It’s Time to Stop Saying You’re Broken and Need to Be Fixed

Self-improvement is bullshit.

Self-improvement, on its surface, sounds good. It sounds like progress. It sounds like we’re doing the “right” thing.

I threw myself into self-improvement inside prison, and even more so when I got out of prison.

I’d chase “solution” after “solution”, “fix” after “fix”.

I believed the promises that authors were selling me. The promises had to work; they just had to. I was broken and needed to be fixed. They’ve sold millions of copies; they must know the answer.

I’d consume self-improvement material with the wild voraciousness of a broken man desperately seeking to feel anything other than how I was feeling.

When you’re not comfortable in your own skin, you will do whatever you can to feel better — drinking, drugs, sex, and yes, self-improvement.

Book after book, podcast after podcast, blog after blog.

All the while, I was falling short of the promises expressed in the content I was devouring.

With each unmet expectation, a further reinforcement that I was broken and needed fixing.

“It worked for millions; why not me? What’s wrong with me?”