Ever since I embarked on my self-help journey in high school, one thing I can confidently say is I’ve been avoiding betterment burnout. Even though I have nothing mind-blowing or awesome to show for it, my growth has been small but consistent year after year.
With no sign of slowing down.
It’s something I’m proud of, as I’m well aware of what the self-help industry tends to do when it comes to the topic of improving oneself. You have the Tony Robbins, Rhonda Byrne’s, Tai Lopez’s, and Jordan Peterson’s of the world all riling people up in their own way. Carefully articulating their words to steer people towards a particular conclusion.
All the while maybe feeling excited about what you could be doing.
If not that, then it’s pressure from inside. The desire to have glowing hair and skin without blemishes, weighing less, being more outgoing, happier, and more confident. The list goes on and on.
At the end of the day, traditional self-help is far more likely to lead to betterment burnout than it is to be genuinely helpful. It can manipulate us into caring about things we don’t truly care much about. It can make a trivial problem in our lives a much bigger issue that we feel the need to address.
And it’s more likely to lead us into a betterment loop where we’re not feeling much growth at all and panicking because those strategies aren’t working.
So to help with all that, here are some strategies that I’ve used over the years to help with preventing betterment burnout and managing it in a healthy manner.
5 Ways To Handle Betterment Burnout
#1: Remind Yourself Of Your “Why”
When it comes to setting up your own goals and ambitions, I always ask myself, “Why am I even doing this?” The reason being that there is so much more that goes into a goal beyond simply setting one. There is your motivation (as in what do you use to motivate yourself), your approach to said goal, and most importantly, your reason for pursuing this in the first place. Your why.
Asking that first is crucial because that answer is at the forefront of everything. Your “why” is the guitar soloist or the lead singer in a band. It’s the leading role in a play or movie where events happen around them.
And like those positions, they aren’t made lightly. They’re big decisions.
The biggest problem with a lot of advice is they don’t elaborate on this. Many self-help gurus pounce on particular problems and feel the urge to “fix those” without understanding the underlying reason. That or push their own expectations and hype people to start caring about different problems.
This is why your “why” is so important. It’s both an anchor and what you can use to determine whether this is a genuine goal or just someone foisting their expectations on you.
If you’ve never figured out what your “why” actually is for something, then it’s well worth digging into yourself and figuring out that reason. When I set my resolutions for this year, I asked myself several questions that helped me justify why I wanted the goals that I set. It went like this.
How To Reframe, Refocus, and Form Your “Why”
- What aspects of my life are most important to me right now? What kind of problems am I realistically facing?
- Are these solutions something that I’m excited about doing in my life?
- What are the solutions to those problems?
- Are these solutions something that I’ve created for myself, or are they influenced by outside sources?
- How satisfied am I about the answers to these questions?
Your why isn’t a mantra, so allow yourself to be brutally honest with yourself for those answers. In fact, I encourage you to be more honest in figuring out your reasons and motivations for the goals you set.
#2: Also Define Your “Enough”
Unless you’re dealing with a difficult friend or some other external force causing problems, many gurus won’t be talking about setting limits. In fact, this topic is rarely brought up when discussing your goals and desires.
Sure enough, setting actual limits for yourself is one way of staving off betterment burnout. And the simple act of doing that can make your life feel happier in the process.
This hit me early on when I decided to place a limit on how wealthy I wanted to become. Over time, looking at the lives of the wealthy only further validates my reasoning to pursue less rather than more.
There can be several reasons for experiencing that burst of happiness. One can be the fact that you’ve moved the goalpost closer to you so you don’t have to work as hard. Another can be that the reposition is something that is more connected to your desires and vision for a happier life.
Screw “Breaking Limits.” Aim for “Enough.”
Even though many self-help gurus love talking about breaking past limits and not being constrained, there is a difference between constrained and “having enough” of one thing. Often times, obsessing over that one thing leads to people fixating entirely on that and missing crucial details.
That or create problems in other areas that could’ve been avoided entirely.
Setting limits varies from person to person, but the easiest way to determine what is “enough” is to consider where you are now and what you think is reasonable enough.
The reason I continue to push myself to lose 50 pounds year after year is because that brings me into a healthier weight range for my height and age. The reason I know this is due to weighing myself on a much fancier scale that told me exactly that.
50 pounds isn’t my true limit, but achieving that means I’ve completed at least 75% of my overall health goal. And that is enough for the time being.
#3: Stave Off Betterment Burnout With Allies And Connections
Like with everything we pursue in life, we’re not truly alone in pursuing them. And sure enough, there are people who will care about what you are doing and your progress.
A good way of staving off betterment burnout is to simply lean into this. If you’re not already doing that, then I would encourage you to do so.
It’s something that also isn’t brought up much in self-help, primarily because so many people focus on raw individualism these days. I can’t blame people for that too much because self-help is inner work and improvement of yourself.
But the loneliness factor is something that can’t be ignored.
As someone who lonewolfed my academic pursuits and a good portion of my self-help journey, I can attest that working and growing alone sucks a lot. What would make my growth more viable and fulfilling is being able to share that with people and celebrate it.
Not to mention have other people “in the trenches” with me working on themselves like this too.
Finding your community or tribe can be difficult. It might require you to create your own group and find people locally. It might force you to do something you don’t normally do. But it’s well worth the payoff to have some accountability and people genuinely caring and wanting to help.
#4: Be More Critical Of Self-Help
My goal for being in self-help is to help people be critical of the industry. I still wish for growth for people, and overall, growing should be good and fun to do.
But it also has to be somewhat serious.
Not in the “you gotta be serious about the strategies I tell you to follow” way. But serious in that what you’re focusing on and what you’re doing to improve is something you are serious about and care about.
This brings me to this strategy for handling betterment burnout, which is to be critical of this industry.
As this paper suggests, women are primarily the target in this industry, with so much of the rhetoric instilling in many women that their behaviours, feelings, and tendencies are inherently flawed. This fixation and targeting of women has perpetuated this idea that in order for women to thrive in today’s society, they need to grow and improve themselves at every opportunity.
On the surface, this feels alright, as this industry has so many people willing to offer their advice. But a critical eye can show another angle. That all this advice, pushing of products, and courses are all just a ploy to make people more into routine consumers rather than see exponential growth.
Furthermore, this push for individualism leads to more isolationist behaviour. This only deprives ourselves of collective action and true societal change.
What I’m getting at is that we shouldn’t entirely dismiss any piece of advice a psychiatrist or self-help guru provides. However, we shouldn’t accept their word as the complete and total truth and follow every word.
I’m of the mind that self-help advice is transformative, but only when you transform the advice yourself. The reason being that a guru offering generic advice often lacks the nuances and privileges (or lack thereof) of your specific situation.
Simply being critical of any advice serves as a solid check to ensure you don’t suffer from betterment burnout.
#5: Betterment Burnout Fizzles When You’re Grateful
The underlying issue that comes from betterment burnout is gurus telling us that we’re not good enough. That we can be better if we had their strategy, bought some coaching from them, or picked up their book/course.
There are certainly people who mean well about those kinds of things. But the vast majority want us to be more consumers rather than people improving ourselves and making our lives better.
As such, those of us who genuinely wish for people to improve offer this advice in the face of betterment burnout.
Practice some level of gratitude.
It doesn’t have to be every day. However, it should be used enough that you can be happy with your life and direction.
It should be enough for you to recognize what you have that can be improved upon should you desire to.
And that desire stems from genuine care for yourself and not from some guru putting words in your mouth.
Conclusion
Betterment burnout can be dealt with, but there needs to be better strategies. If you’re experiencing it, the best thing to do is to return back to the drawing board.
Ask yourself questions about your approach. Is it healthy? Is it working?
Ask yourself about the guru that’s motivating you. Are they helpful? Are they offering genuinely helpful advice?
Criticalness brings seriousness about our lives and giving a damn about what we’re doing with ourselves. It’s important to have that and if you are experiencing betterment burnout then one thing is clear.
You are being led down a path and aren’t genuinely growing. It’s time for a change.
To your growth!
Eric S Burdon