This is a thing i've seen all across the internet, across all demographics, and i cringe every single time i see it. When i started coming to this sub, i hoped that the tough-love attitude would have erased this nonsense, but it appears here as well.

I'm not sure exactly how long this phenomenon has existed, or where it came from, but my hypothesis is that it stems from a generation of people who have grown up watching training and self-improvement montages, and then internalized that feeling.

What i'm talking about is the "I don't want to end up looking like Arnold" of self-improvement. People who are so completely detached from reality that they utterly underestimate just how slow, grueling, boring and unrewarding self-improvement actually is. Here is a shitty graph to demonstrate what i'm talking about:

https://i.imgur.com/1GnXphN.png

In movies, one of the absolutely most common tropes is the nerdy, worthless loser who is "Discovered" or who discovers his "hidden potential" and then skyrockets into success through a quick training-montage, often played to some inspiring music. And then after about 3 minutes, supposed to represent an always undefined period of time, they suddenly become better than people who have trained their entire fucking lives.

Now, these are movies. It's not supposed to represent reality. The problem arises when jackoff snowflakes think that he is that special chosen one, and set out to make absolutely huge life-changes, overnight, because he thinks that he suddenly found his special potential.

The tell-tale wording for these people are almost always the same: Some version of "Today is the day i turn my life around"

And the posts and comments are almost always the same as well. Some paragraph about "Finding the light", "I realized" or "Swallowing the red pill", followed by either a paragraph of completely undefined and subjective goals (These people usually last a day) or a massively overambitious, bullshit list of all the things they will do, starting tomorrow (These people usually last about a week).

Memorable examples of this, is the retard who made a post on the Fitness sub about how he was going to climb fucking Mt. Everest in a year, with no prior training at all. Or the GetDisciplined fad of people going "Hulk mode" or "Superman mode." Or one of the top-posts on GetMotivated, with 35k upvotes, about some fat fuck sitting on the gym with an accompanying text about "This is the day i change"

They all failed. Of course. None of them even lasted a week.

And if you ever try to tell them to calm down, they are so far up their own asses that they will just give you some half-assed acknowledgment or give you some lecture about not "supporting" you. Because they think that where all the other thousand failed, they will succeed. Because they feel special. Today.

But it's not that easy. And if it was that easy, there wouldn't be any fat people. There wouldn't be any addicts. That feeling you're feeling, like you could take on the world? We've all had them. We know what it feels. Success doesn't work like that.

And worst of all, the comments are always full of people applauding them, and patting them on their backs, for deciding to do something.

And then you check their profile a week later and they're posting on SuicideWatch or something.

But in reality, tomorrow you will be the exact same loser as you were yesterday. You didn't magically develop iron-will and discipline to match a Tibetan monk because you saw an inspirational video on YouTube. If you were unable to sustain the discipline necessary to do any of these things yesterday, you're not going to be able to do 10 of them tomorrow. It's not going to be like a glorious training montage, where you shock everyone with your amazing progress and talent.

Motivation is not discipline. Motivation is a fleeting, extremely temporary feeling that makes you feel great and can get you through the day, but never more than that. Motivation is like a cup of coffee. Discipline is like 8 hours of sleep. It's a quick-fix, a band-aid that can give you a kick but will never be enough to get the actual job done.

And i'm not writing this to make you give up. As satisfying as it is to watch annoying people run headfirst into brick-walls, watching them succeed is far better. I'm writing this because you need to realize that this is a dangerously contraproductive mindset, that has become popularized in a society of instant-gratification and virtue-signalling. Where patting someone on the back for trying is supposedly better than actually helping him succeed.

Learn to recognize these ideas and feelings in yourself and in others. Learn to subdue them and to remind others when they're about to fall in the trap.

Self-improvement isn't a glorious endeavor. It's the most unrewarding thing you'll ever do, for days after days, months after months. It's slow, cold, boring, embarrassing, lonely and exhausting. Day after day after day. Until the day where it's all worth it.

Most of the time you don't even notice the change yourself, until years later when people point it out to you.