Self help alchemists and what they get wrong

I tried to write some self-help maxims to hate.

If you don’t watch time, it watches you.

You can achieve every dream you set out to achieve.

It is your responsibility to make sure you end up somewhere on purpose.

If you don’t know, you’re failing.

Your success is up to you.

You can own the future.

If you do things intentionally, they will end up better.

You are who you decide to be.

You are your biggest investment.

Success is a decision.

If you’re not in control, you might as well die.

Loser to winner in just one attitude shift.

The difference between the C-suite and a bus driver’s seat is just a choice that you make.

I want to say something about personal development and success alchemy.

I’ve imbibed a lot of this gobbledegook over the past several years, and it has always frustrated me to some extent. It’s annoying because it’s almost always white men telling me how to be better, because there is frequently some actually good advice in there, and because I can’t help but feel like so much of this self-actualization hocus pocus misses what it is that actually makes people successful.

It places hyper focus on the individual, when community support is crucial for any type of success and happiness. It fetishizes the ability to both know and control the future, both of which are impossible. It reaps ancient wisdom around how to live a peaceful life and re-packages it as a series of incantations you recite in order to get wealthy. It favors people who are already not caught in systems dedicated to oppressing them. It uses scientific insight to help those who are already well-off better extract wealth from systems that favor them. It ignores societal context as the stage on which all personal decisions take place.

It may not be totally worthless though. I do believe there are some things that I can do, small actions that over time will acrete into relationships and accomplishments that will bring me renewable sources of joy, and small changes in viewpoint that can free me from beliefs that are either painful or self-limiting.

And I believe that my success and happiness is connected to that of those around me, of my city, and of my society. We do not live in this world alone, and we cannot succeed in it alone. We are in control of very little in our life. Where we can make changes that are worthwhile, we should. Where we can work with others to make larger changes, we should.

And somehow the things you do every day will add up to your future self, which is, undoubtedly, going to be great. And the things we all do will, somehow, add up to our future society, which will, undoubtedly, be a dumpster fire.