Who Does This Guy Think He Is?
As much as I’ve read about various self-improvement topics (health, finance, productivity being the most consumed), I have a love-hate relationship with the topic, leaning heavily toward the negative. The genre wouldn’t be so popular if people weren’t looking for something, but so much of it tends to be a kind of passifier. After all, if you’re reading about getting better at something, then you can tell yourself the lie that you’ve done something, even though you’ve only ingested information without acting on it. Or, you dig into one book after another, take some course that’s all full of promises but short on real content, or beat yourself up for hearing someone tell you what you need to do, not doing it, and wallowing in guilt for once again sitting on the couch with a pizza instead of becoming the next great physical speciment of humanity.
The problem is two-fold. One one hand the people writing these books and selling these course know that their buyers may never take one action step toward improving whatever it is they feel inadequate about, but they see an opportunity to make a buck appealing to their dreams and insecurities. The grift game is strong here. On the other hand, any act of self-improvement ultimate requires you to actually do the thing. Nobody is going to make you take that walk, lift that weight, eat that vegetable, save that dollar, love your spouse better, train your dog, finish that project, build that thing, and on and on. You can try to hype yourself up all day, but no matter what it is, you have to take the first step to start. Or, you need to take the step to reach out to that doctor or therapist who’s actually there and trained to help.
For so many of the areas of life you may want to change, assuming there are no other real factors acting against you, the uncomfortable truth is that there is no secret to making the change. What you need to do is known, and often has been known for a long time. You can find wisdom through the ages in the classic wisdom literature, philosophy, religious texts, or the collected skills of those who have practiced every area of human endeavor. Added to that, if you take the time to look critically, you can find all kinds of peer-reviewed research and documentation from science, medicine, psychology, philosophy, etc. that confirms what timeless wisdom has been telling us all along.
All that is why I’m trying to document and share what I’ve found. But I want to be honest with everyone. I am not qualified to tell you how to improve your life. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a scientist. I’m not a financial expert. In fact, I’m just another regular person who also wants to just be better at being human. What I am is a tech nerd with a computer engineering degree, and a theologian of the Christian persuasion with a graduate theology degree. I’m also insatiably curious. I’ll spend hours and days reading for the joy of it. But when it comes to areas of self-improvement, I may be able to help you think through questions of faith or troubleshoot your home server, but I am not and will not pretend to be some kind of guru about anything.
What I can do is share what I’ve found. And instead of trying to market some book, course, or product for you to consume, I can just put it out there, and “publish” what I find under a creative commons license in the hope that I can create a starting point for a collection of information and tools that you can use to help yourselves improve, if you are willing to take the first step to acting on that knowledge, and then take the next step, and keep taking steps until you work through failed and successful attempts until you find yourself in a place that’s hopefully better than where you started. I make zero promises, and I ask nothing of you other than to take some actions for yourself, and if you have some information I lack, help me improve what I share unti it builds up to a free resource for all.
In the next post, I’ll outline the various areas of interest I’ve found, and get started on the first. It’s one of my first halting steps toward iterating my own way to a better self, and I invite you to join me, taking your own steps in turn.
Shall we begin?
