daily Victorian on Instagram. She has actually been
(38:47):
on the podcast before. I just love how she intersects spirituality, philosophy,
and psychology. I think that is so powerful. Do You
Fucking Mind? By Alexis Fernandez is also another part podcast
that I adore. She is also a personal friend of
mine and she is a neuroscientist. I love getting content
from people who know their shit, and I love getting
(39:10):
content from people who are experts but also have a
lot of empathy rather than just like a one track
mind when approaching topics like this, I like people who
are willing to see different sides of something and willing
to open the door to a discussion or two different
ways of approaching it, rather than just being like, this
is the best way to go about something and there
(39:31):
is no other alternative. So those are kind of my
favorite resources. This next question, I really love when is
the right time to be disciplined versus when do I
know that I need to take a break? I think
you need to take a break when you don't even
care about the outcome anymore, when you're thinking more about
how other people will view you more than how this
goal will change your view of yourself. When it's becoming suffocating,
(39:54):
when it's overwhelming everything else, when there's nothing about it
that you even lightly enjoy, When when you just feel
like you need a break, is when you need a break.
You know, discipline, it's incredible, it's a great skill. We
need it to follow through. It can't be your whole life.
Make sure you have some spontaneity and some fun. There
was kind of a second part to this question, which
(40:15):
is how to know when you've consumed enough self help content?
So not just how to know when you've pushed yourself
too far in terms of a goal, but how to
know when you've overwhelmed yourself with more answers than you need.
I think you know that you've consumed too much self
help content when you can't trust yourself anymore, when you
(40:36):
always need someone else to give you the answer, to
provide reassurance or an explanation, rather than just being prepared
to learn, to experience and to try things out and
make mistakes. When you're intellectualizing and gathering information rather than
doing things, you're missing out on the most crucial part
of learning, which is of course experience. There is only
(41:00):
so much someone can tell you. There's only so much
guidance someone can tell you before you have to go
out there and try it yourself and feel it yourself.
It's like someone can describe to you the most beautiful
tasting cake, but you're not actually gonna enjoy the taste
of it until you try it yourself. Someone can, you know,
tell you the most amazing way to get something out
(41:23):
of life, like the most amazing mindset shift. You're not
going to actually know what that feels like until you
commit to trying it. Also, when you feel like you
don't know what to think anymore and it's making you
more confused rather than bringing you clarity, that's when I
think you really need to take a step back and
just like read something different, watch something different, enjoy like
(41:45):
your guilty Pleasure TV show, watch them Love Island. Like
there's no police that's going to come around and be
like you're brain rotting and you're consuming things that aren't intellectuals,
So like we're taking away that self improvement badge from
you like you're not a fully demids human, Like, shame
on you. No one's going to do that. It's actually
good to let your brain be kind of gilly and
(42:07):
kind of lizarity every now and again. This is a
question that I really really thought was important to bring
up here because we didn't necessarily cover a lot of
it in the episode, so hopefully I can give it
some airtime here. How does the self improvement industry harm
or influence our perceptions of chronic illness? I have been
thinking a lot about this question since I first came
(42:30):
across it in my Instagram DMS. I think the biggest
issue is that the self improvement industry is so focused
on productivity and so focused on personal responsibility that it
kind of implies that wellness is always within our control,
and it kind of implies that everyone should be capable
(42:52):
of doing the same things when that is not the case.
And just because your abilities are different doesn't mean your
worth life us. Just because you can't wake up at
five am and then you know, go to bed at
twelve and work as many hours as possible and do
six workouts a day, like, just because you can't do that,
doesn't mean you're a failure, right, It just means that
(43:13):
your body is different. And I think the wellness space
in particular, and particularly like the fitness space self improvement space,
it's really focused on productivity and doing as much with
your hours as possible. And often that muchness means a
lot of effort and a lot of time and not
(43:35):
a lot of rest. And if you are someone who
struggles with exhaustion or has a kind of physical impairment,
or if you're someone who has a different brain to
someone else, like that's not always going to be possible
for you. It doesn't mean that this person and people
who are able to do that are better. I think
it can also lead to a lot of shame or
(43:56):
guilt or a sense of failure that you're not able
to work hard enough to heal yourself. You should be
able to heal yourself through your mindset. If your mindset
is strong enough, you can overcome anything, including a chronic condition.
And it's like that's literally ridiculous, Like no, like, no
matter how powerful your mindset is, no matter how productive
(44:18):
and efficient and powerful your mental state is, like, so
there are just things that aren't possible and that doesn't
mean that you are giving up. It just means that
you understand your limits, and that in itself is actually
a lot more powerful than just saying yes to everything
and being someone who can stretch themselves so thin that
(44:41):
they become exhausted and actually take their health for granted.
I think this space just sometimes really dismisses the realities
of chronic illness, and it really oversimplifies, It really oversimplifies
and focuses more on mindset than it should, and it
kind of sidelines the voice of those whose conditions don't
(45:02):
fit into the industry's neat you know, like before and
after success stories, or don't fit into this narrative that
you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, like
you could if you wanted to. But do you want
to and is it actually the best thing for your health?
And should you force yourself to make yourself less well
(45:22):
just to prove something to someone else, just to prove
that you have worth because you can meet their standards,
the standards that weren't set with you in mind. No.
So I think it is actually a really big issue,
and I think it's one that I really should do
a whole episode on how self improvement and the self
help space sidelines the voices of people with chronic illnesses,
(45:42):
not just mental health issues, but physical disabilities and so
much more because it is something that feels largely invisible.
So thank you so much for that question. I'm going
to do a whole episode on it, I think, so
we'll talk about that more later down the line. I'm
going to answer this final question, and I love this question.
(46:02):
I love this question because it's a little bit different
to what we've talked about. This person says, I don't
get the hate with the self improvement space. Is it
really that bad to want better for myself? I don't
think it's toxic to work hard, and I don't think
that discipline is an evil word. I also agree with you, Actually,
I think that you are totally right. It's not bad
(46:23):
to want better for yourself. It's actually amazing and it's
great that you've been able to identify something that or
a collection of things that you think will make your
life better. But I do think the reason you believe
this is because you have the right attitude. Everything that
you are saying sounds like you meet all the kind
of all the checklists, all the categories for someone who
(46:46):
approaches self improvement positively. You're doing it for intrinsic reasons,
You're self motivated, you're doing it to align with your purpose,
and it sounds like you're not falling into a toxic
trap with discipline, which means that it's amazing for you,
and it means that you are really focused on elevating
yourself from an authentic position. I think I've laid out
(47:06):
all the reasons that it becomes toxic, but just to
reiterate them, it really becomes toxic when it's not for us,
when it's for someone else, when we're not doing it
for inherent enjoyment or or to prove to ourselves something,
and when it's dominating our entire lives so that there
is space for nothing else. Nothing is ever entirely one
(47:28):
thing or another. The same can be said about self improvement.
There are such beautiful parts of it, and I continue
to have goals that I want to strive towards. I
continue to have things about my life that I do
think could be better, but I also don't let that
take away from the appreciation that I have for the
things of my life that are already great. And I
think that is the healthy space to be in and
(47:48):
it sounds like you're in that healthy space as well.
So congratulations, Thank you so much. If you have made
it this far, I want to hear your thoughts about
self improvement in the comments below. If you agreed, if
you didn't with something that I said, even better, what
are your thoughts? How do you know when it's going
too far in your life? But also I want you
to share a piece of content a self improvement project, book,
(48:13):
podcast series, seminar. Whatever it is that you think is
actually a genuinely positive beacon of light in the space
and that you think people should be engaging in. What
are the positive examples of self improvement that you consume
or that you see that you think others could benefit
from knowing from as well? So thank you again for listening.
(48:34):
Make sure that you are following along wherever you're listening
to this podcast on Apple, on Spotify, on the iHeartRadio app.
I don't know where you're listening from, but make sure
you hit that follow slash subscribe button. Make sure that
you leave a five star review as well if you
feel called to do so, and share this episode with
a family member, with a friend with a colleague with
your followers if you think that this is a discussion
(48:55):
that needs to go further than just you and I.
I think that it's something we need to talk about more,
and I hope others agree with me, so I'd love
for you to be able to share it and bring
more people's attention to this. As always, as we wrap
up our episode, I want to remind you all to
stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, and as always,
we will talk very very soon. Thanks for joining me.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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