In this comprehensive edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter: we will be discussing:

• Why is the purpose of this post?

• What is the Self-improvement fallacy?

• Why we are drunk on our own beliefs.

• My approach on self-improvement.

Table of Contents

• Author’s Notes: What is the Purpose of this Post?

• What is the Self Improvement Fallacy?

  • Do the habits make you?

  • Do you make the habits?

  • You should make the habits, not the habits make yo …

• Why we are all drunk on our beliefs.

• My Approach on Self Improvement.

• Closing Segment.

Author’s Notes: What is the Purpose of this Post?

Before we begin, this is the follow up to my previous Meditation post, explaining how I will be reflecting back and discussing the ideologies that I preach inside this newsletter. To be completely honest, the original plan was to scrap that idea and send out another regular self-improvement post for this week. Since I’ve figured that meticulously laying out my beliefs would be far too tedious since I could just show it indirectly through what I write rather than directly speaking it out.

That seemed to be a rational decision until I took some time to dive deeper into that thought and see it for what it’s truly worth. But, after some more inspection, I realized that I wanted to scrap the idea out of the fear of controversy and criticism rather than logical judgement.

I thought to myself “If I truly believe in own values and ideologies for self-improvement, then what is the harm in sharing it to other people in your newsletter? Sure, there will be some mixed opinions, but those values should already align anyways, since this newsletter is a reflection/extension of my own belief system. That’s why I believe that having some sort of framework or guidelines for what the newsletter stands for is necessary.

“If I can’t stand for anything that I believe in, then how am I going to be able to fight for it?” Conviction is necessary because it gives you an objective, some sort of belief system or set of principles that you can stand by. And without those principles or beliefs in place, your drive and motivation will falter soon shortly.

But with that being said, this is only to document my beliefs and ideologies for self-improvement and should not be taken as absolute gospel by other people. You should allow yourself to think freely and use these ideologies that I’ll present for your own interpretation. So, it is up to you whether you agree or disagree with these ideologies. Though doing so, it is also up to you to decide on if you wish to continue subscribing to this newsletter.

If you are strongly against the ideologies that I’ll mention later in the post, then it would be reasonable that you should no longer continue following what I say. Unless, if you do resonate strongly with the ideologies that I’ll mention, then it is reasonable that you continue following that I say. Once you read or understand at a fair extend on where I stand for in terms of the self-improvement niche, then you can figure which out which type of person you are in this equation. So, until then, just sit back, relax and read what I have to say about the self-improvement space in my perspective.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion as this also applies to my own opinions and what the newsletter represents as well. I faced a lot of internal resistance through the process of deciding on if I should discuss this or not, but I think that it is absolutely necessary as a means to progressing for my own self-improvement journey and the future of this newsletter.

So, in order to keep moving forward with my goals, I must come and accept my ideologies as they are and overcome this mental hurdle that is the fear of the conflicting opinions of others.

Throughout this entire post, I will be discussing my thoughts on what I think about the self-improvement space, the ongoing problems with it, and my solution to help solve it. This will be quite long so feel free to take breaks in between and see what sections are most interesting to you.

But if you’re the person who doesn’t really care too much about ideologies, beliefs, and just want practical self-improvement advice, then I will be posting about the regular topics next week. Even if you aren’t interested, I still think that there are some valuable takes within this post that you can apply in your own self-improvement journey.

What is the Self Improvement Fallacy?

The Self Improvement Fallacy is defined as the misconception that achieving personal development and growth will lead you to lasting fulfillment. It is with the misconception that through self-improvement, you will live a perfectly happy life while ignoring the other complexities of life outside of the realm of self-improvement. These complexities can consist of one’s own childhood traumas, belief systems, and other outside factors that could contribute to this.

“Why is this important?” you might ask?

It is because the awareness or acknowledgement that the Self Improvement Fallacy exists and is an ongoing factor that happens within your own journey. Having the ability to be aware of the Self Improvement Fallacy can prevent you from falling victim to it.

The reason why the Self Improvement Fallacy is dangerous is because it leads you in a state where you will yearn for the unconscious desire to prove your own self-worth through the continuous progression of progress itself. Overtime and without the proper self-awareness, your self-worth will be perfectly tied to the success that you have within self-improvement. This seems like a positive correlation, but it can quickly be a common cause of self-doubt, extreme perfectionism, and the un rational desire for the approval of others through self-improvement.

This fallacy is closely similar to the “Salvation Fantasy” where you have the unconscious yearn for the external source that will save you from your suffering. But people who suffer from the salvation Fantasy are often victims of deep-rooted childhood trauma or experiences that could have shaped this conditional desire for “salvation”. In other words, it is not necessary the habit or lifestyle change that they were actually looking for, but rather the unconditional love that they never received from their parents. As a result, the salvation fantasy is a manifestation of that inadequacy as it is taken the physical form such as the desire to “fix” themselves.

For example, someone might have the desire to “lose a lot of weight” not for the rational reason that it will make them healthier and thus happier, but instead the yearning of validation that they’ve never received from their parents. Again, the salvation fantasy and the self-improvement fallacy go hand and hand, and it would take a dedicated post to go fully in depth with the entire concepts itself.

I would not be able to give it justice with this section alone, though I mentioned it here because it is the foundation in which we will base the act of “self-improvement” upon.

What do I mean by that?

If we go by with what I described above, those acts of “self-improvement” were never actually self-improvement at all, but rather the manifestation of uncured trauma that has resurfaced in the shape of a specific habit or action. By falling victim to our past trauma, we are only worsening the effects of it by reinforcing the belief that we cannot be worthy of existence if not for the success that we have built upon in self-improvement. Once we lose the awareness to identify that, the cycle will repeat, and symptoms of perfection and inadequately will only get worse overtime.

But first, I want to ask you some questions to test your thinking.

“Are you who you are because you do self-improvement?”

Or,

“Do you do self-improvement because of who you are?”

Do the habits make you?

Or,

Do you make the habits?

How much do you rely on “self-improvement” not as a positive integration within your own life, but as a crutch for a lacking aspect that is not being fulfilled. Like I mentioned before, is it the lack of unconditional love that you’ve gotten from your parents which has led you down this route, or perhaps for the validation that you unknowingly seek from others?

Say if we stripped you of all of the progress that you’ve made on self-improvement. How much lesser of a person would you be without it?

Though the real issue lies in, how much do you rely on those habits as a crutch rather than an actual benefit to your life?

You should make the habits, not the habits make you.

Self-improvement should never overcompensate for a lacking emotional area within your own life, but as a positive benefit that should be integrated instead.

Let me give you an example.

You are going to the gym not to be heathier and look better, but instead to get the approval that was absent in your childhood.

It would come from a place of overcompensation. So going to the gym acts as a substitute for the lacking aspect that wasn’t being fulfilled. The problem with the gym approach is that it won’t completely fulfil that emotional need because it was never supposed to.

An emotional need can never be solved by a physical solution and vice versa. Sure, it can help “scratch the itch” or alleviate the symptoms, but there will always feel like something is missing.

You will spend your entire life going to the gym because you have the assumption that it will cure this ailment, this need for unconditional validation, and it works. For now.

You accomplished your goal; you lost the weight that you wanted, you gained the muscle that you were desiring, but guess what happens? You will continue to always want more, you will never be satisfied enough.

True salvation will never come if you don’t address the internal factors of your own traumas.

You keep going and going, repeating the vicious cycle. You will never be happy with yourself because your internal desires will never be met.

That is the aftermath of the “Salvation fantasy” an emotional itch that only gets alleviated but never truly goes away. Thoughts of insecurity is encouraged within the cycle of the Salvation fantasy.

“I’m insecure and need to lose/gain weight” < “I need to work on this lack of unconditional affection that I didn’t get from my parents”

Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely nuance in this argument since going to the gym is a great addition to your life and can make you more confident.

I’m not saying that habits like going the gym and eating healthy are bad things at all. I think that their great for improving your quality of life. But psychological needs must be met in the same way that physical needs do as well.

So, what’s the main take behind this? You must have a rational desire behind self-improvement for it to be truly effective. A person who uses self-improvement as a crutch on a collapsing foundation (Deep traumas) will never be able to use it in its intended capacity. The goal should be to purely benefit one’s life than to take away from it.

Why we are all drunk on our beliefs.

With all of that aside, there is a counterpoint to the concept of the Self Improvement Fallacy that we should discuss. This following section isn’t to disprove everything that I said in the pervious chapter, but rather to add onto it as different elements that you can take advantage of.

Think of it as two sides of the same coin; by understanding both of these concepts, you are able to use either belief to carry you towards your goals whenever applicable.

Based on what I said in the previous section, it would be completely irrational to believe that every single desire dedicated to self-improvement should come from a rational decision. That would come from the assumption that we are emotionless machines that can carry out tasks without fault. But that would be completely illogical to think so.

Reason being, most of the desires that drives us to do what we do come from are emotional, even irrational thoughts.

We all have our motivations to carry out a specific goal for ourselves, and that usually comes from an irrational perspective.

We are constrained by the belief systems, ideologies, or attachments that keeps us motivated for the pursuit of something more. Without these emotional forces at play, most if not all of us would lose the will to keep moving forward, or even the will to keep living at all.

“We are all slaves to something” Perhaps a belief system or vison that we keep deep within our hearts, which causes us to take drastic measures as an effort to keep pursuing our dream.

That pursuit to a certain dream gives our lives meaning, and without that dream we would not have the desire to keep struggling along. While this dream gives our lives purpose, it also hinders our range of thinking and thus limiting our freedom.

But even if it is to cap our own freedom, most of us would still take that exchange because we are tethered to a dream that we will seek out at all costs.

A “go all out or die trying” mentality if you will.

What am I a slave of?

I’m a slave to my vison of the self-improvement dream; a slave to the fear of regret that keeps me going even at my worse days.

It is my vision of the self-improvement dream that still keeps me going, even though I had to sacrifice a lot of things in order to get this far.

My dream is that all of my efforts to self-improvement will eventually pay off in the near future. I want to be grateful for my past self for working hard especially so that I can enjoy the fruits of his labor. To live the dream life that I always envisioned myself having. My worse fear is to take the easy way out and live a life that is not aligned to my purpose.

To live a life that I that I could have had but instead refused to take the opportunities towards it, that would be a truly haunting feeling to experience.

So even if that makes me a slave to self-improvement, I will happily take on that mantle if it means the opportunity to make my dream come into reality.

Is that dream considered irrational? Perhaps. Is it realistic? Depends on who you ask it to.

You must be reasonably unreasonable in order to achieve great things. If your dreams or goals are within your comfort zone, then they aren’t big enough. But, if your dreams are just scraping the edge within your reach of ambition, then that is the dream that is worth dying for.

That is the dream that will make you jump out of bed every day in order to pursue it.

So, the main takeaway is to use those “irrational” or “unreasonable” beliefs as fuel to pursue the dream that you always wanted to achieve. Even if that means using the emotional side of your personality to drive you to keep moving forward, then I think that it is fair to do so. Like I said in the beginning, rational and irrational are both sides of the same coin. The best thing to do is to use either of them when it is only necessary and to pull back against it when it is not.

The worst thing that can happen to be overly irrational to where it clouds your judgment and decision-making skills while being overly rational can make you too timid and scared to take risks. The best thing is to have a balanced approach on both emotions.

My Approach on Self Improvement.

So, what is my approach to self-improvement?

There is a quote that sums up my ideologies pretty well.

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own” -Bruce Lee

The Journey of Self-Improvement will always have some sort of imperfections behind it. Much like what we discussed in the Self Improvement Fallacy, you should take some time every so often to question your own beliefs and to see if they truly are aligned to your values.

There is never a one size fits all to self-improvement, so the best thing that we can do is to take aspects from it that we can use for own. Never take anything as complete gospel but instead use the advice that you’ve learned to create your own interpretation of it.

The worst thing that you can do is to adhere to a fully laid map of what your self-improvement journey should look like. This can leave you susceptible to exploitation from others who can use your nativism to trap into their own cult-like following.

But, if I had to be specific on what my approach to Self-Improvement is, it would be a combination of both the centrism and stoicism ideologies and mesh them into one whole.

In my own opinion, I believe that this is one of the best approaches that you can have on how to integrate self-improvement successfully into your life.

Centrism will allow you to..

• See from both perspectives and adopt elements from it that suits your individual needs.

• Prioritize a compromise approach and see self-improvement as a nuanced journey that is very subjective to an individual.

• Avoid both extremes from the “right or left wing” side of self-improvement, and to prevent external bias from interfering.

• Learning how to juggle both ambition and contentment, appreciating the progress that you’ve made so far whilst continuing to have the ambition to seek for more.

• Find the success bell curve within self-improvement. To have the understanding that overreliance on one aspect of self-improvement can actually lead to diminishing results that can take away from lacking areas.

Overall, Stoicism and Centrism have similar takes on meeting an equilibrium where it favors both aspects of the spectrum. I have only scratched the basic principles of Stoicism itself so I cannot speak too much on the advanced concepts within the philosophy.

However, here are the basic principles of Stoicism that align well with the centrist approach that we mentioned above.

Stoicism will allow you to..

• Accept things that are out of your control, focusing on the pragmatic solutions rather than extremist ideas.

• Stoicism prioritizes constant self-reflection and analysis of our own motives; this allows us the time to step back see if our actions still align with our values.

• Stoicism focuses on rationality and not making decisions based on purely emotional biases. Instead, it is encouraged to think carefully through each decision on how to handle it better.

• Stoicism focuses on acceptance with your current reality and to cultivate a sense of clarity on external factors. This doesn’t mean to entirely give up on it but rather to see how it is at face value.

With these ideologies combined, I believe that we are able to integrate self-improvement within our lives without the chance for drastic drawbacks to it.

This aligns with the ethos of the newsletter “Self-improvement should be a benefit to your life, not a detriment”.

It should be noted that these beliefs are not set in stone and are only used as guidelines or principles to base your judgement upon.

Closing Segment.

With what you’ve learnt today, I hope you are able to take these ideologies to use for your own self-improvement journey. As a positive integration with the adaptability for change. I’m sorry for the delay in publishing this post as I was really reconsidering on whether or not I should have made this due to the potential controversy. But, with all that I said here, I believe that I made the right choice.

This post is used as the framework that keeps the values of the newsletter in check. Without a concrete ideology to believe in, then you wouldn’t have the desire to stand for anything. This is definitely longer than the usual posts that I made on here, but I just wanted to speak out my thoughts on how I think self-improvement should be approached and the downsides behind taking it too far.

Again, these are only my beliefs, so it is up to you if you agree with them or not. I will be going back to writing about regular self-improvement topics, but this was the post that was needed to be published to move forward towards the right direction.

Depending on what my schedule looks like for this week, you might also be getting another post though more sized down due to the delay of getting this post out last week. Usually, I try to keep to a very consistent schedule of 1 weekly post as I want to stay true to my promise. But unfortunately, I was unable to follow through with it last week, so I do want to apologize again for the inconvenience.

This newsletter is not only dedicated towards self-improvement but also is a reflection of my own self-improvement journey as well. So, I want to emulate that as best as I can.

So, until then, peace 😎✌