Personal-development can quickly turn into a downward spiral of personal-destruction. More and more people are speaking out, feeling that the very journey that they started to better themselves, is actually making them worse.
In some cases, they are right, their self-help has become self-destruction, and they are finding out — sometimes too late — that they've worked so hard for nothing.
This is something I have deep personal experience with.
I was that guy, spinning my wheels and staying still — I talked about my experience briefly here:
Despite my personal-development failures…
I'm also a personal-development success story and I can confidently tell you that it works, it's one of the few things I'm stone-certain about. When I show pictures to people and describe to them the kind of person I used to be, they often don't believe it, hell, I often don't believe it. Because when you change, truly transform aspects of yourself on a fundamental level, you literally become a new person.
However, I've made some pretty big mistakes along the way.
Mistake 1: Striving For Perfection
I've radically transformed aspects of my life. The keyword is "aspects." Narrow aspects that have had carry over into other areas, however, I'm not perfect and I'm still deeply flawed in many areas — same as you, same as anybody else.
People seem to get this misconception stuck in their minds that if they do the perfect morning routine, say the perfect affirmations — essentially, if they preform the perfect ritual, they will perfect themselves.
People also tend to get this idea stuck in their minds that they need to be perfect in order to achieve their goals.
On both counts, nothing is further from the truth.
There's two things that need to be understood here, two things that took me years to finally understand.
- You cannot make meaningful progress toward more than a small handful of goals at a time.
- You can be deeply flawed, deeply f-cked up, and still massively successful in certain areas of your life.
On count 1, you just cannot make meaningful progress toward more than a few goals at once. Even "small goals" can take an inordinate amount of time, and may require you to work through years and years worth of bad programming.
Even "small goals" will still require a significant mental investment if they are far outside of your comfort zone or your mental baseline.
Even "small goals" can be deceptively challenging to accomplish.
Don't underestimate the amount of work that may go into your "small goal" because it may require more effort and mental strength than you think.
Many things that people want help with, are extraordinarily simple to accomplish. For instance, fitness.
This is among the most simple and straight forward things that a person can do. Plug your stats into a free calculator, do some simple math, get a decent workout routine, and cut or add the calories.
Sure, you can get fancy with it but what remains is that weight loss and physical transformation is the most simple thing a person can do.
It's cold, hard, straightforward biochemical science — you do the proper exercises for the right number of sets with the right effort, you eat the proper amount of energy, get rest, and the weight will pile on or fall off like clockwork at a predictable and precise pace.
However, just because physical transformation is simple, straightforward, and requires little time-investment, that doesn't mean it's easy.
Many people have deep, deep trauma's and poor thinking habits around their bodies and fitness, for that reason, people struggle massively with physical transformation.
On count 2, perfection is completely irrelevant and you can be deeply flawed and f-cked up and still go very, very far in life.
When you look at high achievers:
Some of them are crippling addicts. Some of them have shockingly poor social skills. Some are downright unlikable. Some can hardly form a coherent sentence.
None of them are "perfect" and some of them have such obvious and glaring flaws that it's a wonder how they made it so far in life.
You might think to yourself, "well if they can do it, surely I can."
You would be correct in your assumption, because what you're seeing, is that all these "flaws that hold you back" are not so big or serious as they appear and they aren't actually going to stop the determined person.
You can rule the entire world without ever developing the charm and charisma natural to a waiter at a mid-range restaurant.
Change takes time and effort, the more things you try and change at once, the less likely you are to succeed.
And, you don't need to "fix" everything. Only fix what you need to fix, the rest, just let it go, deal with it, and focus your attention better.
This leads me to mistake number 2:
Mistake 2: Focusing on Your Weaknesses
This is a nasty one, because it's just so tempting, but make no mistake, it's a trap, and a big trap.
Like I said above, you don't need to be perfect, not even close, but it's still tempting to focus attention on your weaknesses.
There's this misconception that if you root out all your weaknesses, then everything else will be easier.
This is only about 30% true. Yes, if you remove an obstacle, you clear the path, however, not all "obstacles" are actually blocking your path.
Some weaknesses must be transcended. They absolutely must be, or else you will never get to where you want to be.
If you have a huge, glaring weakness that stands directly between you and your objective, then you need to take the time to root it out, destroy it with as much brutality as possible.
However, this should only be done when it's necessary, and it only becomes necessary when it stands in direct opposition to your goal.
In all other cases, it's better just to accept your weaknesses and deal with them.
Why?
Because you may spend years and years trying to destroy all the weakness within you, only to stray so far from your goal, to have gotten so lost in the weeds, that you've completely lost sight of your purpose, your vision.
A good way to determine if a weakness is something that you need to address, is if it constantly roadblocks you, if you find yourself facing the same challenges over and over again.
If it feels like you keep getting tested, and keep failing the test, then there is a weakness that you need to address, I talked about it here:
If you don't need to fix something, then leave it alone, turn it into an opportunity for building self-love, accept that you're flawed and that being flawed is okay.
Mistake 3: Doing Too Much
This ties into the two points already made. When you're doing too much, you're doing too much.
I don't care what anybody says, morning routines do work however, they can get wildly out of control. When you find yourself filling your morning routine to the point where it's become a multi-hour long slog that you mechanically repeat every single day…
When it reaches the point where your morning routine is an active distraction taking time from your goals…
Then you've gone too far.
This isn't just relegated to the morning routine, it applies to all the self-help work you do. If you've reached a point in which your focusing all your attention on the self-help practice and you've lost sight of taking action toward your goals, then you're doing too damn much.
Scale back.
This issue is often a combination of the previous two. It's often built on the foundation of striving for perfection and focusing on your weaknesses.
Mistake 4: Not Understanding Why You're Doing What You're Doing
Now for the synthesis. The self-help practices that you engage in must be targeted, they must have a direct purpose that is helping you attain something that you want to attain.
When it comes to crafting a morning routine, something that can be utterly transformational in it's own right, the most important thing is that you understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and what you're getting out of it.
Should you meditate twice a day for 20 minuets? Maybe, you don't need to, but it would be a decent start, so long as you understand what your meditation practice is helping you achieve. If you want more information on that, check out this article that I wrote about it, it came on the heels of years of meditation practice and study into the science and spirituality of the practice:
How about cold showers, journaling, breathwork, jogging, lifting weights? These are all great, but they need to be done with purpose, they need to be targeted at specific issues you are trying to overcome or specific goals you are trying to achieve, or else, it's just wasted effort.
What you do needs to be related to what you want to do.
Anything that you do that's a distraction from achieving your goals, is a distraction from achieving your goals.
It's really that simple.
Final Thoughts
Personal-development practices are tools, that's all. They are tools that can transform you radically, however, they are just tools all the same and it's best to pick the right tool for the job.
You can use a flathead screwdriver to pull nails, sure, it works, but there is a better tool for the job and you'd probably find it a little odd if you saw your contractor pulling nails with a flat-head, when he had a hammer hanging from his tool belt.
The best thing you can do to avoid these and other mistakes, is to determine what your objective is with as much clarity as possible, then the personal-development practices, the tools, that will help you achieve your vision will become more obvious.
The second best thing you can do is embrace iteration. Don't be afraid to try things, and don't be afraid to drop things.
If it helps, it helps.
If it doesn't, it doesn't.