Why focus on improving yourself?

I think it is here quite established, that you shouldn’t take your motivation and validation from external sources.

This I will take as a key point for the following part.

What should we take as motivation/guideline for our life?

What I encountered the most is:

“Get to be the best version of yourself”

This is a really good guideline and helps a lot. But I think it can easily mislead, if you don’t think it to the end.

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Problems of improving yourself

So at first we must see, that this is an endless effort. There will always be more things where you can better yourself.

Even harder makes the fact that nearly everything follows the principle “use it or loose it”. Meaning that you cant learn something once and then change your focus. If you don’t continually use the learned stuff you wont be able to use it on the desired level.

I conclude:

→ The best version of yourself varies with time. (If we continue bettering our self, there will be a point of saturation. Meaning you need all the time, only to not get any worse. If you want to better something more you need to neglect something else, which gets worse).

→ The road must be the goal. And we must be content with that.

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Another difficulty is in the word “best”.

If you want to address something as “good”/”bad”, “better”/”worst” and also “best” you have to first define a goal.

So if you want to be the best version of yourself, you need to define the best for what.

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“false” directions

Here are some common points, which is often recommended to improve on:

1. Improving your financial situation

2. Improving your physical Health

3. Improving a Skill set

I would argue, that those are (at least partly) problematic as primary measurement/direction to improving yourself.

(1) Is only needed if your financial situation is limiting an other meaningful goal. It in itself doesn’t give you anything. It only gives you more possibilities. (Except a better social standing and a feeling of superiority to other people. But in my eyes, this is not something to aspire).

(2) It similarly gibes you more possibilities (longer (able) life, more physical demanding stuff possible). But if you don’t care how others see you it doesn’t matter that much. Except, that there is a lot of evidence that physical health has a major impact on your mental health/state. So if you want to be happy, then some basic physical health is important. But then happiness is the goal and physical health more just a tool.

(3) If you improve a skill with the intent to be better in the workplace/jobmarket the same arguments as for (1) holds.

If you improve a skill for a hobby, then you do it primarily for fun and the goal is happiness.

What somewhat works is if you improve a “survival-like” skill.

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Solution?

So what in my eyes works as a criteria for good/bad, better/worse is only:

a) Happiness (who doesn’t want to be happy)

b) Live as good as possible to specific morals. (those can be derivated from different things. The most popular is religion)

c) Capability of acting (Meaning: maximizing your skill sets so that you still can act and take your life in your own hands in as many situations as possible)

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External validation

I don’t want to be motivated to do anything by external validation.

Therefor for me the advice improve yourself is hollow and can lead easily to “wrong” directions. For example improving you physical appearance, getting “rich” or achieving a hard goal.

A good Method to recognize how much one is driven by external validation is the question:

Would I do/learn it, if nobody sees it and I will tell no one about it?

For me it was quite shocking, how much I still crave(d) for external validation.

I think it is important to accept, that we are driven by external validation and it is also ok, that we get satisfaction from it. It would be horrible for our mental Health/State if we try to get rid of it completely. But we don’t have to base our decisions on it! If we decide to do something because of internal motivation and we have as bonus external validation, it is ok to take it.

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Happiness

Happiness is hard to find if you directly seek it. That is why I find the advice “improve yourself” still good.

Most Men get really much happiness out of setting goals and working towards them (achieving them isn’t even that important as long there was progress). So it would be the correct way to focus on fitness, personal finance or a different goal. But the true goal is all along happiness.

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For me personally the possible criteria to orient where/what do you want to improve (a,b,c) are still somewhat lacking to take on bigger struggles. Therefore do you have any other answers to:

What is the goal of improving yourself? (If you take away any form of external validation)

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You can also gladly point out if you think some assumptions or deductions are wrong.

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Would love to hear your thoughts