During the lockdown, I discovered the wonderful world of personal improvement and development methods called self-help. I realised that by using these methods I could possibly improve my lifestyle so I explored more and more. The more I read about it, the better I felt about myself. I was learning how to make drastic changes in my life and develop efficient habits to improve everything, from my mindset and productivity to diet and exercise. My life was going to transform by applying the self-help methods into action. Or, at least I thought it was.
I used to consume a lot of self-help content a while ago and believed in it blindly. I tried extremely hard to put the advice I read online into practice. I failed each time, and each time I felt like a loser because the advice didn’t change my life. It became more and more frustrating as this progressed. And then one day I had to ask, why is it not working? The answer lied in the content itself; the content was not of any help at all. It was not practical as it didn’t apply to my life personally because you cannot fit everyone into a box and give them a single advice to follow to ‘fix them up’.
The problem with the self-help culture is that firstly, it assumes you’re already living a pathetic and miserable life-style and secondly, it presses that you do everything just right. The trend promotes a mindset that there is a correct way of doing everything and if you follow that path you will succeed in whatever you want to. It is a comforting thought to put a formula into command and apply that to solve all the problems we face in life, like insecurities, finances, love and relationships, etc. and hustle towards a path of success. We all want that but life does not give it to us so easily. It is this vulnerability on which the self-help industry thrives. It prospers by making you believe that you have something inherently wrong with you that you need to get it fixed as soon as possible.
This is worsened by the fact that anyone on the internet can give advice and call themselves experts and people start to believe in them. With an easy access to all, the internet becomes a safe place for all the self-help ‘gurus’ to produce content that thrives on the consumers’ insecurities. They’ll use fancy terms and give grand advices that will make you want to change your life and give a sense of motivation that helps accentuate that feeling. And people love the feeling, hence the want for the feeling increases the more content one consumes; a perfect formula for the gurus to grow online: dopamine rush. It gives you an illusion of making progress. While in reality, you just procrastinate believing in the sweet illusion. You end up with an entitled feeling that you are making progress while others are slacking in their homes and you are one step ahead of them all.
This bubble needs to be burst. You are not a broken vase that needs to be fixed. There is no fancy truth that needs to be decoded. If there was something so crucial that it needs to be known by all, then you would have been born with that knowledge as a natural instinct; just like laughing or crying. Life prospers with a balance, not with an apply-to-all magic rule. You don’t have to be positive all the time, or hustle every second of your life to achieve your goals. This will kill your creativity as there will be no space left for mistakes. Listen to your body and feelings rather than forcing a desired aspect on life. And obviously, not everything online is complete nonsense, but that does not mean it will apply to your life entirely. You can always take bits of information that make sense for you. You can find your own right way of doing different tasks by simple hit and trial, observing and learning and most importantly, by making mistakes.