put the self-help down maybe

a while ago, i hurt a friend. not to give too much context but i didn’t feel very terrible about it - at least not at first.

even after i was confronted about what i did, my first thought was to challenge her argument. i believed i didn’t do anything wrong, and my time had come to finally use the knowledge i’d been given in the books and podcasts i consumed. so i listened, not to hear her, but to give the perfectly curated response.

long story short, i ended that confrontation with pride. i hadn’t faltered, and i had been perfectly articulate, confident, and right…

wrong.

it took me a full week to realize that although yes, i ‘stood up for myself’, but at what cost? a broken friendship?

i then realized that i had built a toxic relationship with self-help content. it gave me a subconscious superiority complex, made me stiff in the guise of being ‘observant’, ‘calculated’, ‘don’t talk more than you listen’. i became isolated and private, purposefully, cause the books told me it was much more respectable to ‘move in silence’, and not let anyone aware of what i was up to.

i even became a critique of all my relationships - all the messy and human mistakes that should probably have not been measured by a self-help book; ‘what benefit is this person adding to my life?’, if it didn’t tick all of my boxes, i would turn them a cold shoulder. there was little room for mistakes, second chances, and compromise.

i’m lucky that i didn’t do this long enough to ruin all of my friendships, but i certainly lost or at least, tainted a few. i had formed a corporate-like relationship with the people around me. nobody called me anymore because i had my phone on DND most of the time, pretending to be batman.

it was after - years after - that i realized what this kind of media had done to me.

now, i’m not saying that self-help content is bad. everybody experiences it differently. i also don’t want to act like i haven’t learnt some powerful things from it that i still use today.

but i think i was just too young, the last thing i needed was all that advice, and i got a high off of knowing that i was ‘five steps ahead of everyone else’. so i swung to the very end of the spectrum, and got consumed in the egocentric parts of the knowledge.

but back to my friend - looking back now, although i wasn’t acting from cruelty; i genuinely believed i was doing everything “right.” i’d consumed so much advice about boundaries, confidence, and never letting people disrespect you that i forgot another important virtue entirely: humility.

because what happens when you’re so busy trying to become a better person that you stop being one entirely? we are not AI. you can’t fix a human misunderstanding with a rehearsed answer from your favorite self-development influencer.

there is no guidebook for life - you have to be humble and feel. you have to be humble enough to feel. and it’s probably some of the most uncomfortable feelings you will go through. and that’s the point.

i find that i learn more when i allow myself. of course, i have my own personal set of values that i don’t compromise on, but i still leave a little room for life to happen to me. for life to teach me. and i try to remain ready enough to recieve it. the girl who always tried so hard to get everything right, and appear almost perfect, is slowly seeping out of me.

i don’t want this to be too long. i just want to say - maybe all you have to do is put the self-help down, for a little while. free you mind from the countless diagnoses and instructions. don’t let it be the only thing you consume.

live. you’re spending too much time studying the manual. hit the brakes already. stop being scared to be a messy human. to make mistakes. apologize. learn. look stupid. mess up. do it all. that’s how we grow.

and finally,

please take everything i’ve said with a grain of salt.

thank you for reading ❀