Why Self-Improvement Can Make You Worse.

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Why Self-Improvement Can Make You Worse.

muchelleb 18.04.2026 9 589 просмотров 724 лайков

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💿 *Get my best practical ideas in your inbox (free)⇢* → Sign up: https://www.muchelleb.com.au/newsletter-signup ⛳️ Red Flags of Self-Improvement This is off the top of my head, no specific creators in mind. A lot of creators who do lean into these lines of thinking often are doing what they feel is helpful, but I'd just be a bit more mindful if this is the style of content you're watching. Really notice how it makes you feel, and, if you use any of the advice, pay attention to whether it leaves you feeling more or less thoughtful. → Encourages isolating yourself (e.g. go ghost for 6 months, cut off everyone, etc.) → Over-focuses on “having discipline” and “taking action”, while ignoring emotional regulation, difficult days, different brains, flexibility, and letting go of self-criticism → Creates an “us vs them” dynamic that breeds division or superiority (e.g. “people like us vs people like them”) → Pushes rigid formulas, steps, or “right ways” of doing things without encouraging self-reflection or a personalised approach → Turns relationships into hierarchies (e.g. “high-value vs low-value people”) → Encourages self-rejection instead of self-acceptance → Feeds your ego or makes you feel “better than” others (e.g. “when you start healing, you won’t relate to people anymore”) → Encourages shame-based growth rather than curiosity-led growth → Promotes constant optimisation without emphasising space for fun, rest, and relationships → Pushes “more, more, more” instead of focusing on what’s actually effective (which is often less) → Over-identifies you with your problems in an unhelpful way (leans heavily on labels instead of helping you understand and change what’s actually going on) ☁️ *Join the Intention Community (it's replaced the Intention app)! ⇢* → _Every month, two brand-new tools (meditations, worksheets, videos, etc) drop, usually built around a recent video - so that you can take what you’ve learned and do something with it._ → Join: https://intentioncommunity.circle.so/ 🪞 *Organise your Life with the Calm Productivity Notion Pack. ⇢* → _"This notion pack is amazing!! I feel like it’s changing my life already and I’ve never been so impressed by a product." Alice Joyce_ → Get the pack: https://shop.muchelleb.com.au/products/the-calm-productivity-notion-pack 💛 *If you liked this video, you'll probably like... ⇢* → The Behaviour Change Playlist _(when you want to start a new habit or change)_ : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW3yd6NHmEVqXsWO6qv2AytfUtVeVf6f7 🍧 *I post more of this kind of thing on Instagram ⇢* → Follow me: http://instagram.com/muchelleb 🎧 *Prefer chattier deep-dives on productivity and behaviour change? ⇢* → I drop weekly chatty episodes on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2HqznNA2v9McYirvqmUVvO?si=024ac78820b24443 💭 *Video timeline ⇢* 00:00 Everyone is quitting self-improvement 00:05 The self-improvement trap #1 01:32 2: The cycle that keeps you stuck 03:04 3: It's time to go camping 04:20 4: Stop outsourcing your intuition 06:14 On quitting self-improvement 06:44 Stop copying Kylie Jenner, Blinders and Making ur Own Nachos 08:43 Self-improvement red flags 09:47 How I’m trying to be better 11:04 My guiding principles going forward 🔗 Anything I mentioned ⇢ 🔗 If you don’t know what you want in 2026, start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYLk8u8e_UA 🔗 Video on “the self-criticism cycle”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCxuFdIPqJk 🔗 Tim Ferris Blog Post on The Self Help Trap: https://tim.blog/2026/03/04/the-self-help-trap/ 🔗 Research on venting: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/does_venting_your_feelings_actually_help 🔗 50 Therapy Red Flags: https://jonathanshedler.substack.com/p/50-therapy-red-flags

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Everyone is quitting self-improvement

the four self-improvement traps that will lead to self-improvement making your life miserable. Trap number one. I

The self-improvement trap #1

remember picking up a book called Miracle Morning. This is no shade to the author, it's just part of my journey. And it has this SAVERS morning routine process. Silence, affirmations, visualizations, so on and so forth. And I tried to do this routine every single day diligently. I even wanted to make a video about it until I realized that I was trying to solve problems that didn't exist. So, I stopped doing that routine and I started doing things in my morning that actually felt helpful to me and where I was at that moment. Immediately, my life felt better. And this is trap number one. Self-improvement to solve non-existent problems will make you miserable. And the most vulnerable people to this trap are overachievers. Self-improvement should look like you, a list of actual problems that you have that seem to affect you in your day-to-day life that you've dived into and you understand the root cause of. Maybe a list of goals that you want to achieve that you've really thought about. And then, a list of experiments to try that addresses those other two lists. It's that simple. You should not touch a seven-step morning routine, a cold plunge, attempt to give up coffee unless it very specifically addresses something on those lists. There are no circumstances where you should be trying to wake up at 5:00 a. m. unless you have a real reason to wake up at 5:00 a. m. You don't need to declutter your whole life unless the space around you is bugging you. You don't need to quit coffee unless you're like me and after one coffee, you just feel terrible. Bad self-improvement that keeps you stuck in a miserable cycle is self-improvement that doesn't actually address anything which keeps you in this endless loop of problem creation, like creating non-existent problems rather than solving existing problems. Trap

2: The cycle that keeps you stuck

number two. So, here are two ways I see people looking at self-improvement and one will make your life worse, better. Lens number one, you look at self-improvement as self-discipline tests. Or, lens number two, you look at self-improvement as doing some stuff that could make your life better. Lens number two, obviously, is where you want to be always. But, lens number one seems more common, especially in the industry and in the self-improvement world. So, you should start running every day, for example, because you want to feel energized. The only goal in your head should be, I want to feel more energized or fill in the blank. Not, I want to make sure that I'm disciplined and good enough to do this. If you do a daily 20-minute tidy, you should be looking for the reward of having a fresh space to look around at. You're not testing whether you're disciplined enough to have a tidy home. Like that has nothing to do with it. Because when you mess up, when you err on your diet, when you skip a run, when you don't tidy your house one day, which will happen because you're a human being, when that happens and you feel disappointed, the disappointment should be, oh man, I didn't get the rewards that I wanted from that. So, I didn't get the energy that I wanted from that run and I'm disappointed in that. I didn't wake up to a fresh and clean house and oh, that makes me sad cuz I hate that feeling. But, if what you find is that you're more disappointed in yourself than you are in the fact that you didn't reap the rewards of a change that you wanted to make, that's when it gets into scary territory cuz now you're in what I think of as a self-criticism cycle and that is when self-improvement will make you miserable. I made a whole video about that, I'll have it linked below. I'm of the belief that no one who is in a self-criticism cycle should be consuming self-improvement content unless that self-improvement content is helping them

3: It's time to go camping

to get out of that cycle. Trap number three. Imagine waking up on a Sunday morning. You put on a self-improvement podcast, you feel motivated and inspired, you even take some notes. And then, you take what you've learned and you do nothing. You put on another podcast, video. You have all of these ideas of things that you could do, but you haven't done anything with those ideas. Welcome to trap number three, treating self-improvement like a collector's hobby. To make a comparison, this is very similar to someone researching how to camp, listening to books, podcasts, YouTube videos, all about camping, buying all of the camping equipment, and kind of waiting for the one piece of advice that's going to get them camping. But, there is no They need to take themselves out and they need to try camping. That's how they become a camper. It almost feels like you're looking for a golden piece of advice that is going to somehow change everything for you and magically wipe away your problems. And you know well that golden piece of advice doesn't exist. But, you keep on searching. You make parts of your life better, easier, nicer, smoother by taking small actions, seeing what comes of them, and then taking more small actions. And eventually, you look around and you're proud of how far you've come in certain areas of your life. And along the way, maybe you watch some podcasts, some videos, some self-improvement creators, maybe you don't. The improvement comes through small action, not consumption.

4: Stop outsourcing your intuition

Trap number four. When I was in my late 20s, I learned about rage journaling as a self-improvement tool. I learned that it was helpful to re-trigger old anger, old hurts, and that emotionally expressing those feelings would heal stored trauma. Now that I know better, I know how that sounds, but at the time, I was kind of new to anything along those lines and I was like, yeah, like I have some stuff that I could work on. I'm going to try rage journaling. And at first, I felt good, like I it was relieving to rage journal. And over time, I started feeling worse, but I was like, you know what? I just need to push through. Everyone says this is amazing. And then, I found the research. Repeated venting is a temporary relief trap that actually entrenches negative emotions rather than helping you to let them go. The more you engage in venting, especially repeated venting, the more you're kind of practicing rumination. Rumination is the number one predictor of mental health problems and I'm giggling now, but at the time, here was me engaging in a self-improvement practice that was making me ruminate more, making me feel worse. But, I kept on going because I was like, no, they say it's good. I fell into self-improvement trap number four, which is guru mentality. Putting the advice of someone on the internet over a feeling in my gut as I tried that advice out that said, something about this isn't right for me. And in the trauma space, that's concerning and scary and I actually think there needs to be more done to monitor that space, but I also see this in the productivity world. You pick up David Allen's famous guide to getting things done. You create all these lists, you download all these programs. It feels complicated, it feels hard, maybe you hate it, you hate maintaining it. It's not really working for you. But, instead of going, okay, well, why do I hate this and what should I change? You might go, okay, I'm going to push through. I'm going to keep going until you then turn around to yourself and go, well, something must be wrong with me. Somehow, you become the problem in the scenario. But, you can't almost ever copy and paste someone else's strategy in their life and expect it to work perfectly for you. Aspects of that system might be really good for you, but there are going to be aspects that aren't good for you because you don't

On quitting self-improvement

have the same brain as that person. Now, what to do about it? I know a lot of people who let their problems fester, look at their flaws that affect other people negatively, and don't go, I'm going to do something about that, who don't put any thought into becoming more compassionate people or kind of people or healthier people, and trust that they are miserable. Giving up on self-improvement, giving up on improving yourself may not be the liberating answer that it's advertised to be, even if these traps exist. So, instead of just give up, stop trying, stop trying to self-improve, here are four potential

Stop copying Kylie Jenner, Blinders and Making ur Own Nachos

solutions that you might consider first. Number one, why are you copying Kylie Jenner's makeup? In 2016, Kylie Jenner's makeup was it and I tried it. I followed the YouTube tutorials and I looked bad. Now, I know that I am low contrast. Kylie Jenner is high contrast. She's a true winter. I am a soft summer. I have hooded eyes, she doesn't. I'm pale, she's not, so on and so forth. When you try to copy and paste someone else's strategy for productivity, planning their days, you might just be me trying to copy Kylie Jenner's makeup look. If you are consuming self-improvement content and you try to find people who match you in terms of values, in terms of struggles. If your struggle is motivation, don't get productivity advice from someone who's clearly never struggled with motivation. It's not a flaw that they've never struggled with motivation, but they're probably not going to be able to help you. If you struggle with thinking too much, don't follow someone who is an action taker and a doer. Follow someone who's had to work through their journey of overthinking. Of course, you could start with the Kylie Jenner makeup look and try to customize it to fit you perfectly, but you'd be better off if you're me starting with a Carine Roitfeld look and then customizing it to suit you perfectly, if you see what I'm saying. Number two, you want to create blinders. People will put blinders on their horses for horse racing so that they don't get distracted and they move towards the finish line. If you're consuming self-improvement content, it's easy to be a horse without blinders and doesn't get to the finish line. So, here's what I mean. Create a finish line to focus on, a list of problems to solve, a list of goals that you want to achieve. Go to that video that I already have in my description if you want to make that more helpful. And then, when you consume self-improvement content, put on your blinders. Does that advice help you in some way to solve those problems, get to those goals? No? Stop listening or don't apply it. Number three, stop reheating nachos. Someone is giving you their specific method for journaling, it might be a perfect fit, but it also might not be. You might need to change the recipe up. Pay attention to how you feel as you do it. Really notice, what do I hate about this? What would I do differently if I was to design this from scratch? What doesn't feel good? Redesign, go again. Sometimes, another person's recipe will be perfect for you because they're so alike to you. Sometimes, another person's recipe won't be and

Self-improvement red flags

you're going to need to make changes. And number four, find better content. So, in Tim Ferriss's article on the self-help trap, he says something like, "Modern self-help contains an inbuilt flaw. To continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken. " I really like Tim Ferriss, but I would argue that good self-improvement would help you to get better at noticing if you are caught up in a trap of finding things about yourself that are broken. And good self-improvement would help you to break that pattern over time. And I've come to realize, especially I just saw a clip of the Clavicula interview where he talks about what he's doing as self-improvement, that there is a huge range when it comes to self-improvement content. It's really easy to get caught watching the wrong people. And I remember one time when I was going to therapy and then I saw this list of therapist red flags and my therapist ticked every single one of them. I actually saw that list after I finished up with her because I was like, hmm, something's wrong. But, it did help me to realize, oh, I'm not crazy and some of the stuff she was doing was weird. Here is a similar list of self-improvement red flags on the off chance that you are listening to people in the self-improvement space that are spreading weird ideas. I'm going to put

How I’m trying to be better

that on the screen and I'll also have it in the description. Knowing all of this, how do I show up online better? I am a self-improvement creator creating a video about how self-improvement can make your life worse, even if you are the smartest of people, and I see the irony in that. And there are also probably so many people watching this who are thinking, "It's actually not that deep. " Like there's a whole segment, a bunch of people that are like, "I listen to self-improvement, and it's fun, and it's like a little pep, and it makes me feel inspired and motivated, and I take what I want, and I leave the rest. " And I love that. I love those people. You are always welcome here. And there's also another segment of people who I appreciate just as much, who are smart, intelligent, thoughtful, good, and capable people who might see themselves in these traps and be like, "Oof, self-improvement is making me worse. " And the reason I really wanted to make this video is cuz I needed to puzzle through my own thoughts about this, about the self-improvement space period. This has been on my mind for so long, this sense of, "Okay, how do I create a path forward in which I'm creating content in this world that I approve of and that I think is helpful. " I really wanted to end this video by being like, "And here is exactly what I'm going to do to move forward to make sure that I'm never contributing to these traps, and that I am a perfect creator in the self-improvement space. " I actually don't think that that's possible after having really puzzled it over. But I want to end this video with sort of just a list of what I am trying to aspire towards in my content. Number one, I want to do what I can to

My guiding principles going forward

make sure that I feel like I'm creating responsibly in this space, so that people are less likely to fall into those traps in my content, knowing that I can't control the weather. And I want to help people to actually build the self-trust and the self-collaboration that they need, two things that I think are so important, so that they're not listening to a content creator like me or like any other content creator and putting that content creator's opinions above their own experiences. I also want to create content that treats people in my audience as thoughtful, intelligent, and capable. No one likes to be treated like they are made of glass. I also think that treating people like they are made of glass can create another unhealthy and unhelpful cycle. I do want to create content that gets clicked and watched not to extreme levels, but enough. But I always want to prioritize people over algorithms. I also want to let myself have strong beliefs about what I think is the best approach to behavior change, productivity, while also allowing people to disagree with me and have different opinions. My approach to productivity and behavior change has developed to really prioritize flexibility, self-acceptance, working with yourself, and I really believe in those approaches. I believe that they're the best fit for people that are like me. I don't want to water down or soften my content so that everyone feels seen. I actually want to create content that's as specific as a Kylie Jenner makeup look, but where people can quickly identify, "Oh, like I'm not a true winter. I'm not a I don't have hooded eyes. It's so-and-so. " I don't know how I'm going to do that, but I want that. With all of that said, thank you so much for watching. If you watch this end part of the video, I appreciate you. This was me rambling and working out my own thoughts, and just wanting to express them because this has been so top of mind for me. I hope that some of the ideas in this video were helpful in some way. If you feel like you are in one of the traps that I've talked about in this video, and you feel like unsubscribing from self-improvement is one of your steps forward, please know like that doesn't bother me one bit. I did kind of defend self-improvement a little bit in this video, but I could not care less. If anything, I would be stoked if the result I got from this video was you unsubscribing from self-improvement because that's what you know in your heart you need to do. Amazing. Please do that. I appreciate you so much, and I'll see you soon.

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