There’s a para­dox with self-improve­ment and it is this: the ulti­mate goal of all self-improve­ment is to reach the point where you no longer feel the need to improve yourself.

Think about it: The whole goal of improv­ing your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is to reach the point where you nev­er have to think about how to be more pro­duc­tive. The whole point of pur­su­ing hap­pi­ness is to reach the point where one no longer has to think about being hap­py. The whole point of improv­ing your rela­tion­ships is so that you can enjoy some dra­ma-free cun­nilin­gus in the McDonald’s dri­ve-thru with­out almost crash­ing the car.

(Still work­ing on that last one.)

Self-improve­ment is there­fore, in a weird way, ulti­mate­ly self-defeating.

The only way to tru­ly achieve one’s poten­tial, to become ful­ly ful­filled, or to become “self-actu­al­ized” (what­ev­er the fuck that means), is to, at some point, stop try­ing to be all of those things.

Orig­i­nal Article