It’s Okay If You’re Not Constantly Growing
The idea of self-help being a constant work in progress is a lie.
One thing that I’ve worked on over the years is to understand the nuances of particular phrases and meanings. Through my media consumption, I’ve noticed subtle things like how workers go on strike, newscasters frame it as the consumer suffering because of it rather than the actual reason the workers are striking (i.e. the owner of the company exploiting said workers).
When it comes to self-help specifically, one thing I’ve caught myself on and have stopped doing is telling people that we are constant works in progress. That our goals in life are to be constantly improving.
On the surface, the rhetoric makes sense. If you stop learning or growing or improving in any way, you’re merely coasting through life without any purpose.
It’s that whole Einstein quote all over again:
“Once you stop learning, you start dying.”
In a world where there is no shortage of problems, we don’t really question our self-improvement journey. We settle with the idea that we will constantly be improving and looking for new things we can do to maximize our output in anything and everything.
Everyone has some “hacks” on being better friends, partner, being the perfect form of physical prowess, and becoming a multi-millionaire in 5 years by starting up a company and hustling really hard.
And I get that.
But the more time I spend in the self-help industry and understand more about how it works, the more I see these tactics advocating for something worse and that people end up regressing rather than improving. And a lot of that has to do with the person’s mindset and how they view certain statements.
Constant Improvement Keeps Us In A Loop
One of the strongest self-help guru’s tool in their arsenal is the loop. It’s a series of instilling specific emotions that lead you to think they are the only person you can rely on all because they are making you feel good.
You create this illusion that they care about you and are empathetic even though their overall actions don’t speak to that at all. Instead they use various tactics to get you to rely on them.
And one of those particular tricks is this over-arching idea of self-help being this constant work in progress.
Even if you’re looking to a guru for a specific problem you’re dealing with, a self-help guru doesn’t just focus on that one issue. They talk about improving your diet, being in a better relationship, regulating emotions, growing a business, and so on. They touch on all manner of life goals and life aspects.
They position themselves as though they know how to optimize those things since they “cracked the code” and have already gotten to that point.
They instil that deep down you want to be like them. So much so you’ll buy whatever they suggest or subscribe to.
And while improving our lives and having a better life is a good thing and worth pursuing, many rich self-help gurus imply that the goal for humanity is a constant improvement. After all, in every industry out there, there is always some kind of advancement or discovery. Technology a decade ago is so different from current technology.
But the self-help industry isn’t exactly innovative as the tech industry.
Similar to philosophy, there are innovations in thinking processes but the industry itself doesn’t change much from that. It largely changes based on how the world changes.
Tony Robbins in a video encouraged how you can meet new people is by cracking jokes. In the video he pretended to be a brown man and walked up to an Arabic man smiling and said “Hey I’m a terrorist too! How’s it going?”
The video was recorded around the time 9/11 happened and I presume is still featured in his seminars based on this one’s account.
Because self-help changes along with world events and the times, innovation looks more like jumping onto the latest trend and hyping it. That much is clear as there is no shortage of gurus talking about AI courses and how to leverage AI.
But because self-help isn’t that innovative, a lot of these “innovations” lack substance. There’s nothing really new. You can easily look up the exact same stuff that these gurus are teaching. Or you can even use whatever tools they’re talking about on your own.
But it’s this presentation that these products they are offering are improvements to your life or will change it forever that keep you more in this loop.
Rejecting it is totally fine and is likely to be better for you than buying whatever they’re selling.
We Will Always Have Flaws… Including Wanting To Grow
By design we are born to make mistakes. Unlike characters in a video game, there isn’t really optimal strategies for us in the real world. For sure there are certain things about the world and we consider these as rules, but to achieve a goal there isn’t just one way to go about it.
There is no specific method to becoming good at a certain skill. But we do know that to develop skills, you need to practice.
Because of this universal rule, truly growing yourself doesn’t have to be boiled down to what another guru or myself tells you. In the end, we’re merely projecting our beliefs and views.
And it’s up to you to process them, pick them apart, and apply them in your own life.
The problem is when it comes to self-help gurus a lot are in that camp about growth being this constant thing. Your “end point” is when you spot the next mountain for you to climb. There is never this point where you reach the peak and you’re just content.
I know I’ve certainly implied that in the past where we need to be constantly moving and growing, finding something else to give our lives meaning.
It’s okay to not be constantly growing because it allows you the opportunity to relax and truly enjoy what you have accomplished. It allows you to waste your time a little. To be “sub-optimal”.
It gets me to think that deep down, working to be optimal in every aspect of our lives is a flaw. That this idea to be constantly growing is similar to the concept of perfectionism. It’s an illusion to be truly perfect and there comes a point where what it takes to inch closer to that peak is to spend more time doing something that only enriches us slightly.
I compare it to sites improving SEO. A website’s rank is important and it’s key to improve it. But when there are thousands of criteria and things to account for, optimizing for half or more of those criteria is better time spent rather than worrying about a few specific criteria.
Our lives work in a similar fashion where everything is important, but by focusing on being optimized in everything can make you lose the point of what it means to grow.
It’s Important To Ask What Is “Enough”
The key to breaking this cycle comes down to what you define as “enough”. What is enough in your life? Truly? Obviously our goals change as we grow and we learn about new things in our lives. However what enough establishes is a base line for you to be working towards.
It demands you to be present with yourself and to figure out what is missing in your life and establishing steps and goals to get you to that point. What does a healthy looking version of yourself look like? How much money do you need to support the lifestyle that you want to lead? What is your ideal relationship look like? How many people do you think you need to be socially satisfied?
Even though there are a lot of needs in our lives, the idea is to find how much is needed for yourself and to determine whether that amount is sustainable for you too. It runs counter to the whole idea that we are constantly improving or that we shouldn’t feel satisfied or rest on our current laurels.
But at the same time, there comes a point where optimizing too much becomes a waste of time or that you neglect other parts of your life that are equally important.
Really all that life is is finding that sweet sweet balance.
It is perhaps that which is a never ending journey as new developments form and the world changes little by little. It’s being adaptive that is changing but it’s more towards being able to survive and sustain ourselves rather than trying to grow larger like the gurus imply through their work.
Self-help teaches that while we should be striving for more, it’s also important to be showing gratitude for what we do have in life. It’s a subtle reminder that greed can overtake us and it can lead to our lives being ruined or regressing.
It’s ironic that rich self-help gurus preach this when they themselves have ample of money and are living the dream. And yet instead of thinking this is enough, they find more ways to be making more and more money. Whether that’s through seminar after seminar, charging thousands for coaching or speaking gigs, among many other avenues.
In the end, it’s better to take their words with a grain of salt. To move past your reliance on them and determine what kind of life you want to live. Because in the end, gurus are just projecting their desires. And for a lot of rich self-help gurus they want us to think growth is a perpetual and constant thing because it results in us buying more of their stuff rather than moving past them and achieving our goals and dreams.
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