Personal development gets a bad rep. Which - largely - is well deserved. The whole ethos of needing to be harder, better, faster, stronger is deeply flawed when viewed in isolation. It’s based on the assumption that when you’re born, you’re insignificant, unworthy of love and happiness, and only by “doing the work”, you can gain those basic human rights. And the more of this self-optimization you do, the better.

But what if you don’t care about being the best version of yourself? What if all you want is for things to stop sucking so much?

Self-improvement is only one part of the equation

Let’s assume happiness can be measured, like the balance on your bank account.

Getting fit, living healthy, building all those amazing habits, having a crazy career, traveling around the world, fostering fulfilling friendships and relationships - all of that is like depositing money at a bank. If you do those activities regularly, the numbers on your bank account will grow larger and larger.

But much like in the real world, your happiness bank account is plagued by those pesky fees. Drug addiction? That’s 3000$/month. Estranged family members? Another 500$ on top. A crumbling marriage? Oof, that’s pricy, 2000$.

All of that could be manageable though as long as your income is high enough. If you make 200k a year, why care about those small fees, am I right?

But then there’s the heavy hitters: Taxes. Only in this analogy, they can go arbitrarily high. Low self-esteem will cost you 20%, childhood trauma 70%, and crippling depression can go up to 500%. The more money you make, the more you’ll lose. To come back to the happiness thing: No matter how much you've optimized yourself, if you don't do anything about these "taxes", you'll still be miserable. Good luck staying afloat under these conditions. The economy has seen better days I guess...

You’re constantly building yourself up, and tearing yourself down

A few years ago I solely focused on maximizing personal growth. Achieving my goals, getting jacked, improving my social skills, getting a girlfriend, earning more money. None of that is bad. But after a while, I felt like I was stagnating. Not because I stopped making progress, not at all. But those hidden taxes in the form of anxiety, past trauma, and bad self-talk kept dragging me down.

Luckily all that “personal development” I did before gave me the strength and perspective to see the bigger picture. I switched from investing all my energy into “growth” to a nice mix of self-improvement and decreasing the levels of “suck”.

You’re not a machine with dials that just need to be cranked up all the way. You’re a human being, with emotions, and very likely a history of bad experiences and pain. Self-optimization will only get you so far. Life sucks sometimes, that’s ok, no need to hide that. Allow yourself to be less than perfect every once in a while, face “the suck" and ask for help.

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