Three Hurdles of Self-Improvement

Piotr Bardzik
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read
Thamesmedian Island by Andrew Bardzik

How often have you read an interesting article or a book that gave you a prospect of embracing its wisdoms and consequently making your life better. You might have created similar expectations following a lecture, a seminar or participation in a workshop moderated by an expert on a subject.

Over the years, I have personally collected hundreds of such experiences. The pattern with time became familiar and consistent: once new insights were embraced, new expectations followed. What happened next was, however, as consistent as it was disappointing. The expectations with regard to newly acquired wisdoms did not translate into self-improvements. All this notwithstanding the fact that the wisdoms themselves did not get depreciated or turned out, in hindsight, overrated. On the contrary, my perception of their inherent value remained positive.

So why on earth the apparent failure?

The task daunted upon me as I needed a justification for this apparent and consistent failure to close the loop of learning — embracing — internalizing — solidifying improvement. I have thought about it long and hard and with time I arrived to an explanation that I was ready to embrace if for no other reason as providing my battered mind with some peace.

It is all about three hurdles on the way to self-improvement.

1st hurdle

The first and, by far, the easiest. All it takes is a bit of curiosity accompanied with commitment to keep you mind open for a while. It might be five hours to read a book, it might be an hour to attend a lecture, it might be fifteen minutes to listed to a TED talk or 6 minutes to read a text on Medium website. The variety and volume of wisdoms on offer and the ease of accessing them sets the bar low for the curiosity requirement. Similarly, we might be very busy people but even very busy people need a break sometimes or a distraction. In other words, the first hurdle in the sprint to our self-improvement is a one that is easily jumped.

2nd hurdle

The second hurdle is about the relevance of an interesting idea to us, to our particular circumstances. It is about the transition from a wisdom of an abstract or a generic nature, if you will, to one that has a direct relevance to us. This might appear to be a fairly easy step, in theory. In practice, things are somewhat more complicated. Nassim Nicholas Taleb points to a handicap we all carry — that of domain dependence. It is about our inability to recognize the same concepts in different contexts. The failure directly relevant to the 2nd hurdle is the difficulty of embracing an adage that we can so passionately preach to others as one that is equally valid for us. We are not talking about a hypocrisy but rather about a type of unconscious blindness. Perhaps this difficulty is related to a notion that giving an advice costs less that acting upon it. This seems to be supported by a mega-adage formulated by Gian-Carlo Rota who famously said: “The advice we give others is the advice that we ourselves need”.

3rd hurdle

If the first hurdle was an easy target and the second one upgraded the difficulty exponentially, the third on piles up the challenge far more. Getting over the first hurdle creates a generic potential for our self-improvement. Jumping over the second hurdle makes this potential specific and relevant to our circumstance. Whilst this move is significant, it does not change the fact that we are still find ourselves in the domain of potential. The third hurdle relates to turning this potential into tangible self-improvement actions. The great mystery of the difficulty in transforming wisdoms into out self–improvement relate to this very step. If we do not get over the second hurdle we will never feel disappointed that we did not manage to turn an adage into our benefit — simply because we failed to recognize that it applied to us. The third hurdle is different — if we got that far we are convinced that it is valid for us. The crux of the matter is that we fail to realize that acting upon it means often rocking the boat, questioning out status quo and upsetting our internal equilibrium. We often are where we are in our quest for self-improvement (or lack thereof) not because we did not know better, but because the price for the improvement is too high. Very often turning the potential of an adage to our advantage needs to be paid with the fear of leaving our comfort zone, with the price measured in disclosure of our vulnerabilities or indeed or any other currency whereby the trade-off involves sacrifice (certain) today for a benefit tomorrow (uncertain albeit very promising). It seems to me that this failure to recognize the price that we need to be paid for acting upon a wisdom it is the reason why so often what make so much sense is not pursued successfully.

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Piotr Bardzik

Written by

Turning implicit to explicit — a Turner, if you will, albeit not J.M.W.

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