The Problem with Self-Important Self-Help Guides

How motivational life advice bypasses executive dysfunction and other disabilities.

Photo by Lucas Clara on Unsplash

“Embark on my self-improvement journey! I created by own business from scratch, became a millionaire on my eighteenth birthday, travelled the world, and bought my own mansion by following the these simple mantras. To be like me, here’s what you must remember:

• Wake up at 4am!
• If you cared about your goals, you wouldn’t be distracted. If you procrastinate, you obviously don’t care.
• Work now. Rest when you’re successful. Then when you achieve that goal, raise your stakes again. Rest when you’re dead.
• Don’t listen to the voice telling you to take a break. Exhaustion is just another excuse for laziness.
• Think of all the poor unsuccessful people working in retail and struggling to pay the bills. Every one of them is in that state because they didn’t follow my advice. They clearly have no source of happiness nor fulfilment in their lives. You’re better than that!
• Let’s face it, your life sucks. Everything you’ve achieved so far in life is worthless. If you disagree, you haven’t unlocked your true potential yet. You are selling yourself short.
• If there’s anything in your life that is making you miserable, it is your fault unless you take action against it. Stop complaining; it is all in your hands.
• Success is the only way to achieve real happiness. Family and hobbies are cool, but until you’ve found yourself through traveling across every continent and earning six-figures, you’ll never love yourself.
• Your mental illnesses/disabilities/insecurities/finances/other commitments are not valid barriers. They cannot prevent you from spending every waking moment pursuing your goal. Others who have it worse than you do have achieved more than you ever will. These disadvantages are all in your head (or are social constructs). You must overcome them to achieve success. (Alternatively, all those problems will dissipate once you’ve made your first million.)
• You are invincible! The only person holding you back is yourself!”

Good for you. Now, enough of the sugar-coated shaming.

People with less than immaculate focus and willpower are far from lazy, apathetic, or weak. Convincing someone that they need to overcome how their brain biologically functions is forcing them into a losing battle. And no, they won’t have success to show for it.

When getting out of bed feels like your only victory of the day, holding yourself to such high standards is beyond disheartening. These expectations are unrealistic for anyone to achieve, no matter how able-bodied, mentally stable, or financially free you are. Nonetheless, self-help gurus and social media influencers recite these “motivational mantras” that hold everyone to the same hyperbolic standard. The subtext is that you are weak and worthless if you fall short.

What makes such self-absorbed self-help so dangerous is how inescapable it is. These days, society is constantly pressuring us to work harder, earn more money, do better than everyone else, and improve our situations. While these things are achievable, they are not easy and the odds work against you. It takes time and effort that cannot be underestimated. Many people spread themselves too thin in trying to keep up in multiple areas. Also, not everyone has the same advantages.

Self-improvement is what motivates us on a personal level and as a social expectation. Therefore, it is easy for the more privileged to capitalise of this culture by repackaging their brags as “helpful” advice. Most of it is shallow with no practical instructions. Rather than fact, it is rooted in passive-aggressive shaming and toxic positivity.

Self-Destruction

My life could be read a cautionary tale against the hypodermic needle of self-improvement.

As a preteen, my academic performance had always been below-average. I didn’t take this to heart, as I did not consider it the most important thing in my life. I enjoyed making art and playing outside (you know, being a kid). I was also an avid reader and had started dabbling in creative writing. My passion in this area was not reflected by my English grade due to my messy handwriting, short-attention span, and difficulties with grammar.

As I was getting to an age where my grades held more importance, my teachers and parents (who had high expectations for me) were losing patience.

Being told I was lazy, stupid, and wasting my potential for failing to meet expectations struck a nerve with me. What was even more mortifying was my teacher’s description of the future, echoed by my parents: “How well you do now will affect you for the rest of your life. You have to do well now for your future to be bright. What we expect of you is simple but it will only get harder in the coming years. You think this is hard? Please. You don’t even know what stress is yet. This is still the best, most care-free time of your life.”

The amount of existential horror this supposed “encouragement to work hard” mentality imbued in me is a lot to unpack. It completely dismissed the levels of stress and pressure I was under. I was very likely depressed and this implied it would only get worse. I was miserable and it suggested the only way to achieve a satisfied life in the future was to meet impossible expectations.

When my parents labelled me as “half-assed” after studying to exhaustion every day (because it only resulted in mediocre grades), I felt like giving up.

Consumed with the frustration at myself for not being good enough, I made a silent vow that would come back to haunt me. I vowed to grit my teeth, push every feeling, boundary, and doubt aside and dedicate myself to achieving the best. Then, once I could reap the fruits of my labour, I would “switch my emotions back on” and re-immerse myself in the better life I’d made.

Finishing primary school became settling into secondary school which became GCSE exams which became A-level exams which became a degree which became a masters. Alongside academia, I balanced extracurricular activities, forcing myself to hit a word goal every day, and keeping up with reading. Activities I loved became chores. I abandoned all hope of a sleep schedule, stable relationships, or fun time.

Throughout all this, time passed by, good things came and went, and various traumas turned my life upside down. I was overwhelmed. I was hurting. But those were internal things. Things I could suppress. It did not occur to me that I was supposed to allow myself time to process these traumas and learn to cope in a healthy way. All I could think about was fulfilling these external expectations and doing well. There was no deadline or achievement on the horizon where I thought “I’ll get to that point and then rest.” I believed that if I continued to work harder and suppress my humanity, my internal struggles would disappear and be replaced with external rewards.

Then it took a toll on my mental health. Throughout sixth form, I received counselling for symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although well meaning, the sessions reaffirmed my belief that I was “stronger than my mental illness” and could achieve anything I put my mind to. However, as I was unable to establish a plan of action beyond this motivational rhetoric, my failure uphold my grades, relationships, and sanity made me feel guilty.

In my first year of university, I was started on a heavy dose of anti-depressants with the aim of subduing my panic attacks so I could continue with my daily responsibilities.

Two years later, I was discouraged by a nurse from seeking a diagnosis for autism and borderline personality disorder, despite the fact she was the one suggested I had them. Her reason: the stigma would look bad on my record.

My point? The world of psychiatric help is still rooted in the obsession with productivity. Despite mental illness originating internally, if you “look” like you have it together, even the professionals assume that there’s nothing wrong with you. In reality, keeping a stiff upper lip is not sustainable in the long-term and it comes with a price. This is why the normalisation of self-care, slowing down, mindfulness, and processing your emotions is so important.

But my happiness was so dependant on success, I couldn’t start putting my well-being first if meant I could no longer uphold my academic performance. That would against everything I’d vowed to do.

Ten years later, I’m still not sure how to take my emotions off hold. Of course, I still care about my ambitions, such as getting my masters degree and getting my book published, but that’s about it. I don’t know how to take a break or relax without feeling an immense guilt that I am wasting my time. I cannot set aside time to do things I enjoy without thinking about what needs to be done.

It becomes a vicious cycle. Now, I am too burnt-out to do my best work or work efficiently. However, I never learnt the arts of resting, recovery, or self-care. Subconsciously, I can’t let go of the misconception that it is taboo for me to look after myself, since my worth is defined by my success.

Therefore, I continue to work in this burnt-out state. A task that should take twenty minutes takes two hours but I can’t rest until its done. By the time I’ve achieved all I need to do in the day, there’s no time or energy left for me-time. If there is, I spend it in complete exhaustion, wondering what more I could have done to better myself.

I also don’t know how to celebrate the victories I’ve already achieved. Even though I knew they were big achievements, did not feel fulfilled when I moved into my own place, got into my first choice university, graduated with a first, or finished writing my novel. I thought “Cool. I’ve achieved the bare minimum. Onto the next thing.”

When you base all your happiness on achieving success, it becomes a hunger you can’t sate. You may also disassociate from every other enjoyable aspect of life. You can quickly forget how to listen to your body and respect your own boundaries.

It’s a long road to reshaping my unhealthy relationship with productivity that was indoctrinated into me.

Slowly I’m learning that my disability and mental illnesses are not character flaws I need to feel ashamed of. When I discovered the likelihood that I am autistic, I saw all my sources of shame under a new lens. I’m more in tune to the fact that sensory input, socialising, and masking, things I do every day, drain my energy. These are just part of how my brain functions, but I’d never given myself credit for putting up with them before. Before, because I didn’t understand what was grinding me down or how to articulate it, I thought I was just being silly.

But disabilities aren’t signs of weaknesses that need to be overcome. You can achieve amazing things as a disabled person, but you still need to respect yourself and be honest with how things affect you.

Similar things can be said for mental illnesses. Shame and suppression of my feelings did nothing but amplify my depression, trauma and depersonalisation. The misconception (commonly spewed by self-help gurus) that a physical or mental illness can be willed away with enough ambition is unscientific and insulting.

If you have to sacrifice your wellbeing, happiness, or safety to achieve success, the success is probably not worth it.

With this new perspective that worth is not defined by success, I marathoned the most popular motivational videos on YouTube. I then read some popular life-coaching articles that marketed themselves as recipes to getting your shit together and becoming a millionaire entrepreneur. What did they have in common? The same repetitive, rebranded rhetoric. Words that stroked the speaker’s own ego, but were packaged in the shape of advice.

Yet, the eloquence of it all did ignite a spark of invincibility in me. I felt like a new woman… for about ten minutes until I tried to put it into practice.

Healthy Alternatives

Executive dysfunction has plagued me all my life, but that’s not uncommon and it doesn’t make me weak-willed. So many of us struggle to get started and balance tasks and time management. If you want to create self-help content, you need to stop pretending that issues like executive function don’t exist.

Realistically, every person works differently. This depends on the nature of their goals, their other commitments, their abilities, their resources, their neurotype, their body clock, and existing habits. Selling your own routine and life-hacks as a one-size-fits all solution may inspire some of your audience, but it will detriment the rest.

If you are speaking from your own experience, speak honestly from your own experience. Do not try to brand it as a universal truth or a one way ticket through which everyone can make their dreams come true. Integrity goes a long way.