The Myth of Self Improvement

we seem to be more free than ever before we can order whatever food we'd like we can travel almost anywhere and pursue any career that our heart desires and yet depression and burnout are also everywhere the Mental Health crisis has only increased why is this when was the last time you felt like you were enough we are always striving to do more and to be more to always be improving ourselves I would argue that it is this cultural emphasis on self-improvement that leaves us so fundamentally burnt out and depressed in such a culture we Embrace

hyperactivity finding ourselves in a state of compulsive striving we have little time to connect with both ourselves and others we are steeped in the normalized myth that we are each of us mere individuals striving to attain private goals the more we Define ourselves that way the more estranged we become from vital aspects of Who We Are and what we need to be healthy our culture is not good for mental health and this shouldn't be shocking news researchers like Tim casser have found the four principles of American corporate capitalism self-interest a desire for financial success consumerism

and competition consistently lead to poor mental health outcomes why then do we continue to endorse and embrace such a culture this video is sponsored by brilliant the research lab I worked in actually tested a lot of Tim cter theories specifically examining intrinsic versus extrinsic aspirations and how they are connected with mental health outcomes however being someone who has struggled with stats I had a hard time interpreting a lot of the graphs and charts that caser used thankfully I found brilliant a fun and interactive way to learn topics that I usually would find ways too complex

brilliant offers Hands-On lessons in math science and computer science allowing you to learn six times more effectively than watching lecture videos thanks to its interactive approach Brilliance courses on data science and Analysis have been crucial in helping me understand data collection and Analysis the course breaks down probability and statistics in an easy and interactive way that for me is just way more fun than boring textbooks if you're curious osity goes beyond statistics brilliant has over 60 other courses with clear and intuitive explanations that can tell you how stem actually works and how it's relevant in

your everyday life no matter what your level of knowledge the step-by-step Solutions and fun problem solving exercises ensure that you'll be able to master all sorts of technical subjects from neural networks to astronomy to try everything brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days visit the link in the description below the first 200 of you will get 20% off brilliant's annual premium [Music] subscription Michelle Fuko wrote extensively on the disciplinary Society this form of social organization tells people what they should do through surveillance and monitoring interestingly in his later years Fuko wrote

about a more specific form of discipline that he called the Technologies of the self intent and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct but also seek to transform themselves to change themselves in their singular being and to make their life into an U that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria such individuals might abide by a strict morning routine practice cold showers and subscribe to a set of self-improvement and self-help podcasts and they will likely feel a sense of freedom and pride in doing so such an individual appears

to stand in contrast to the fearful subject of the disciplinary society as they aren't being compelled to follow such a strict routine by some authoritarian Observer they are free to become who they've always wanted to be interestingly as B Chohan argues a society that normalizes this technology of the self is actually more effective in extracting resources from its members than the surveillance methods of disciplinary societies instead of a society that runs on telling people what they should do this new form of control tells people what they can do this is smart power a power that

compels people to subject themselves to power relations completely on their own accord rather than inhibiting or repressing smart power motivates us to self-optimize rather than a disciplinary Society we now live in an achievement Society instead of the tireless surveillance of disciplinary societies that measure and observe their subject s in order to optimize productivity we have now taken surveillance into our own hands motivated by the need to improve ourselves we use apps ranking systems and Health Data to determine if we are self-optimizing enough the auto exploiting subject carries around its own labor camp as a self-illuminating

self- surveilling subject it Bears its own internal panopticon within the digitalized networked subject is a panopticon of itself this ensures that each and every person has now taken on the task of conducting Perpetual Autos surveillance this is far more efficient than the techniques used in a disciplinary Society if we see ourselves as a project that can always be worked on there is always more for us to do not only do we take on the task of monitoring and measuring ourselves we also feel compelled to constantly improve ourselves under the idea that this is fundamentally good

for us as an entrepreneur of himself the neoliberal achievement subject engages in Auto exploitation willingly and even passionately the self as a work of art amounts to a beautiful but deceptive illusion that the neoliberal regime maintains in order to exhaust its resources entirely we are then capable of unlimited self- production making ourselves into better and better marketable Commodities by making sure we are for example in shape have an attractive partner and are making enough money and this involves more than mere career aspirations physical optimization means more than aesthetic practice alone sexiness and fitness represents New

Economic resources to be increased marketed and exploited this compulsive drive to improve ourselves under this idea of our self as a project can now take over our entire lives this pressure to achieve to be more and do more leads to a sort of culturally induced narcissism as Steven Ryner writes narcissism and sociopathy describe Corporate America but it's flat out wrong to think in 21st century America that narcissism and sociopathy are illnesses in today's America narcissism and sociopathy are strategies and they're successful strategies in contemporary Society it is effective for us to be constantly focused on

ourselves and monitoring our performance and self-image to be so fixated on promoting ourselves is to never let your guard down to compulsively market and improve yourself in the hopes of one day perfecting your self- project this constant self-reference develops into a rat race within oneself and eventually it could lead to burnout or what Young chhan describes as eye tiredness the ego grows exhausted and wears itself down such tiredness stems from the redundancy and recurrence of the ego we exhaust ourselves with ourselves evidently burnout is more often than not treated as an annoyance or a failure

in mastering oneself fully it is seen as a weakness and should be treated immediately lest we run the risk of falling short of our journey towards self-optimization but I think burnout and depression should be seen more as the very symptoms of this compulsion for achievement in weariness of the self aronberg points to this achievement society as the root of this rise in depression depression began its Ascent when the disciplinary model for Behavior broke against norms then invited us to undertake personal initiative by enjoining us to be ourselves the depressed individual is unable to measure up

he is tired of having to become himself it is this voluntary self- exploitation that gives rise to a Fractured Soul we experience severe dislocation a loss of connection with ourselves and others as we compulsively strive for self-perfection depression and burnout are simply the canaries in the coal mine in terms of demonstrating the D destructiveness of such an achievement culture this is not to suggest that self-improvement or the striving to be a better person is inherently maladaptive such a journey is healthy and often beneficial however we should pay close attention to when such a process collapses

into a hellish cycle of excessive self-reference and exhaustion it is more than likely that such an outcome is the result of self-exploitation rather than healthy intrinsically motivated self-improvement alienation is inevitable when our inner sense of value becomes status-driven hinging on externally imposed standards of competitive achievement and acquisition and a highly conditional Acceptance in others eyes we struggle to answer the question who am I and this is an important question to answer if we wish to ever truly improve ourselves Eric fr's escape from freedom is a masterful exploration of how Freedom alone can nonetheless leave us

unhappy alienated and vulnerable to authoritarianism negative Freedom the absence of constraints does not bring us closer to solving the question of who we are we live under the illusion that we know what we want but as from argues the sad fact of the matter is that we want that which we are supposed to want this I would argue is at the root of compulsive self-improvement we have become automatons who live under the illusion of being self-will individuals he lives in a world to which he has lost genuine relatedness and in which everybody and everything has

become instrumental ized where he has become part of the machine that his hands have built fromm's cure is simple spontaneity seen in both artists and children spontaneous activity does not abide by rigid self-optimization and Improvement instead it is an Embrace of activity for the sake of the activity itself art play time with friends and a gradual slowing down flies in the very face of the sorts of self-improvement that lead to burnout as from writes spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the Integrity of the self

for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself a new with the world this partially relies on truly giving attention to the moment through active listening and observing the gift of listening as B Chelan observes is entirely inaccessible to the hyperactive ego which must close itself off in order to constantly measure and optimize itself any disruption from the outer world is considered to be a threat to achieving our potential to listen is to open oneself up to themselves and the world around them our world has made us increasingly focused on ourselves as a

project this has made us rigid and incapable of spontaneity it is only in those moments of intrinsic Focus where we are doing things for themselves in which we can escape the burnout Society call it a flow State spontaneity or resonance we find ourselves alive only when we risk destabilizing our journey towards self-perfection here I think bertron Russell gives us the most succinct path forward in combating self-absorption the secret of happiness is this let your interests be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as

possible friendly rather than [Music] hostile [Music]