Why Your Obsession with Personal Growth is Just a Distraction 

Damn. This is a hard pill to swallow. I was talking to my therapist about how passionate I am about the psyche and how I’ve been devouring psychology content (podcasts, ebooks) because I truly love it. But deep down, I fear that all of this intellectualization is just a way to avoid suffering (helplessness, loneliness, boredom) and that life is just… that! Thinking that growth will be the tool to endure suffering and contain the aggressive drive against the absurdity of life. I feel proud of all the work I’ve done to live a more conscious and authentic life and was aiming for more, but maybe you’re right… Life isn’t going to get better than this. The present moment, and all of this, is just a way to make me feel good about myself-trying to control the uncontrollable.

I kind of fully disagree with this video, though that might be because I'm fully in grip of the "cult" you speak of 😅 My criticism mainly consits of the fact that, it seems to me as if you lump "self improvement" and "self optimization"-movement together. 1) You describe self improvement and self optimization (as a movement in general and in relation to most individuals who strongly associate with it) as this sort of vehicle for hopes and dreams, with the convinient property that one never has to actually work for them and or do an honest review on how to operationalize actually achieving them, to continue to believe in one day achieving these hopes and dreams. This than leads to inertia and stagnation, because this vehicle is used to hold onto those dreams, because without them life would be unbearable, while at the same time subtly allowing yourself to not make any reasonable progress. You say this comes from, and furthers, a contempt of "the here and now" and leads to missing the opportunity to "seize the day", so to speak. I definitly see this happening to some people, but many others, including myself, pursue self improvement not primarily for achieving some specific goal some day, but to kind of "breath life" into our lifes. By setting challenges day to day, or even moment to moment, overcoming the diffrence between ourselves right now and the person who will complete said challenges in the very near future, not only creates a feeling of movement and direction, like you speak of in the characterization above, but *actually* moves your "inner self" up a (small) notch. This kind of goal setting (i.e. honest, reflective, purely internal and most importantly *autotelic* self improvement, ) more akin to Nietzsche, Frankl and Camus, than to modern hustle culture, seems to me like clean fuel source of motivation. Afterall, you're not merely "enduring life" in hopes of salvation through a better future, you find the salvation every day in overcoming yourself, in overcoming some real and tangible internal obstacle that you grow above of. 2) Imo, one can definitly find purpose in pursuing a long term future oriented goal, as long as this envisioned future goal comes specifically from the above mentioned internal source of purpose and motivation. Even if the direction of the goal is nudged a bit by external reasons, if your fuel is purely this internal statisfaction in overcoming, than you won't aim at something not worthwile, and your journey along the way won't be unfulfilling, even if you never achieve the end goal. I'd say this is true, because your internal challenges must come mostly from external ones and your source of those can pretty much be chosen arbitrarily; let's say there is a subset of sources from the choice can be made arbitrary without later regret or non optimal life statisfaction. If than external influences, like salary, influence your choice from that subset, I don't think that's terrible, at least not in regard to the truthfulness and quanity of your felt purpose in life. ------------ Now, a simply rebbutal to that whole idea would be "Is that really the most statisfying life you can live?" and I think actually, for most people the answer is no. But for those people who obsess with self improvement in the first place, the answer is, sadly, likely yes. The most some people can even hope to get out of life is feeling alive for the time being and having purpose, that's it. The problem than is not their quest for self improvement in of itself, but the reasons for it and what those reasons lead them to do. Orthodox "self improvers" should be known as the type of person, who think like Frankl and practice (somewhat) like David Goggins, who use Eisenhower Matrices to make sure they're at least 80% on top of their life as they could be, they should be known as those who try to maximize their life not for some compulsion of achieving some fantasy but out of appreciation for life. Instead, when people hear this term they think of people making impossible To Do lists, unrealistic goals, people who listen to some motivation music video 5 times a day, day dreamers busy using the whimsical "power of visualizing", people who take 30 supplements and half-heartedly listen to some podcast daily. That is however not the fault of this idea of self overcoming in of itself, but it's commercialisation. I thinks is admirable to help people not dream their life away and also protect them from punishing themselves as some show of strength to prove how worthy they are of their dreams/goals, but at the same time, the ability and act of exerting control over oneself is for many people the only reason they keep going, and preaching mindfulness and gratefulnesss (for their life) to these people is only going to make them feel bad. Sure this can become very pathological VERY quickly, like eating disorders, physical self harm, intentional self endangerment, etc. But as long as you practice awarness you can direct this exertation of control over yourself in the right way and not only find purpose and psychological stability but you might also actually improve the circumstances of your life. Afterall, working in retail while also being a marathon runner and programmer is better than just working in retail. And obviously, even though the former person is challenged a lot more in their life(though through their own volitiation) than the latter, everyone would expect the former to have a way better life statisfaction.

I am a researcher in the field of self-optimization and I very much agree with your description. The connection with the eternal focus on a promising future is very well presented.

Great insights on simply enjoy the now

'One must imagine Sisyphus happy'. Great video and timely in this time of endless distraction.

Thanks, this is mighty thought exercises.

Halbrand here to drop some wisdom

Very true! Im very glad i watched this. It's like a light bulb moment. Thank you very much 🩷🙏