Why I stopped improving myself

Turns out there’s nothing to fix

Years ago, when I was physically and mentally at my lowest, I discovered something surprising: I could get better by making different choices.

By eating differently, moving more, and sleeping enough, I pulled myself out of the hole I was in.

It was a powerful revelation: I can do something about my life. I can improve myself.

That’s when I fell hard for the self-improvement world. Books, courses, workshops—I devoured it all. I stacked habits, optimized systems, and tracked everything that could possibly be tracked.

And for a while, it worked very well. Until it stopped feeling like progress.

What got me here, won’t get me there

A couple of years into this transformative new way of being, I was doing well.

I was no longer in survival mode, I felt physically stronger and mentally clearer, and I had systems that made my life feel steady and more predictable.

But underneath all that ‘doing well,’ I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still off.

Because I was doing better—physically, mentally, and emotionally—I had started facing some of the deeper questions. Why was I procrastinating? Why was I snapping when I got frustrated? Why was I feeling stuck in my professional life?

At first, I still thought I could ‘solve’ these questions by ‘self-improving’ them away. My systems and strategies had worked so well until now that I kept looking for more of them—new techniques, new frameworks, new tools to ‘tame anger’ and ‘fight procrastination’.

But no matter how many I tried, none of them made a dent.

These techniques didn’t seem to work on the deeper stuff: old patterns, triggers, and parts of myself I’d spent years trying to ‘fix’ or avoid.

The mindset that had gotten me here wasn’t able to take me further, and was actually getting in my way.

How self-improvement misses the point

Self-improvement, I realized, is built on a subtle but powerful story: that there’s something wrong with you. That you’re broken, and if you just work hard enough, fix enough flaws, and stack enough habits, you’ll eventually be ‘better.’

But as I started to dig into my patterns—the things that might look and feel like flaws on the surface—I learned something else entirely: there was nothing to improve, only to (re)discover.

I found myself drawn to teachers like Richard Schwartz, Joe Hudson, and Gabor Maté—people who didn’t see the self as something broken or in need of fixing, but as something whole, with layers to uncover.

I don’t remember exactly how I found them—maybe part of me already sensed it was time to move on—but their ideas struck an irreversible chord. They resonated in a way the grind of strategies never did.

Through their teachings, I started to see myself differently—not as a project to fix, but as someone to understand.

Instead of piling on more strategies, I began to listen inward—finally meeting the sides of myself I’d been avoiding. Not as problems to fix, but as neglected parts that needed care, attention, and acceptance.

What at first was about improvement, became about exploration.

The ultimate ‘fix’

Looking back, ‘self-improvement’ gave me the scaffolding I needed to rebuild my life and get out of survival mode. But scaffolding isn’t meant to be permanent. It’s a temporary structure meant to be taken down after use.

When I stopped believing I was a project that needed (constant) improvement, a load fell off my shoulders. I became calmer, more patient, and more curious about the way forward.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t striving, I was listening.

Self-improvement got me moving, but letting it go (and embracing self-exploration) taught me how to stop chasing fixes and start understanding myself instead.

And funny enough, that’s when things really started to get better.