Weekend Challenge #52: Who You Are Matters – A Cautionary Tale of Self-Help Quips and Quotes

This week, I was confronted with a quote during an Instagram death scroll that made me take a second look. As someone who struggles with self-doubt from time to…always…I follow a lot of people who provide such uplifting media because I need it. But that means I often scroll right by. This time, I didn’t. I paused. Reread. And then thought, “wait, I think that’s missing something.”

Yes, I had the bravado to think I could disagree with one of the biggest names in the self-help world. Let me tell you why…

Here’s my submission for the anthem of self-help for the last decade:

\”You kind of suck. You must get better. If you run a marathon, do a 50k. If you wrote an article, get to work on the book. If you’ve ever dealt with anxiety, depression, fear, anger, or any emotion for that matter, just stop. Get better. Better. Better. Better.\”

Now, I am a fan of the self-help world. Psychologists and counselors who are willing to share their work through a $14.95 book give access to many who can’t put up $100 every week. But somewhere along the line, some things went awry as less than qualified people began to pedal less than thoughtful ideas and shamed millions along the way.

Mark Manson, himself a self-helper and author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, pointed out some issues with the industry that are worth summarizing before I go to my own:

1. Self-help reinforces perceptions of shame and inferiority when people consume it with an attitude of, “look at all the things I’m not doing to be better than I could be. I’m more awful than I thought.”
2. Self-help is a well-hidden avoidance tactic for people to say they are working on themselves while not actually doing anything about it. Reading a book is the start, not the finish.
3. Self-help is built on unrealistic expectations of getting better in every aspect of your life in the matter of an hour seminar or a couple of hundred pages.
4. Science can be in short supply. Most authors and leaders in the space do very little research on their work. That can be ok, but it should be something to be wary of.
5. Self-help means help yourself, yet most treat it as getting help from a guru or author. Only you can really create change in your life, so the ideas of others are just that, ideas, not perfect and universal solutions.

If these issues are true why do I, and millions of others, buy so much self-help stuff? There are a lot of reasons but a hopeful one is simple.

Many people truly want to improve their lives but get stuck in how to do it.

It’s encouraging to see how many people are trying to get “better”. What I can’t stand is the blind way we talk about what “better” is. Is it happiness? Discipline? Motivation? Or is it something deeper like faith, friendship, love, or hope? It could just be as simple as having more stuff – money, cars, houses, and everything else you don’t need but you hope impresses other people. Maybe it’s all of it? The quips and quotes of self-help fail to reconcile why we need help in the first place.

Such ambiguity begs the question of whether self-help is actually helpful or not. I think it is but we need to be more careful and discerning in certain situations.

A Case Study In Mattering

As a case study, let’s return to where I started. That quote I saw this week that gave me pause was from Tom Bilyeu (who I truly do appreciate as a thinker and leader). He said, “It doesn’t matter who you are today. The only thing that matters is who you want to become and the price you’re willing to pay to get there.” I get it, the idea that you can leave your past behind no matter how rough it is and become something new is cool. However, I also think it needs context.

I don’t think Bilyeu is wrong. His work is incredible, and his pedigree speaks for itself. I also know this message permeates self-help everywhere. AND I wonder if it’s oversimplified. Boiled down for Instagram but missing the nuance that life always has.  

To truly engage in self-help, it absolutely does matter who you are today.

Who you are today is the only place to start becoming who you want to be tomorrow. Like a river that starts as a stream, the current version of you has awesome things to offer the version of you that you are building. The idea that you would try to forget or somehow extinguish who you are for something else, doesn’t work.

It seems that a more nuanced way to approach the idea is to recognize that who you are today does not determine who will be tomorrow. It is not the cause-and-effect life you were taught as a kid – go to a good school and get a good job; get your act together and find a partner; go to jail once and you’re screwed forever.

Who you are today though does matter for your future. If you have struggled, hit rock bottom, and want to climb out, you can’t forget about the bottom. The lessons you learned there should go with you. Your background and mistakes that put you there aren’t to be ignored; they are to be incorporated.

Brene Brown may have said it best. “When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.”[i] It takes incredible courage to examine our collective and individual stories. The easier route is to try and deny the past to act as if it doesn’t matter, but as Brown points out, then the past defines you.

I think Bilyeu is on to something that Brown might echo. The past does not HAVE to define your story but it’s not as simple as ignoring it. If you are willing to step into and own your past, only then can you build your future.

So, it’s not that who you are today doesn’t matter, it’s that who you are today needs ownership.

You matter, right here, right now. You might not be exactly where you want to be. You might want to get better. But if you don’t reconcile the story of who you are today, and clearly identify what “better” means, you aren’t going anywhere.

Weekend Challenge

Get better. See you next time. Kidding, kidding…

This weekend, I hope you can start to own your story, take account of your past, and realize how much you of today matters. One of my favorite questions about who we are today to address in a written or recorded journal is:

“What values have my actions exemplified?”

You can think in terms of your whole life, the last year, a few days, or whatever time frame you need. I started the LIFE Enacted Guide with a version of this question to honor what you might be tempted to ignore – yourself! 

I want you to lean on who you are today to create a purposeful vision for your future.

If you want a deep dive, grab the LIFE Enacted Guide but at least ask yourself this question. If you’re honest, you might unearth some ugly stuff. For example, I found that I live out value for the “approval of others” and “financial success to measure my worth.” I don’t like it, but they have shown in my actions. I usually create work thinking about if it could go viral – approval of others – or make me a bunch of money – financial success as worth.

I want to live values of contribution instead of consumption and authenticity instead of popularity, so I have some work today. Change is damn hard but the guide helped me identify the not-so-great pieces of who I am today so that I know how to get “better” tomorrow.  

Who I am, matters to who I am becoming. The same goes for you.

Who I am, matters to who I am becoming. The same goes for you.

Happy weekend everyone. Be careful of the quips and quotes in the self-help world that go big on social media – their authors often have so much behind them that you should dig into.

Let me know if you’ve seen any quips that need questioning this week and share how your weekend challenge helps you figure out who you are.

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[i] Brene Brown (2015). Own our history. Change the story. https://brenebrown.com/blog/2015/06/18/own-our-history-change-the-story/