Self Improvement Is A Fight, But You Decide Whether This Fight Elevates You Or Destroys You

No one can guarantee you that your best will be good enough to achieve your high goals. But that’s not what life is all about

Yesterday my goal was to write 3,000 words for my new novel and two articles for Medium. I wanted to finish it at four in the afternoon.

At eight in the evening, I had finally written the second article. I was exhausted but happy, even if I had missed my time goal clearly.

In the past, I would have been dissatisfied with myself, because I know that I could have achieved my original goal if I had had a little more self-discipline during the day.

I extended my lunch break to over an hour and watched Netflix. Then I lay down on the sofa for another half hour and slept.

After that, I wrote the last thousand words for my novel and decided to go jogging before I started writing the articles.

I was procrastinating. Although I knew I was procrastinating, I couldn’t prevent it.

In the past, I would have seen it as defeat.

At the end of a day, when I had written a total of almost 5,000 words and jogged seven kilometers, I would have seen myself as a loser and would have gone to bed in a bad mood.

What bullshit.

Not even six years ago, what I did yesterday would have been an inexplicable miracle. If I hadn’t made small steps in my development over the years, I would never have become so productive.

Today I know that. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was on the wrong path, and Self Improvement was a fight with clenched teeth, blood, and sweat for me.

The Danger of Rapid Progress

When you realize for the first time that you basically have infinite possibilities to improve yourself and your life, it’s like being enlightened.

I don’t know what it was for you. For me, it was the book How To Get What You Want by Raymond Hull that opened my eyes. All you had to do was set concrete goals, believe in them, and then patiently put them into practice in small steps.

That immediately made sense to me. And then for years, I didn’t do anything at all about what was in that book. Later I added other books and inspiring blog articles. And one day, I started to follow some of the advice from the Self Improvement scene. And it worked.

Wow, what incredible progress I made.

Someone should have told me that the learning curve for beginners is always steep. If you’ve never done anything before, you can do it one hundred percent better after the first session than before. And that feels great.

Unfortunately, that also raises false expectations. Nobody tells the beginner that the progress becomes more and more difficult with time. Nobody tells you that on the way up, you will always reach Plateaus, where you will stay for a long time, even though you try even harder than before.

It’s the same everywhere — in sport, in learning a language or in self-improvement, which can include all kinds of activities — the rapid progress from the beginning is slowing down.

As soon as someone notices this, he usually reacts in one of two ways. Either he gives up, or he continues and loses the ease. The latter has happened to me.

I wrote over twenty books, became faster and faster at writing, and finally published a book every two months. In my best month, I earned over 8000 Euros, and yet I was dissatisfied because it was a daily struggle to be so productive.

It was still difficult for me every morning to start writing and achieve my own daily goals.

Why was that so? Because I expected that I would become better, faster, and more successful. But every book only sold as well as the previous one. And sometimes I even sold less than the last book.

There was no progress, but the work remained the same. I thought I was doing something wrong.

The healthier attitude

Today I know that success never increases linearly. We don’t always get better and more successful with what we do. We stagnate, take a step backward, and then catch up again. That’s the only way the game works.

Of course, this also applies to the vast field of Self Improvement. We don’t start being more disciplined today and then get better every day. And while we’re at it: We never get anywhere either. We’re not working towards a golden end state where we made it.

As soon as we understand that Self Improvement and all related activities are a process that derives its value from itself, we suddenly see much clearer.

Since I have understood this, I can also enjoy barely perceptible progress. Above all, however, I now define progress differently.

Running training is successful as soon as it has taken place, and not only when I have set a new best time.

A writing day is successful when I have written something instead of doing nothing at all.

A book is a success when I’ve published it, not when it’s sold a thousand times.

Why are these successes for me? Because it is concrete steps that bring me closer to my distant goals, no matter how much closer.

Every day is a success if you have taken even one step in the right direction.

If you can internalize this view of things, Self Improvement is a perpetual celebration and no more struggle against yourself.

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