Why I Muted Self Improvement Writers
By: Pretheesh Presannan
Tags: Humor, Self Improvement, Self Love, Self Help

Why I Muted Self Improvement Writers

Image Courtesy Alex Cybergirl

Yes, I did it. I finally showed the courage to mute those successful self-improvement writers on this platform. It takes courage to say ‘fuck you’ to the hope providers because the mind never wants to give up hope despite being the same piece of shit for eons. It takes courage to say ‘I might as well be this, live this, and die this’.

When I somehow manage to wake up at noon and reach out for my mobile phone, I find my daily reads shit ready on the Medium app. And moreover, the stories I find are ‘How I consistently woke up at 4:00 AM in the morning for the past year and found happiness and success’.

Seriously, are these the kind of stories one would want to read as soon as they wake up from bed? If nothing else, it just makes me more depressed and gives my mind a chance to hurt myself the whole day. Why would I have to dig my own hole? It’s kind of already dug enough right?. Why more pain? Sorry, it’s a no.

If I find myself waking up late having already wasted the previous day unproductively, I can always remind myself that the past does not exist, but only in my mind and I can't change it anyway. I am still here alive. This gives me the essential relief to be grateful for this day and re-boil the tea that was prepared by my mom hours before I decided to get up from the bed. And hopefully out of that self-love I might be inspired to do something out of love and not out of guilt and fear. That’s it, I do not have to waste a year to find happiness which never comes but only the pathetic sustaining of hope.

So I had to make a tough decision about muting the self-improvement writers who were promising a successful happy life. After some pondering, I realized that all we want is to hurt less in life. And in this internet age, most of the pain is coming from comparing ourselves with the ideal successful lifestyle of some random weirdo on the internet (whom I would never possibly meet for them to run around me and shame me).

After all, we do not know anything about the self-help guru. Maybe he is lying about happiness, maybe he is an idiot, maybe he is a neurotic sick fuck with no appreciation for life, but he only cares about himself and his hard work showing off. Maybe he lacks the courage to take himself lightly.

Maybe I should talk to people who live with him before believing him. Maybe I should talk to his therapist. Maybe I should talk to his ex-girlfriend. Maybe he fucked up his girlfriend’s life and is now being so hardworking as a way to hide his guilt; if that’s the case, why would I follow him? I had never been an asshole anyway so as to prove to myself that now I am a good boy. Ironically, only bad ones want to desperately prove they are good to themselves. Maybe I could afford to be myself and relax.

Maybe he masturbated a whole day and felt so bad and hence began a no-fap challenge and advising others to do so; all these to run away from his guilt. I wish he was not sent to church so early before he could start thinking for himself and thereby switching off his brain. But I ain’t spending the whole day that way, so why would I be guilt-tripped into some cold turkey no-fap bullshit challenges. Not that he will ever be honest about himself and thereby putting himself, his followership, and earnings at risk.

I had read about a popular self-help writer saying that if he does not write enough junk stuff here for his beloved junkies, then he cannot enjoy the Saturday night party with his friends peacefully. If this is not insanity I do not know what is. I find one of his tricks is to steal famous quotes from Socrates, Aristotle, etc, and turn them into his story title. For example: ‘An unexamined title is not worth submitting to publications,’ he says in his title.

Let Socrates rest in peace:

“The unexamined life is not worth living” — Socrates

Yes, as a reader, it is a big risk to not have those life-saving self-help stories pop up on my daily read feeds. But at least there is peace of mind. And it takes courage to earn that peace of mind. It is like while being in school, teachers and their stupid advice are everything for us. When we are out of school, we do not worry about their shit anymore; we should not. Likewise one needs to be willing to get out of self-help schooling; one needs to grow the fuck up.

One needs to come face to face with the reality that one is not that important to be successful. We are, after all, just an accidental product of an act of frustration release from our parents. We should not take ourselves so seriously. That is being humble, not just bragging ‘I am humbled’ for the sake of show-off.

One should face and get over the fear of being looked upon as a loser, and not out of sheer panic of the situation indulge in some activities to run away from facing that fear. If panic is the reason why you begin the search for success, you might as well go through a full-blown panic attack before jumping into action out of fear, and thereby releasing the neurotic energy from the mind and regain sanity.

I seriously do not think that while I am about to die, my last thought would be something like: I could have been more productive. And if that’s what is going to be the case I am better of being dead way too early. If I had bothered to appreciate being alive and the next cup of coffee that would suffice.

All the very best.