I struggled for a long time to stick to self improvement. I must admit, I am still struggling to this day. Does this bother me? Absolutely not. Not in the slightest.
I am unbothered because I came to the realisation that self mastery is a very inconsistent, rough, intricate journey that never stops. Not until the day your body ceases to remain alive. There is so much beauty in this.
The Relationship Among Failure, Stress and Cortisol.
Modern day self improvement content creators remove the beauty from self mastery and invoke extreme pressure on men to complete tasks in a certain way and within a certain time frame. “Do NoFap for 90 days straight”, “meditate for an hour a day”, “journal every single day”. This is not the way.
Failure, as painful as it may seem, is beautiful, divine, and most importantly, inevitable. Only through this can we learn and grow. A child tries to jump from one tree to the next, but he falls. He learns through this failure that the placement of his feet was incorrect. Therefore he tries again with a new foot placement and succeeds. Lessons. Failure is what makes the good become great. Constant lessons.
Besides appreciation of the beauty of failure, the pressure put on to young men through these strict routines concocted by the modern day self improvement hemisphere goes against what it stands for. A contradiction. How so? Unnecessary stress. When we put too much pressure on ourselves after a NoFap relapse (for example), we become unnecessarily stressed. We hate ourselves. We see ourselves as unworthy.
As such our cortisol level raises too high. How is this a bad thing? We may suffer from some or many of the following:
- Fatigue.
- Irritability.
- Headaches.
- Intestinal problems, such as constipation, bloating or diarrhea.
- Anxiety or depression.
- Weight gain.
- Increased blood pressure.
- Low libido and erectile dysfunction.
Pressuring yourself after a relapse does much more harm than good. The same goes with not having the best meditation session. And the same with a day without journaling.
My Goal — For Both You and I.
I made this blog to shed light on the right way to go about self improvement. Let go of pressure. Become one with constant development. It is a slow race, but the slower you go the more great the end result will be.
My goal is to show willing young men that they can absolutely stick to this journey with calmness and grace and without the feeling of low self worth coursing through their veins because they have not have reached where they wished to just yet.
The art of letting go. The art of removing. The art of destroying.
