If you've ever been on a forum or any social media website looking for ways to improve your life in some way, chances are that what you got in return were not people who evaluated your life situation or who cared enough to listen to you and give guidance with realistic expectations in mind. Rather, what you received were simple platitudes.
“Just be confident.”
“Just ask her out “
“Just go to the gym.”
(This is especially true if you spent any amount of time on YouTube watching self-proclaimed “self-help” channels)
On paper, this all sounds like good advice - and if we're being charitable, some of the people giving out this advice could very well be genuine. Confidence - according to many “self-help experts” - is just a mindset. Something you can easily adopt by simply not thinking negatively or by letting go of “negative energy” (with words like “negative energy” or “vibes” appealing more to women). If you then gain that confidence, you'll successfully delude yourself into thinking you can ask that potential mate out. If unsuccessful, then you simply need to “work harder” by going to the gym to max out your genetic potential assuming you haven't done so already.
For roughly two to three years (2021-2023) this is what I tried to do. Never once in my life was I an athlete, and every time I made an attempt to work out as a teenager I felt embarrassed and would leave the gym feeling ashamed of how weak I was. The reason I was able to start this task of going to the gym and stick to a routine without skipping a day was because I had put myself into a false reality. I had to envision myself not as the person that I was, but as the successful person that I wanted to be. Instead of viewing my body as “ugly” or “skinnyfat,” I had to force myself to visualize my physique as “strong” or “powerful.”
I had spent my time reading and educating myself all about the body, mass building, and nutrition. I knew that for best results I had to be on a routine that encouraged hypertrophy, rather than just strength. I knew I had to eat more protein and sleep more. When I was home, I found some exercises I could do that would bulid muscle with my bodyweight and a pair of adjustable dumbbells. I felt I had put my all into this new version of me.
This was my new way of thinking, which involved denial of reality and submission to delusion, and I began to see it crawl its way into other areas of my life. When I bought the audiobook version of Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Lund Fisker, I attempted to make the right decisions that could make early retirement possible. However, having no background or education when it comes to incredibly important financial decisions, I ended up making costly mistakes that put me deeper in a hole more than I wanted to be. Although these were not life-shattering financial mistakes - I had to recoup my losses by selling some assets and personal belongings that otherwise I would have kept. But I persisted, I wanted to believe that I could become an entirely different person. I wanted to believe that if I had made all the right choices in this short period with little bumps in the road, I would reap all the benefits and come out with an even greater reward than what I had envisioned.
However, in January 2022, I had an injury as a result of an epileptic seizure. I've had seizures since I was ten (grand mal seizures to be specific), but it never occured to me the physical consequences it would have on my body. An injury I had in my senior year of highschool due to a fall because of my epilepsy came back and it tore at the same part of my body, dislocating my right shoulder again. What's worse is I found out that the combination of having a repeated injury on the same body part with a neurological condition that convulses and shakes the muscles (making them weaker) will mean my body will never be the same again.
And so I had months of repeated doctors visits and weeks of physical therapy. It was humiliating, to say the least. Here I was - trying to push my rep count on my bench press just a few months ago, and now just lifting a pink dumbbell is impossible. When I would go outside or go shopping, all I could see around me were people who had functional bodies wasting them on fast food and sodas. Stomachs bloated with processed sugars and corn syrup, lungs filled with smoke. I didn't want to be a loser anymore, I wanted to be more than what my birth had determined for me. I didn't want to look like I had given up.
I would finally "recover" after 6-7 months of physical therapy, with additional exercises I was doing myself. I still wanted to believe that if I could just work harder, put in more hours, then I could be strong and look strong. But that mindset of delusion, that unwarranted optimism was fading away. All this came to a halt sometime in 2023 when I got myself ready to perform a set of front squats. The set typically was 3x8 or 4x6, however when I ended my first set I put the bar down and sat on my bench. Why was I doing this? What or who was I lifting for? The practice of lifting did not boost my confidence, nor did it help me cope in any way with the reality of my situation. What would be the point in being a “gym rat” if I had to put in 500% of the effort for a mere fraction of the gains that normal, healthy gym-goers receive? This is when I came to realize that the advice I had received was not for my interest, not for my benefit. No one actually cared about the outcome of my life or the direction it was going in.
I started to become skeptical of people who felt that it was enough to give the simple platitudes I mentioned earlier (“just work harder”). How did I know that they achieved what they earned through hard work? Their words of wisdom, their guidance - was it all from experience? Did any one of them actually start from the bottom? Or rather, was it all just an easy way to brag or boast about their fortune while masquerading it as “self-help”? So I left the gym, not because I didn’t see any value in physical health or strength building, but because I was so far behind that I had no time to care about something as superficial about my appearance. Even if I had my goal body, it would not matter because I would still be the same self-isolating with no future prospects.
Ultimately, I came to an understanding that what I need to do is prioritize what I can do with the little I have. Try to enjoy whatever I have left that is still somewhat pleasurable. Improve my life with realistic standards in mind. Ignore obstacles, avoid pointless distractions. This is part of the reason I started this blog - I don’t know where it’ll go from here, but reading and writing has been a great source of wisdom for me. I can gain wisdom by absorbing the words of various authors, and later ponder their meaning by using the written format to see what it means to me and how I can use it in my life.
The point of this post is not to say that self-improvement is useless or futile. But that the majority of what you read or hear probably is not meant for you. Given the age of the Internet, most everyone is concerned with appearances or “clout.” With everyone being a public person - or even anonymous - discerning helpful advice from well-meaning people is getting harder and harder. No one wants to “offend,” because no one wants to be seen as a “bad person.” Some have a vested interest in keeping up a certain appearance and must stick to a certain idea of how to improve the “right way.” And of course others really don’t have any wisdom to give but insist that their life experiences are just like your’s - so you should just shut up and listen to them.
Do what you can with what you have. I don’t have any actual advice to give on this blog or any wisdom in particular. I do have plenty of warnings, however. I hope that by sharing my own experiences and insights that the little I know may be of some help.