SELF-IMPROVEMENT HUMOR

The Great Do-Something Heroes

Self-Improvement Ain’t What it’s Cracked Up To Be

“Do something!” say the self-help gurus. Sounds cool, but there is a problem, especially when you are doing it for all the wrong reasons. You do something like exercise or whatever it is you do, out of fear of what may come for not doing something. You do these things out of fear of being shamed or guilt-tripped.

You do not do something today to get over yesterday’s regret. That is childish thinking; I will do something to cover up something bad, after all, I am entitled to skip my emotional pains. I cannot afford to bear a bad mood. I deserve only good moods.

Now, where would all the accumulated bad feelings go away? God will eat it up for me because I am being a good boy now? Really? Not that you can one day straightaway wake up and begin to righteously feel your feelings while bullshitting all the way from the beginning — it is not that easy as “self-righteous” prigs show off by saying “life is hard” but want it to be so easy at any cost. Yes indeed, it is hard and not stupidly easy like you just have to find the right mechanic to unscrew away nonsense from your head.

From my personal experience, a rather boring and lazy day forced me to look into a popular self-improvement superstar guru’s blog. He writes in his blog to simply do — do not bother about your inner-conflicts or pain, instead, just do what he does and repeat it. So I went up to the terrace — thinking I got the million-dollar trick to live out my days — and tried some push-ups with my feet placed over a chair.

The thing is, if I obey him, then I will feel validated and get to join the good boy club. But reality had different plans; the chair slipped, my already once dislocated shoulder slipped again, my face hit flat on the floor, and then fucking pain. I controlled my scream and ate up the pain. Perhaps, it was a message from the universe to not blindly follow those gurus and stop being so clever.

Maybe the self-improvement guru–who depends too much on his therapist to make sure he looks independent–might have been advised to just get on with do-something if a bad mood arises. Do not think, do not reflect, and do not take bad feelings. Skip on!

A self-help guru gives you petty little dull habits and routines to keep you safe in your comfort zone — to make you feel like a successful hero. Actually, it is nothing more than a trick that prevents you from seeing how miserable you are. We never need to question why we feel lazy or why we get into addictions, etc. Instead, we cleverly replicate some habits of highly effective control freaks— while remaining dead inside. What could be more comfortable than that, you, the great discomfort chaser?

If at all we stopped giving a fuck about self-help gurus and their motivational doses, they wouldn’t feel validated and hence, get depressed. They will be forced to do something else to feel good rather than shaming vulnerable people into obedience. They ask you to thrive, but if you care to look, they are actually thriving at your expense. To be honest, they mostly thrive on the guilt of privileged porn addicts with the promise of making them a stoic or a “right doing” hero.

The evolution, so far, has not found any necessity to appoint self-help gurus to save us from what we think about ourselves in our spare time; they are self-appointed.

What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. — Oscar Wilde

After all, if someone approves of us, then we do not have to face the feelings of shame or confusion anymore because they are the God who decides what is good, bad, right, and wrong. Everything is decided as good and right according to their comfort.

If you are in a total mess, do not worry, all you have to do is to clean your bedroom and pretend you got your brain in order. Also, you get to bypass the guilt associated with last night's masturbation.

Another thing is kindness. A guru will ask you to be violently kind — ignore the irony. If kindness is what works then use it. He will tell you when to be kind and not, according to his mood. Everything is about completing a goal to feel good, so if you act out kindness then you can afford to feel good about it, and not because you intrinsically feel anything good by being kind.

One of the rules set by a self-improvement guru is to grab a kitten walking down the road and pet it. The kitten may just want to be left alone and not be treated as a mere object to show off your kindness and superiority, nevertheless, you should grab it and do as he says. Use it!

Also volunteer at soup kitchens, not because you inherently feel a need to help others, but to tell yourself you are good by doing so. In that way, you can hold on to your selfishness and also bypass the guilt of being a selfish brat. Use those homeless! To understand this clearly, read this conversation with a beggar.

Same with socializing, go and socialize as some sort of a task. And not because you feel joy out of connecting with others but merely out of fear of having to expose your social awkwardness at some point if not to have regularly practiced socializing. Pretend and earn points!

Why don’t you make your own rules and ask him to follow that, rather than following his crazy rules in which he can quite assuredly and comfortably look like a winner? If he wants to win, let him try to be like you, instead of you trying to be like him.

A self-improvement guru will travel, work hard, marry, do ted talks, etc. not because he wants to, but only to prove to himself that he can do all these things and declare himself a winner. He cannot have a peaceful sleep otherwise. If this is not a case of neuroticism then I do not know what is.

Regarding finding a partner, the idea is to use the opposite sex to prove to himself that he is worthy. Let that empath (partner) put up with his narcissism. She might even pretend, endure, fake happiness, and get cancer all to help our childish hero maintain his “good going” self-image knowing that the childish hero who is greatly invested in his “good life living guy” be never offended. He might take great pride as if he is in a mature relationship while ignoring the other possible perspectives, for example, like seeing from the eyes of his partner. But he is safe as long as he is full of himself and his stupid ideologies.

He is a privileged adult, who at some point in his life, reads some expensive psychology books, and becomes guilt-tripped and shame-tripped for being a selfish lazy brat. He foolishly thinks: I need to get over this bad feeling and look like the great stoic or the courageous hero. I can’t bear the shame anymore. At this point, the panic hits, and he would do anything to make sure he doesn’t look like a selfish failure. So he convinces himself that staying away from playing video games is altruistic.

If this is not selfishness — compulsiveness to maintain self-importance — I do not know what is.

He is saying he will not use the opportunity to go through his bad feelings and guilt-tripped mental state. He won’t grow up and be genuinely useful to others, but he will do something to prove he became the great stoic hero. That way he can coach others and feel good about himself — and back to the video games.

He will shout from his privileged couch to stand for values, fight injustice — the blog warrior.

You cannot have the cake and eat it too without getting diarrhea. — NoOneSaidSo

Again, back to the great do-something.

You do not do something because you had been programmed to think that you could afford to be happy and pat your own back if you get to do something. That will be like doing for the wrong reasons and moreover, it is a kind of manufacturing good-feelings artificially. That is, you do not derive any sense of joy in engaging in an activity, but you are merely using an activity so you can later think ‘I did it’ and so feel some security–because you are programmed or advised so by self-improvement gurus.

He might say ‘fuck feelings!’, but he doesn’t really mean it. What he really means is: ‘fuck bad feelings and artificially manufacture good feelings.’ He hopes to be free from the bad feelings that life keeps throwing back at him for his unwillingness to take responsibility for it (though he will shamelessly yell at us to take responsibility) by manufacturing fake good feelings.

So if you are a person who lost their son or daughter, he might advise you to fuck your bad feelings about it and chill out. After all, he had also lost one of his random internet friends and he was sad for like 2 minutes and then said to himself ‘fuck him!, he is dead anyway, I ain’t gonna waste my time for that loser’ — his great growing up moment.

Now take some trauma-shaming:

If you are suffering from some sort of trauma, be it for being beaten up or raped, he would say: Being abused or beaten up is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to use that experience to win a gold medal in the Olympics or become a successful author; otherwise you aren't worthy of being a human according to his standards. After all, he will feel guilty for being a greedy go-getter while others remain miserable. And that’s why he shames you — the great sacrificer’s great tough love.

Just like the guilt of a rich man who takes everything from everyone and then bypasses the guilt feelings with some charity; likewise, the guru who managed to convince himself that he had got his life under control (the illusion of control) with his willpower, cleverness, and manipulations, still feel guilty. So he thinks he should get some losers and make them appear improved too.

Another thing is, doing something for the sake of putting up with guilt:

It is like, you endure the process of writing a boring blog post, but only for the purpose of bypassing guilt. That is, you get to enjoy the chicken cheese sandwich or sex with your wife or play video games without guilt afterward, by saying to yourself “I wrote a blog post so I can enjoy my pleasures without guilt.” So guilt is what drives you into hard work, nothing else.

You like to continue your existence based on a guilt and sin mindset, even when no one is forcing you to believe the sin-trapping method preached by your priest in the nearby church. You call it the ‘grownup’ way, but sorry it is more of a ‘childish’ way.

At the least, it is time for us to stop glorifying this childish coping mechanism as some sort of heroic nature. We all do have coping mechanisms (as long as we have, nothing to be ashamed of), but why glorify someone’s unique coping mechanism as gold? It is not gold, it is glitter-sprayed shit.

If growing up is what we intend with self-improvement, then the mere mindset of prostituting an activity, be it writing a blog post or taking 3 push-ups or whatnot to later think and feel good about oneself is not at all growing up. You may write ‘I did this and that and so you should too’, but sorry, there is nothing noble in it to imitate.

Self-improvement writers rationalize this sickness as this is in our biology that we should do something to feel good. It is not in our biology that we write a blog post and take pride in it; it is merely artificial manufacturing of good feelings based on mental stories we say to ourselves. You program yourself by saying ‘If I do this then I am a good boy.’ If growing up is what we care about, then we should look at this sickness and not rationalize it as heroism.

“You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not everyone for eternity”–WhoeverSaidSo

If one does not have the capacity to derive a sense of joy and flow in whatever he engages in, be it writing a blog post or cleaning the toilet or watching the birds pass by, then instead of seeing the painful truth (in which case there is a chance of transformation), we are advised to take the sick idea of ‘feel good by thinking I did such and such’. This is nothing but self-pleasing or self-calming.

What could be more childish than a person, in his 30’s or 40’s, who wakes up at 4:00 AM every morning to go for a run, just because he thinks that will make him look better than the rest of the others in his own mind?

It is evident that he does not have the capacity to bear the pain of not being so special or not being better than others. And how would such a mindset be of a grown-up nature?

Of course, we do glorify such personalities as superheroes and get motivated because it is rather hard work to consider that there might be a twist in the tale.

Do yourself a favor by staying away from rules and ideologies set by neurotic control freaks, and breathe no matter what. Self-improvement is essentially a kind of mental-masturbation. As Tyler Durden (Fight Club) rightly said:

Self-improvement is masturbation