You might have heard this dialogue, “Self-Improvement is masturbation” in the movie Fight Club.
It has a sort of truth to it, but also sort of false. People go on the journey of Self-Improvement to, let me be obvious, improve themselves.
The journey of self-improvement may be a masturbatory to do for yourself.
Let’s discuss masturbating now, what is it, but you stay in your room and jerk off to porn. Or to your imagination. You learn a thing or two about yourself, like what arouses you, what you hate, what brings your arousal down, etc.
Self-improvement is the same as masturbation, you might end up learning a whole lot from it. You’ll learn your strengths, weaknesses, where you can improve yourself.
For me, it has told me that one of my strengths is storytelling, poetry, and my weaknesses are technical writing. I still got to improve myself in reading, as I slack off whenever I read, and it has also taught me management, time management, a lot.
But, the effects of it can be positive and negative.
I have been on this journey for two years. and in these two years, I experimented a lot, in my writing and other habits.
But, in these two months, my poetry, my WordPress blog, and this blog had an increase in readership. My writing process is simpler now. I can write pretty fast, even when I have no clear idea of what I’m writing about, it’s subconscious.
The thought process has become subconscious whenever I’m writing. An image comes and with a snap of fingers at my keyboard, I write the whole scene out.
But, it also has its negative, you’ll end up getting sucked into the loophole in continuous improvement and never get out of it. As I said, it is masturbation.
When you’re continuously improving yourself, you get joy at it, happiness at it. And you run through the loophole a thousand times.
You’ve read a book a week. Okay, why not read two books a week. You wrote 2000 words an hour why not increase it up to 3000/4000 an hour. You give yourself goals like that and you keep getting sucked into that.
When you enjoy masturbation, you enjoy your arousal, you keep at it, just like that the obsessive journey of self-improvement works.
I’m not demotivating, or anything, but I have learned this the hard way.
Two years ago, I had a novel named, “Leila. Same two years ago I embarked upon this journey of self-improvement.
I gave myself goals to read a non-fiction book a week. Workout every day. Write every day. But, as I began to find improvements in writing, the perfectionist in me got a boner.
I finished that novel in 6 months, then edited it, re-edited it for perfection, then did that thing for 6–7 times. I wrote my whole novel 6–7 times in the editing phase and destroyed the characters and their stories completely.
After that, I had a hard time finding the motivation to write, read and gave up.
The obsessive self-improvement can hinder your growth, but constructive will put you ahead.
Only if I had motivated myself to edit it 2 times. Improve my writing, read more fiction, then the story might have been different.
Self-improvement journey has its strengths and weaknesses, but don’t get obsessed with the results. Work towards achieving what you want, but don’t make it your only goal. Because at the end of the day, you have to live your life happily.
Ashraf Shaikh 