How Personal Development Made My Life Feel Worse
Becoming the best version of you brings as many challenges as it does rewards.
As the stack of self-help books in my office grew taller and taller, you’d think my self-confidence and success would have grown as well. That’s certainly what I expected. Why else would I care about personal development?
While trying to live my life to its fullest potential and align with my purpose has had clear benefits, the direct positive correlation I anticipated between personal development and my mood and emotions was definitely not as strong as I had anticipated.
Finding purpose and peace in life is not as simple as ready a few books.
Those of us that obsess over mindset improvement would agree that a consistent topic of discussion is “failure.” The fact that it is inevitable and so is the need to persevere through it if you actually want to improve at any given thing.
Despite hearing this over and over and seeing graphs on Instagram that depict what real growth looks like, I don’t think the message sinks in until you start to face challenges for yourself. After weeks or months of work you may suddenly find yourself sitting in a puddle of disappointment and think, “Right, this is what they all meant.”
That’s how I felt one day when I had a seemingly random surge of anxiety, took an inventory of myself and felt I could not do it. I could not achieve more, I could not be more. I no longer even wanted to become a better me if this is what it took. I’d rather stop trying. Stop pushing myself out of my comfort zone and just live a quiet, comfortable life.
The feeling eventually passed, as it always will, and I began to understand why I was so overwhelmed. They don’t say you have to “do the work” for no reason. Working on yourself is exactly that, work. Sometimes you feel the improvements, sometimes you feel like the most flawed person on the planet.
Before going any further, allow me to emphasize that feelings are temporary and we work through them. The things we can achieve by realizing our potential, however, are not.
Here are a few ways that personal development was making me feel worse.
The Two D’s: Dissatisfied and Disengaged
Part of what led me to do so much mindset work and seek out a personal coach was that I was dissatisfied with life.
I suppose I’ve always been a bit bored with “normal” and have had a lot of restless energy. But once I made up my mind that I wanted more out of life, I was dissatisfied with everything.
I don’t mean this in an ungrateful way. I have a daily gratitude practice and feel it is genuine. What I mean is that once I realized what I was capable of and began to understand that I really could achieve anything I put my mind to, I felt underwhelmed with my circumstances and overwhelmed by my new expectations for myself.
Shouldn’t I be leveraging this potential to achieve more?
This feeling soon meant I started to feel disengaged in my day job. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next, but I was questioning whether my current career was in alignment with my passion and purpose in life.
Being disengaged with work was a horrible feeling for me. It felt empty and frustrating. I wasn’t motivated and lost my “care factor,” which is previously what made me so strong. I wanted to give up and quit. I was ready for the next thing, though I still wasn’t certain what that was.
Hyper Self-Aware
Becoming hyper self-aware is critical when trying to improve at anything. How can you get better if you don’t know where you fall short? But it’s not enough to know where you fall short. Eventually, you have to make corrections.
I already felt I was a pretty self-aware person. Now, in trying to correct habits that were holding me back, I was starting to label and judge myself more than ever. When I couldn’t quickly correct my thought patterns or other tendencies I felt discouraged. Destined to be indecisive and unsure my whole life.
I had become very aware of everything that was “wrong” with me.
Constant Comparison
So many of the authors, podcasters, and speakers we follow claim to have it all figured out. Their words hold the key actions that you must take in order to grow and prosper in life. Their advice is delivered with such conviction that they must be right.
I started to feel like I had to become everybody else, do exactly what they were doing, take the exact action they told me to take.
Want to grow your Instagram page? You have to go live and post on IGTV. Want to be an expert in something? You have to choose something, one thing only, even if it isn’t the right thing, and practice it forever and ever. Want to be a success? You have to be a great public speaker.
So many of the things “they” say we have to do did not feel natural or fun. Feeling like I had to do things I was not good at or didn’t want to do took the fun and curiosity out of trying to achieve my goals. Did this mean I was going to fail? Or did this mean I was simply paving my own path?
Where’s the Target?
Rewind to the part about becoming hyper self-aware and clarify that I already knew I was incredibly indecisive. A not-so-secret tendency that I’ve identified with since exactly the 10th grade.
I knew I wanted more out of life but I had no idea what. This created a lot of ambition with no direction.
It’s no wonder I couldn’t get anywhere, I had no idea where I was trying to go. I knew I had to get clear on my goals but wondered if my habit of becoming uninterested, distracted and unsure along the way would always hold me back.
So Much Time, So Little Results
When you’re working towards a goal, you want to see results. That’s obvious. But it felt like I was putting in so much energy and getting very little in return. I was frustrated.
I felt this way because it is absolutely true. Overnight success is not real. Experts say it takes 10,000 hours to actually get good at something. Whether it’s athletes practicing their sport every single day, or artists creating pieces that will never be famous, the unseen hours of diligent practice greatly outweigh the publicly recognized achievements.
It is also likely that a lot of the energy I was expelling was in thought process only. Overthinking and under-actioning with the expectation that something is going to happen leads to frustration.
Facing Fears
Facing your fears is powerful. It stirs up emotions. It has the potential for invaluable pay off when you finally conquer fear but also carries the side effect of generating an intense amount of fear and anxiety along the way.
Many of our personal flaws are rooted in some kind of fear. Poor communicator? You may fear confrontation. Unable to decide? You may fear judgment or failure.
So it’s only natural that when we begin to take inventory of ourselves and address things we want to change, that we run into some deeply rooted fears that we had no idea we’d have to confront.
This is all part of personal growth. Pushing our comfort zone little by little is tough, but necessary.
If you’re serious about living life to your full potential, you know you cannot give yourself a fear crutch. Eventually, you will have to face it. Even more importantly, you will probably have to become comfortable with the very feeling of confronting your fear. This is not going to be a “one and done” obstacle in life.
Just Me, Myself and I
You’ve heard it before, “it’s lonely at the top.” Well, I’m nowhere near the top (wherever the top even is) and I can understand why people say this.
As I began to focus more on my career and personal goals, I outgrew a lot of my friends. Our interests no longer aligned and I put old habits behind me.
Our personal communities are constantly evolving, and the people that matter most will be with us along the way, but there is a difficult transition period you encounter when you realize that you are a combination of the people you spend the most time with and you need to rethink those people.
At the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is that you recognize your mindset when you’re feeling discouraged and you pick yourself up and keep going anyways. The road may be long and rocky, but becoming the best version of yourself and living your life to its fullest potential is worth it.
Remember, look at how far you’ve come, not just how far you have to go.
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