If You’re Serious About Transforming Your Life, Ditch Self-Improvement and Focus on Self-Destruction

Why tactical self-destruction is the true secret to transforming your life for the better

The Hard Truth You Need To Face

We are born to evolve. We go through phases of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and ultimately the several stages of adulthood — literally emerging into a new version of ourselves leaving a shadow of who we once were behind.

No wonder why there exists this constant thirst of wanting to improve ourselves. To become better than we once were yesterday.

Let me guess, you’re trying to improve yourself because you have this deep-seated feeling inside of you that’s screaming that there exists a part of you that is lacking.

You want to grow into that ideal version of yourself with ease and you believe that if you were to only work hard that there is nowhere else you can go but up — like a steep incline hill with a direct shot to the top.

Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. Life is more similar to a rigorous hiking trail equipped with all its twists, turns, and obstacles forcing you to trailblaze through unpaved paths.

The truth is, everything in life worth having comes with a price. You can’t expect that just because you committed yourself to growth that you’re actually going to grow.

Similarly, you can’t expect that just because you write down your goals and think very hard about your biggest, wildest dreams — like the Law of Attraction tells you to do — that the universe will magically hear you out, commit some mysterious voodoo, and manifest your dreams into reality all while you sit on the couch munching away at your favorite bag of chips.

You’re not that special beautiful snowflake that you make yourself out to be.

You’re not the center of the universe.

Your success story isn’t going to be any easier than the next one no matter how many advertisements force-feed you crappy beliefs like, “Lose weight without giving up your favorite foods!”, “Get abs in 6 minutes!”, or my favorite “Make $50,000 a month without working hard.”

The true success story lies beyond the realm of great sacrifice — the commitment to bargain a piece of yourself and make that deal with the devil that you’re battling within you.

After all, the things we appreciate the most in life often comes as a result of the value generated from the things we gave up.

“A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will in his hands, amount to nothing.” — Frederick Douglass

Be A F***ing Phoenix

In mythology, the phoenix bursts and combusts into a show of flames at the end of its life to be reborn again from the ash of its predecessor to be stronger than they once were before — better equipped to accomplish their life’s mission.

The phoenix serves to be a symbol of unwavering perseverance that keeps moving forward despite the obstacles that arise in its path, literally sacrificing who it once was to become a better version of itself. It is the sacrifice of its own life that makes the phoenix stronger.

Be a phoenix. Destroy a piece of yourself for the purpose of creating a greater version of yourself. Eliminate the bad to make room for the good.

Don’t improve upon a failing system. Instead, create a system from the ground up and craft your own reality in the way you imagine it. Building out the raw materials of success through the deconstruction of old habits.

Before I started on the path to becoming a Division I College Athlete, I had to eliminate all self-limiting beliefs.

Before I could learn anything of value from a book, I had to destroy the pre-existing notions and habits I had to make room to receive and practice the ideas conveyed in said book.

Before I could become entirely self-reliant, I had to let go of all the pain I was feeling from losing my father at a young age and learn to instead channel that pain into personal strength.

Before I could become a devout Stoic, I had to learn how to sacrifice that part of myself that wanted to feel like he was a victim of circumstance rather than the master of his reality.

Maybe you need to destroy the part of yourself that likes to stay up late and scroll on your phone in bed.

Maybe you need to destroy the part of yourself that flouts responsibility and embraces procrastination.

All you need to do is just let go. Minimize roadblocks by tearing it away from you. Just define the roadblock yourself and break straight through it.

Improvement Follows Destruction: Practice Is Only Worth Something If You’re Practicing a Proven System

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t aim to improve at all. Progress is after all made in due part to making ourselves better and refining our daily practice.

What this means is that you should stop wasting your time trying to constantly practice and improve upon methods that don’t seem to be working. It’s a cyclical self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take Kodak for instance, the camera company that coined the famous term, “a Kodak moment”. Despite Kodak being one of the biggest photography companies in the world back in its prime, they avoided adopting the digital camera and instead focused solely on improving and marketing their film-based business model which was their claim to fame.

Huge mistake. Their failure to adapt and eliminate their old strategies is exactly what led Kodak to fall from grace and land into a dark pit of bankruptcy in 2012. The same type of story can be parallelly seen with Blockbuster and its lost battle against streaming titans such as Netflix.

Needless to say, you first need to focus on what you need to eliminate and change before you can focus on improvement.

Adapt and evolve to the most optimized and efficient method of doing things. This may take some searching but if anything, this whole search allows you to discover what you should and shouldn’t be focusing on in your journey to a self-actualized future.

When you find something that works, only then should you improve that one thing, that one part of you relentlessly to the point of flawless perfection.

It is when you focus on this mixture of improvement and destruction that true greatness is found.

Final Thoughts

Let the odds play in your favor and create your own luck by folding the bad hands.

Strategically destroy parts of yourself to ultimately create a clear path for you to follow to your ideal self.

Remember: the “new” you will never be equivalent to the “old” you — best to leave the “old” you in the shadows of your past.