When Self-Help Becomes Self-Sabotage

Self-improvement has never been easier with a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips. Everywhere you look there is advice on faith, diet, relationships, travel, finances and career from a wide range of sources.

For anyone on a self-improvement journey, it doesn’t take long to realize that delving too deeply into the self-help culture can have a detrimental long-term effect on your psyche and damage the very confidence you are trying to build.

Let Me Explain:

Just as there is a phenomenon called Facebook envy, a situation where prolonged exposure to the supposed happiness and excitement of other people’s life can lead to discontent with your own. There is also a type of dissatisfaction caused by prolonged attempts at self-help and self-improvement especially when you feel you are constantly coming up short.

It is similar to the principle of making a New Year’s resolution. On the whole, making a New Year’s Resolution is a positive start to the New Year. Problem starts when your goals require drastic life changes that you quit “cold turkey.” These overnight shifts are unrealistic, unsustainable and ultimately set people up to fail. This failure gives their self-confidence a massive hit and reinforces the belief that they cannot do anything right.

No Two People Are the Same

Also, a self-help journey can be confusing. For instance, one source may describe how many tasks they complete before 9:00 a.m. while you may feel lucky to have stumbled out of bed by then. In this instance, early rising does not necessarily lead to a productive day for everyone. However, you have convinced yourself that in order to be successful, you will need to get up at 6:00 a.m. and it doesn’t sit well with your system.

The truth is, while many successful people do get up at the crack of dawn, many others do not and early rising is not a guarantee of success. It’s important to cherry pick the habits of people you want to emulate and use their advice as a general guide not a rule.

Social media, including platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, etc. love creating a feeling of deficit in our lives. A deficit it seeks to fill. It makes us feel inadequate and the only way to conquer this inadequacy is to consume more social media. It’s a vicious circle.

Take, for instance, your everyday celebrity. They always look stunning. You look at a photograph and marvel at how great they look just walking in the park. You don’t realize that there is a team of people tasked to making them look like that. Looking good is their job and it takes considerable time, effort and resources to maintain. They put the same amount of time and effort into their appearance as you do working 8 hours a day.

It’s the Same Lesson

The same lesson can be learned from self-help. I find self-help books inspirational and motivating. I have learned a great deal and picked up so many amazing tips. However, these books and videos are not crutches, they are merely loosely aligned goals to steer you in the right direction, not rules to live by.

Psychology research on self-concept suggests that constantly comparing your current self to an idealized version of yourself can increase feelings of inadequacy. Self-help content often emphasizes “ideal behaviors,” which can unintentionally widen the gap between where you are and where you think you should be. Too much emphasis on narrowing the gap can lead to anxiety and insecurity. Rather than seeing self-improvement as a journey, it is easy to fixate on how far you have to go.

In many instances, constant self-improvement can become a form of procrastination that feels productive. This is sometimes called ‘productive avoidance,” and it is when people think they can improve just by reading about improvement without putting in the actual effort to improve.

Often, people that are constantly attempting to improve have higher rate of anxiety, emotional exhaustion and depression stemming from a feeling of never being good enough. This happens when extremely high internal standards create constant self-criticism and dissatisfaction. Rather than feeling they are achieving some progress, they fixate on how far they have to go.

Comparison Brings No Results

It is unwise to compare yourself to something or someone that doesn’t exist or is merely two dimensional. You can read celebrity books but they, just like you, have insecurities and anxieties that their fans have no idea about. Portions of their lives are not going according to plan, and you only ever hear about that when their walls come crashing down.

Real and lasting change is best achieved slowly over a period of time not huge trajectory changes. Extreme changes will make you not only miserable and are not designed for long-term benefits.

Let’s Talk:

What changes have you been able to implement in your life? How did you accomplish them? Did you choose the slow, consistent route? Which self-help materials have you been able to tailor to your own life and priorities?