I’ve been hearing about a revolt of sorts against self-improvement and optimization of habits. Hearing that a large sum of people are turning their backs against something that has made me the person I am today fills me with a sense of sadness. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, if you inundate yourself with the thoughts of other people, you’ll struggle to hear your own inner wisdom trying to show you what you need.
To be transparent, I haven’t read or watched any of the content against self-improvement and optimization – I don’t feel a need to. The thoughts in this blog are coming from my own state of knowing and also an assumption. There is no question in my mind or body as to the benefits of this journey I’ve been on and I can only believe similar choices would lead to similar outcomes in other people’s lives. I am a proponent of improving yourself, but I have a feeling I’m not in favor of “self-improvement” – the concept people have grown to idolize. My assumption is this: anti-improvement content stems from an unhealthy attachment to outcomes, an inability to use temperance, and flawed motives.
In this blog I’m going to share my guess as to why improving yourself has been vilified.
There is no doubt in my mind that intentional focus on your own improvement leads to positive results.
As always, I don’t have all the answers, but I hope my expedition to try finding them in my life inspires you to start the search in your own.
If you enjoy this blog and feel compelled to support, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Missing the Point
If I were to take all the content against self-improvement, every blog titled “Self-Improvement Ruined My Life”, every video whose hook is “Self-Improvement is Unnecessary”, and any other piece of media claiming a failure to see positive results or seeing mostly negative outcomes, I guarantee I can see where the issue lies. In each case, there is likely a root cause that formed the belief in the individual.
First, I’d like to say that the people who write and post about these experiences have every right to feel the way they do. If they truly feel improvement led to a detriment in their quality of life, I have no doubt their beliefs are justified. They are not wrong to hold the beliefs they do – had I lived through the exact circumstances as them, I’d feel exactly the same. The Logical flow of life formed these ideas, just like my flow formed my ideas. However, to hold a belief does not necessarily mean to hold truth.
If I were to guess the main points of these pieces of content, I’d say the majority say something along these lines:
Self-improvement stole all of my free time. It ruined my relationships. There was never an end, something could always be better. Nothing worked long term. My stress increased trying to manage it all.
These thoughts are each of these people’s truths, but they are not the objective truth and should not discourage you from working on yourself. These stories, if you choose to read them, should be words of caution, so that when you do try improving your life, you do not make the same mistakes. This is the key point I’d like to make. There is no question as to whether or not you should work on yourself – you should, but with the right intentions, expectations, and patience.
In every case, there is likely a flawed motive, an unhealthy attachment to outcomes, or a lack of temperance.
An Issue with Motive
When there is a flawed motive, you are doing things for the wrong reasons.
When you pursue self-improvement for the wrong reasons, you’re less likely to see results. If you fail to see consistent results, you’re more likely to give up on your habits and improvement.
A few weeks ago, I wrote on the idea of motives – HERE – with the main point being that you should strive to get as close as you can to a pure motive with every habit. A pure motive is one that aligns seamlessly with Nature and the essence of the habit. For example, I believe the essence of working out is to stay strong, healthy, and mobile, so I pursue it for that reason.
When I pursue something in this way, I see results more regularly and find it easier to continue. Daily and weekly, I witness the benefits playing out through more energy, better sleep, mental clarity, increased strength, and confidence. It’s not as easy to see results when your motive is flawed.
When pursuing fitness for physique, I did everything I knew should help me reach my goals, but I frequently lost interest and gave up. Every day I’d look in the mirror and be disappointed. Every person on social media had a better physique than me. It became tough to find the motivation to diet and exercise without any clear results.
There’s no way to know for sure how healthy all those people on the internet truly are. They may have the body you think you want, but only they know how painful it was and how healthy (or not) they actually feel. To look like that may come at the risk of your own peace.
My pursuit of fitness for aesthetic reasons only lead to comparison, frustration, poor self esteem, and hunger. Now, as I seek fitness more naturally, I eat intuitively, I work out however I want as often as I want, and I am not worried when I eat one bad meal or drink a couple beers with a friend. The cool thing is that I’ve still managed to see all those aesthetic results I so desperately craved, it just took a lot longer than I was ever willing to commit to back when my motive was flawed. As soon as the motive changed, the habit became easy and the results apparent.
An Issue With Attachment
An unhealthy attachment is when you hope for life to play out in certain ways and feel upset when they don’t. When you expect a habit to produce certain results and it does, you’ll keep going, but if it doesn’t, you’ll grow discouraged and stop.
Life and my habits have become a sort of scientific experiment. When I want to try a new habit, I no longer hope it will solve the issue I’m facing, but I watch intently for data. Take for example a few weeks ago when I was physically exhausted every day even though it felt like I was sleeping well. I considered the problem, came up with potential solutions, and tested them. When I decided to remove carbohydrates from my breakfast, I didn’t think “This better fix my fatigue.”, my thought was “Let’s see what this does.” After a week, I’d determine if there was more I could do or if I should pivot completely.
Self-improvement is a study of yourself – an experiment to discover what promotes your health and peace versus what doesn’t. It takes being curious about how certain habits affect your mind and body. The goal is to work towards peace, but knowing not every habit you pursue will do that. However, if you stay curious, even the habits that don’t “work” do help put you closer to understanding what does.
In this sense, I believe hearing what has worked for others is beneficial, but only if you don’t attach your emotions to the outcome. There is no guarantee that what worked for them will work for you. Listening to others simply offers you ideas of what you could try in your own life. As I often say though, there comes a point when you have to stop listening to other people’s advice and start acting and collecting data.
I’ve grown more confident in my own ability to determine what my mind and body needs. When something feels off, I look inwards and ask myself what needs to change and where my routines are flawed. I don’t do this from a state of expectation, but from a desire to show myself the love and care I deserve. If my body or mind is telling me something is out of whack, I’m all ears and ready to do whatever I can to help myself. My intuition is usually spot on when it suggests solutions, but it can also be wrong and when that happens, I simply try something else.
There is no need to be upset when a habit doesn’t “fix” your problems, all that matters is your own desire to try helping yourself. If you stay curious and test different habits, you’ll eventually find the ones that help bring you back to peace when your life gets hectic.
An Issue with Temperance
When temperance is not used with your healthy habits, you’ll find it challenging to experience things with friends, form relationships, and find rest or release from the discipline. Isolation and loneliness are likely to arise when friends, relationships, and rest are disregarded for your improvement. When you isolate yourself and feel lonely, a drastic relapse into bad habits is likely.
People don’t often discuss temperance when it comes to healthy habits, but it’s important to recognize its necessity. If your habits, routine, and self-improvement consume your entire life and you find it difficult to take full days off or even enjoy a cheat meal or beer once in a while, you’ve gone too far.
It’s critical for my own well-being to remind myself that the whole point of focusing on my habits and improvement is so I can experience all those things still, without the guilt. When I cut out drinking, eating out, and laziness 80% of the year, the 20% is no sweat off my back. My vacations, events, family dinners, and times when life is hectic are easy to say yes to and not worry about discipline. These breaks are uncommon and are like a reward for the effort I’ve been putting in.
I’ve found a balance that works for me. There is still room for self-control and temperance from bad habits, but cheat meals and days are becoming more infrequent and more rewarding because of it.
As important as this process of improvement is, it does not have to become your entire life. You do not need to always be locked in. You don’t need to isolate yourself and lose your relationships. The whole point is to consistently get better. As long as the scale is balanced more towards progress or moving towards it, you’re achieving the whole motive behind self-improvement.
Not perfection, but progress. Take time off and let it inspire your discipline.
Final Thoughts
When I started this blog up again in January, I had no motive behind the action. Some part of me knew I had to start writing again. For the first time, this wasn’t about finding a way to make money, to get views, and likes. This time it was just to write – to get my thoughts out of my head and understand myself more deeply. Even now, I don’t have any motive except to write and record my thoughts in different formats.
There is no forced action anymore. If a vacation comes up (like this week), I take time off from producing. If I have a rough day at work, I may find I need to calm my nerves with reading or stretching instead of posting content. There is no shame in taking time off. Temperance is necessary with everything, not just bad habits. When you take a day or two to recharge, you’ll come back eager to continue.
When I post anything, I have no consideration of the outcome. None of the content I post has an expectation behind it. There’s no hope that this piece of content will be the one that takes off. If a video doesn’t find many viewers, I’m already onto the next video. If a blog isn’t read, I still learned more about myself. If content is exposed to a lot of people, I’m grateful, but I don’t chase that outcome. I post to post, with no expectation.
This blog replicates how all self-improvement needs to be in order for you to see progress. Work on bettering yourself simply for the sake of wanting to. Try new habits because you’re curious if they’ll help you, not because you expect them to based on someone else’s results. Take days off if you feel you need to and don’t lose your social life over this.
Life flows with ease when you pursue something bigger than yourself with no flawed motives or expectations of results. Pursue the habits that intrigue you, see if they help you towards peace or not, then keep doing that. Always test new methods, new thought experiments, new workouts, new diets, new everything because you never know what’ll help you progress.
August 16, 2026
