#393: The Self-Development Journal
All the things that I am learning
Like many people, I have a relentless desire to improve. To make myself and my life better. I’m certainly not alone in this outlook, as the market for self-help books will attest, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. I’ve learnt a lot from being willing to examine myself and from reading about the things that I am curious about. In some ways, my life is better because of my constant need to improve.
I could, however, be critical of this desire and suggest it comes from external factors, like growing up at a school that placed high value on achieving better and better results. It could be said that spending too long striving for something or trying to “fix” yourself stops you from appreciating what you have now.
Sometimes, my head becomes full of all the ideas I have consumed. I try to remember to exercise and to drink less caffeine and to live out my values; all things that, on a good day, I might instinctively do, but that drop out of my head at the very moment that I need them. So I started writing some of these thoughts in a notebook, making lists like: “Things I have learnt about myself recently,” “Things that I am proud of,” “Things that make a bad day better,” and so forth.
And on one of those pages, I have begun extracting the ideas from the self-help books or podcasts I have consumed that have genuinely helped me to figure some things out.
So, here are four ideas that have stuck with me:
Job crushes (From A Job to Love by The School of Life)
A job crush is like a “person crush” in the sense that it is something you think you will enjoy, that you obsess over, but haven’t actually got to know properly. The job seems exciting, romantic perhaps, but when you get into the practicalities, what it would actually be like to have that job, it is not for you. A frequently crushed-on job might be a career such as working in publishing or being an actor.
Being a people pleaser is not as selfless as you might think (From The Joy of Being Selfish by Michelle Elman)
You might assume that by saying yes to an invite, or taking on extra work despite your annual leave, you are being selfless, but this can be framed another way. In these situations, you are assuming that you, and only you, are the most important. You are assuming that you must be at that party or in that meeting, or things will not be the same. Often, however insulting this might sound, people will get along just fine without you being there. Presuming your own importance is often an obstacle for not looking after yourself.
Finding your atelic activities (From Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman)
An atelic activity is something you do for fun. It is done for the pleasure of the experience, and you can keep doing it without having to reach any sort of goal. An example might be reading (without doing it for your degree or your job), or playing a sport because you like it (not because you want to make a career of it). Many suggest that cultivating these sorts of activities is one of the keys to happiness.
FOMO does not just mean missing out (From How to Overcome FOMO by Life Kit Podcast)
FOMO is the “Fear of Missing Out”. It is often felt when seeing how friends or family are spending their evenings as you scroll through Instagram. It doesn’t feel fair that you are at home re-watching Doctor Who when they are at the beach or running a marathon. A better way of looking at these examples is to think about your choices. Why are you at home rather than out? Often you are actually gaining something from your choice: perhaps you are at home because you needed rest or because you need to get up early in the morning for a different activity. The “missing out” part of the phrase unhelpfully implies that you are not also gaining something from your choices.
Unsurprisingly, all our lives are vastly different. And not all of these little snipppets of advice will benefit everyone. And these ideas, even if they do resonate with you, are a) not necessarily going to be transformative and b) not going to make up for some of the very real world issues that would make a life difficult.
I will, however, keep adding to these pages, collecting gems of information that might help me take a few more steps forward.
