When Do I Stop Improving and Live?

Self improvement has to end somewhere, right?

Dear Reader,

I want to be the best version of myself, all the damn time. I want to be better, better, better constantly, and it’s getting very tiring.

I blame my parents (groundbreaking, I know), but the South Asian community has this sort of dog eat dog mentality where you constantly compare yourself to others and pick yourself apart to be the best, all the time.

I forced myself to grow out of this comparison mindset with others but now I compare me to me. But without any actual positive reinforcement. I’m not telling myself anything good.

In fact, over the last two years I went from owning one self help book to half a shelf. Thats an indication is just how much I’m trying to fix myself. Even if nothing is horribly wrong.

My entire collection of self help books.

Humans are always changing, but not always improving

Can you tell me when you can stop improving yourself? The answer is probably never, because humans are always changing. But is this change actually a good thing?

The other day I read a very famous book (name redacted for lawsuit dodging) and its all about habits of the elite (google it, seriously) and I immediately realised It wasn’t going to work for me. I am not elite. I am a regular person, I pay my taxes and don’t own four companies. So I really don’t need to hate myself at 5am. I should focus on 8am. 8am is great. I can do that. That’s an actual improvement on my current fluctuating wake up time. Actually make that 8-9 am….cool.

Self help with a side of capitalism

Every time I log into social media, I either see someone succeeding more than me, or I see people glowing up. Most of the time its because of stagnancy ‘tired of my hair, tired of my nails etc.’ But I knew I had a problem when I thought I was tired of my hair. I went to a hair salon and got a $300 quite to lighten my hair. Then I washed my hair, and I felt better about it. That’s when I realised how entrenched buying is within the whole ‘self help’ bracket.

Self help books, podcasts, workshops, hair, nails, clothes, plastic surgery, wellness, diets etc. etc.

Can people please stop selling me things for five seconds so I can exist? I might love the social media post about the Indian girl who made her hair dark brown, but the odds are the views or the hair salon paid for it.

Also, I’m not saying you shouldn’t change your hair, I’m just saying you should do it because you want to, not because you were influenced by people you don’t know.

Shoutout to my big brother for leaving these behind when he moved.

The original self help

The other day, I came to the staggering, groundbreaking and totally obvious realisation that all self help of every type has its roots in Philosophy. I also happen to have inherited a bunch of philosophy books over the years.

So, instead of reading people digesting the philosophy into personal anecdotes and making everything modern, I’m going to read some Socrates and Plato, figure out Stoicism and tale it back to the original people who had something to say. After all, humans haven’t said anything new in a while, have we? We just put out own spin on it (including Substack, its posts and the ideas we write).

Improving due to having a reason to improve

I think to a certain extent you need to improve, but it should be because of real life feedback. Your friend tells you she’d love if you were on time more often, your dog is getting chubby because you haven’t taken her for a walk in a while. Tangible things that say to you ‘hey, get it together.’

For me, this self help kick started because of me. My friends were lovely, they knew I needed to stay home an recuperate, I took that staying home as a reason to then dive into myself in a little too big of a way. They told me to rest and be kind to myself, and often tell me how much I’ve improved. Do I think that’s good enough? No.

But that’s on me creating problems for myself. I’m working on it, I promise.

Letting your current version exist is probably healthy

I am not psychology expert, lets not take a deep dive into my brain. But, I don’t think trying to constantly be better at everything, all the time is healthy. You don’t get to exist with your current self, nothing happens organically, your actual brain may not keep up with all the glowing up. That probably leads to some sort of dissonance if not a complex of some sort.

I’m a good person, I don’t commit heinous crimes, I’m good to my friends and I try my best.

That’ll do.

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If the first step of getting myself out of the void was to start writing for myself, the second was identifying my own issues. So far I’ve noted my overly serious tendencies and this need to improve constantly. As well as the way I want to be (like Hercule Poirot). Now it remains to be seen if I can actually put it into practice.

Stay tuned, I’m doing this slowly and organically, so I might need to find patience too.