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The Curious Thing About Self-Improvement
PS: There is actually nothing wrong with you
The Self-Improvement (aka “personal growth”) industry is huge and getting huger. The US self-improvement market, for example, was worth $11.3 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $14.0 billion in 2025.
Bottom line, millions of people spend extraordinary amounts of time and money trying to get “better” — be it thinner, smarter, stronger, cooler, calmer, more motivated, productive, compassionate, forgiving or enlightened.
OK. Good. Fine. Or as Jerry Seinfeld liked to say, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Yes, becoming a better person is a more noble pursuit than becoming a worse person, right? But there is something about the premise behind the whole self-improvement thing that is fishy— the deeply held belief that there is, fundamentally, something wrong with you that needs to be improved.
Taken to the extreme, the drive to constantly improve ourselves becomes a weird kind of New Age perfectionism. We never quite get there. But even when approached with the best of intentions, the endless effort to always “get better” assumes that the best of our lives is always just around the next bend… or after the next workout, retreat, yoga session, therapy or book.
