Why is most of self-help and self-improvement content is plain bad or just doesn’t

work?
Don’t ask me! I have no idea.
But before I fade into the background, let me give you something to think about.
This essay will attempt to draw threads from different disciplines to explain to you
what you already know deep inside you and make you go “Ohhhhh!” instead of
just lecturing you about my dumb opinions. It might not work but hope you’re
ready. Let’s go.

The blood shed by your ears listening to people explain away success
Modern people usually get stuck in the confusion of naming something and then
questioning what it is and writing long, tedious, and cheap books with cheap
utopian ideas in them. Let’s not do that. Instead, let us understand why we as
humans observed and named that pattern (the pattern we observed and named
“success”) and how it manifests itself into our experience enough for it to be
identified and named. So, let’s stop asking what success is and go even deeper In
to the question of why we saw it and why we felt the need to name it.
What the hell are you seeing?
To understand patterns of reality we must first focus on how humans see the
world which is not as simple as you might think. At this stage I am tempted to go in
to evolutionary biology and lecture you on the origins of our brains but deep
reflection on this issue has made me realize that this is the wrong answer mainly
because our consciousness (awareness of one's own existence, sensations,
thoughts, surroundings. i.e. the thing that makes us different from animals), is
superior to science or literal truth. We see brains and material stuff and conduct
experiments on them but the way we see them is dependent on our consciousness
and there is no way of taking the effect of our consciousness in to account in any
experiment or scientific assessment. We can’t get behind our consciousness and
get to an objective reality without any higher meaning that science claims to give
us. We are still seeing brain scans or conducting experiments in our consciousness.
We see EVERYTHING in our consciousness. EVERYTHING is inside Consciousness!
Simply put, Consciousness is king and there is no literal truth that doesn’t have
meaning in it because the thing that is meaningful is what pronounces itself in to
our sight.
Don’t look at me like I’m a crazy person! Let me explain.
To see a rock laying on a ground you have to literally let go of everything around
that rock and focus in on the rock. You have to let go of the trees behind it, the
ground soil under it, and, the entire world that is around it to see the rock in the
first place. Reality is too complicated too see entirely. In order to see anything, we
all focus in on that thing and let the complexity around it fade in to the
background.
Even when you’re seeing the rock, you don’t pay attention to the curves, bulges,
colors and, textures on the different parts of the surface of the rock. You have to
let those details go too in order to see the rock as a whole. So, what makes a rock a
rock if its that complex and full of details in different parts of the rock? Why do we
call it a rock instead of just a meaningless collection of textures, bulges and curves
on a round surface?
We can apply this question to anything we have ever named. How is it that we call
a collection of people living on a piece of a land a country? How is a country one
thing and how can we say it exists? How can a collection of people working inside
an office be called a government? How is a government one thing and how does It
exist? How are you one thing when you’re scientifically just a collection of organs
and flesh parts that are connected by ducts and tubes with fluids flowing between
them? The things we consider to be one are in fact a collection of many things and
there is no scientific explanation as to why we named and saw those things as one
instead of just a collection of material things.
You can see this in yourself when you are thinking about something else deeply
while staring at something. You are staring at it but you are not looking at it
because if somebody quickly asked you a question about the features of the object
you were staring at, you wouldn’t answer because you were not seeing the object
even though you were staring at it which indicates that you were not performing
the function of focusing on it since you were thinking about something else. This is
the way attention works in the way we humans see anything.
In order to see anything, you have to select it from all the other details and objects
around it, and there is a reason you selected that thing instead of all the other
details around it even though you might not know what that reason is. Whatever
that reason may be, it is what’s allowing you to see that thing because reality is too
complex to see all at once without focusing and letting some things fade in to the
background all fuzzy and invisible in order to see one thing. Building on this we can
say that humans see a lot of things and we have different reasons for seeing each
thing instead of the multitude of complexity around that thing. Some reasons are
higher than others in our hierarchies and we give them priority and hence see one
thing instead of another. So those collection of reasons can be described as a
hierarchical value structure that allows us to value one idea or principle over
another, hence see one thing over another. I am using the dry technical term of
internal value structures because I didn’t want to use terms like “spirit”, “soul”, or
“third eye” on this essay but you can think of internal value structures as the thing
that is within you, the inner voice within you that you might not always understand
but you know it’s important because it tells you what is meaningful, makes you see
things in a new light, and makes you sure of things that you can’t explain rationally.
This value structure is what allows us to see. Seeing is choosing and there is an
underlying structure of reasons why we choose to see one thing over another deep
within our being, beneath our man-made ideologies and artificial layers. We can
even go so far as to say that we don’t really see “things” but the meaning of things.
Our ancient fathers and religious writers knew this when they spoke about God
and the meaning in our creation which is blatantly misunderstood and attacked
today in our scientific and fact-based world but don’t let me get all “religious” on
you. We will do that some other time.
It becomes easy to understand this value structure when you think about the
things you see and don’t see in your life. My sister is very aware of any tiny spec of
dirt in the house because a clean house is a high aim and a slight mess one was a
disgusting nightmare for her for some reason that neither me nor her understand
fully. Me on the other hand, only notice dirt when the ceramic sink goes grey or
when the floor has a couple of tissues on it, because I don’t find an extremely clean
and neat house as meaningful to me as my sister does. I can say that I value
cleanliness but I don’t value it as much as my sister does and you can see that in
my actions. We often argue about whether the floor is clean or not even though
we are looking down at the same floor. She often says “Look at it! Can’t you see
the mess! You didn’t clean it at all!” but all I can do stare at her in confusion. I
literally don’t see the dirt and mess that my sister sees.
I hope that is enough to give you a little hint about the way we humans are able to
see and the primary role that our consciousness plays in the way reality unfolds to
us. To understand this in more detail you can check out the suggested reading list
at the end of this essay.
Now let’s get to our question - What is success?
Everything that humans named, they named after they saw and as I have
mentioned before, we need a value structure to see anything in the first place
because reality has too many things and is too complex. So, the question of
success becomes - What did we value so much that we saw the pattern of success
in ourselves or others and named it as such. This is a tougher but more interesting
question than the typical “Is money and fame success?” question that many books
justify their expensive prices for answering.
As with most things we give names to, success is not simply an idea or a principle
that someone thought of but the name we gave to a way of being in the world that
led to prosperity and fulfilment. Success was the name we gave to a way of being
that we identified by watching each other for thousands of years, seeing more and
more of what is important, meaningful and worth pursuing in life and writing about
it in our fables, myths and now in our superhero movies. But wait a minute. We
said that our value structures (the hierarchy of things we find meaningful)
determines the way we see and if that’s the case, how come we all identified the
pattern of success and agreed to name it collectively, even if each of us have
different value structures that makes us see differently or completely miss the
pattern of success around us?
The extreme commonality of internal value structures
Although there is some value in asserting the individuality and subjectivity of
reality in some circumstances because we haven’t faced the reality that is facing
our brothers and sisters (we shouldn’t judge too quickly without understanding the
situation better), most of what we see and value as human beings is similar. You
can see this in the way we characterize certain personalities and build characters in
movies or books that bring laughter or tears to the majority of the audience
population. Even our aims are so common even though we think of them as
unique. We have almost 7 billion people and almost all of us (except a small
minority people involved in truly creative endeavors which trailblaze a new path
that was never thought of by anyone) are interested only in a few hundred
disciplines. We have almost 7 billion people but almost all see ourselves in the
future as having kids and forming a family and getting more prosperous and doing
good for the people around us. I could go on but the fact is we are way more
similar than we think although the specifics of our life story and experiences might
differ.
The fact that we named the pattern we observed and named it “success”
collectively agreeing on it and adding it to our dictionary indicates that almost all of
us have a gut instinct for meaning and quickly want to name a thing that
pronounces itself meaningful to us. This commonality of our internal value
structures (hierarchies of meaning) is what allows language to grow. Internal value
structures are more or less universal.
How did we encounter the pattern of success?
Internal value structures allow us to see what is meaningful. So one answer to this
question might be- “We all have structures within us that allow us to see what is
meaningful and we saw successful and fulfilled people and we saw that it was good
and wanted to have what they had but, to have it, we had know what it is and to
know what it is, we had to talk about it and to talk about it, we had to name it, so
we named it success and started talking about it. We failed a lot when trying to
define success because we were trying to define something that our gut instincts
(internal value structures) told us to pursue when we looked at a successful and
fulfilled person. We already know what it is in our gut but its difficult to articulate it
to others and ourselves because internal value structures might not even be
known to us consciously even though they are the way we see and act. So, we
started guessing- “Is success money?” when we saw a rich philanthropist, “Is
success fame?” when we saw a popular person adored by many, “Is success
sacrificing one’s self?” when we see a man giving his life for what he believed in,
“Is success caring for others” when we see someone devoted caring for the weak,
“Is success being nice and unoffensive” when you see people who get along with
everyone and have a good time. All these questions are interesting because we
had the audacity to name something without knowing what it is. This indicates that
we had a gut instinct that made us name it because it pronounced itself as
important and meaningful. That gut instinct is what will guide us to the answer of
what success is in our own lives. Simply thinking about in lying on your dorm beds
will not do it. We are meaning machines. We see meaning in everything and our
guts (internal value structures) tell us to follow the pattern of being we see in front
of us even though we might not be able to articulate exactly if that means money,
fame or cars. That instinct within you is what tells you when you’re off from the
mark or when you are descending a little bit in to hell by allowing yourself to be
controlled by money or fame, allowing yourself to be overly nice and harmless to
people to the point that they roll over you, Allowing yourself to be used by doing
charity for people who don’t deserve it, Allowing your ego to reach the size of the
sun and disrespect those around you. These are fine little balancing acts that you
can’t fully do with just conscious thinking because no matter how long you think
about a certain decision, there is a gut instinct at the bottom of your being that
tells you the truth if you are 100% honest with it. Follow that. Don’t obsess over
what success is because you already noticed it and named it “success” before you
consciously knew what it is, which means you have a good idea of what it is deep
within the core of your being that allowed you to see the pattern of success to
begin with. You might not articulate the reasons that you do everything and that’s
okay because you already knew and felt enough to name it in the first place.
Happiness …blah …blah…blah
Happiness is a term that is very closely related to pleasure in the way we use it in
our lives. When a child gets a cake, he/she will say “I am happy that I got a cake”
instead of “I am fulfilled in life because I got a cake”.
Happiness is not a noble goal.
You heard me. Stop looking at me like that. Just listen.
Whenever I hear happiness the image that comes in to my mind is a music video I
saw somewhere with blue skies and colorful rainbows with every actor dancing
and getting along holding hands in a circle looking dumb in the process. Its also
very funny how people think of the guy who is always happy go-lucky, always
laughing goofily, and trying so hard to be liked by everyone as either dumb or a
psychopath. Funny things are funny because they have some truth in them.
The happiness advocate might think that if you get what you want you will be
happy which is the furthest thing from what happens in real life. Just look at the
study that literally found that happiness levels of people who lost a limb in an
accident and people who won a lottery are about the same in happiness levels
after 6 months. Of course, you can question the research methodologies and how
they measured happiness or if the participants of the study lied but we don’t need
a study to see this truth. Just look at the widowed dad who is raising 2 kids by
himself taking up three jobs, extra shifts and working 40+ hours a week at jobs he
hates to put food on the table and keep the lights on. Then look at the guy who
achieved his dream and became a Rockstar musician touring the world getting paid
in millions, has no one that gives a crap about him genuinely, on drugs,
promiscuous and aimless. Theoretically the latter person would be happier
according to the happiness advocate but we all know that isn’t usually the case in
this life where you can work terrible jobs, toil away and suffer for little in return
and still be the happiest you have ever been when you look you kids look up at you
when you get back from work. This life where you can have all that you dreamed of
and nothing at the same time. This life where you can feel inferior, exhausted, and
fed up but still content seeing the fruits of your labor. This life where you can have
everything you wanted and allow those things destroy you.
It’s truly funny when you hear a person that plays video games in the morning
after telling himself that he would study that morning, say he knows he will be
happy if he gets a house, a car and maybe some girls. What makes you say that you
know yourself enough to dictate the things that you have to possess to be happy,
with a straight face while I’m watching you play that video game. The interesting
thing about self-deception is that we all know it deep down. We all know that we
lie to ourselves all the time and that’s why we watch each other’s actions instead
of our words to establish trust. Your boss will always require a third person to
testify to you character before he/she hires you. After the dating phase passes,
your spouse watches the things you do for her and the value of those things
instead what you say, making her final actions based on what you do instead of
what you say. The way we built our civilization is a testament to the
acknowledgment that we lie not only to others but to ourselves as well.
It becomes easy to see this in your own life at instances where you say things to
yourself only to watch your utterances become lies after a while like the video
game guy even though you really didn’t intend to lie to yourself. As you are human
its very likely that you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do, and you
don’t know enough to know what would be best for you. That’s why meaning
should always be emphasized instead of what you simply want which is as likely to
make you miserable as happy. Meaning hits you when you see things that are
meaningful to you and as I have said before we are naturally predisposed to see
things that are meaningful as they pronounce themselves in to our sight. Using
that nature and following it along the path of meaning will both make you tolerant
of the tragedies of life and experience moments of genuine happiness that are
worthy of remembering (we also remember the things that are meaningful btw).
The proposition that the primary goal in life is to be happy is not a very good one
primarily because there is also the big elephant in the room which the “always
happy” person is either blind or ignorant enough not to see. We will all die and we
will all rot. Not only death but we will suffer in this life as well. These are
inescapable truths of human existence that are not easy to ignore let alone be
happy in the midst of. The right reaction to these truths isn’t “Be happy
nevertheless!” which is almost an impossible thing to do for a normal human being
who is in touch with his true emotions and fears.
The more interesting and truthful approach is something like - “Even though you
are a feeble and mortal human being, even though you are full of faults and
potential evilness, even though your life will be full of suffering and pain of all sorts
besides the main tragedy of death, you have the ability to confront chaos and
make something useful and beautiful out of it as you are made in the image of
God. As vulnerable and deplorable you are, you can at least take up a burden and
carry it on your back and keep moving forward and when somebody asks you -
What justifies your existence? What makes your life worthwhile? Why would it
matter if you died right now? Would the world be any different or even better
without you? You can reply - ‘Well, as weak and as vulnerable as I am, I at least
have a noble burden that I carry on my back and I moved that burden from A to B.
At least I’m useful enough for that!’. Hence Make the problems you face difficult
enough and make the sacrifices you make noble and worthy enough to shield
yourself from the horrors of life and death. Don’t just be happy.
Happiness and meaning are related sometimes as often times happiness is a
momentary burst of joy that dawns on us in certain moments when we have lived
a life of meaning. If you notice, it usually happens when we are looking at
something that we have suffered and paid a sacrifice for like seeing our kids which
we raised with extreme difficulties play on the grass or when we finally get the job
that we spent sleepless nights pursuing, suffering away to better the lives of our
families or when we hang out with friends that did so much for us or when we see
the business we have been slaving away for finally make profit. Meaning is not the
same as happiness. Maybe it’s time to stop chasing mere happiness and instead
look inwards and see yourself and find what gives your life meaning or ask if it even
has one. Happiness is overrated. Justify your existence so that when you look at
your life you can at least say “I did this for myself, my family and my community
and I am proud of that. This is why I was created. This is the meaning of my life
“with happiness in your heart. Maybe its time we stopped analytically thinking
about things that we ourselves named, weirdly asking what they are in the first
place. Maybe its time that we lived our lives being honest with the deepest parts of
ourselves that tell us the truth instead of asking for a technical description for the
things we already experienced and knew enough about to name and pick out from
reality. Maybe its time we followed meaning instead of mere happiness and
desires that don’t sustain us through the tragedies of life. Maybe it’s time we tried
to live a life of meaning instead of confusing ourselves with terminologies and dry
definitions. There is literally nothing else better to do than pursuing meaning when
you’re suffering in this life while you’re waiting to die.
P.S I ended this essay in a grim way for all those people out there who think the
purpose of life is to be happy. I wanted to piss you off a little.
Thank You
Yours Truly,
Dumb Person

A few suggested readings

• 12 rules for life: An antidote to chaos
• Maps of meaning
• The fountainhead (interesting but not insightful)
Suggested YouTube Channels (If you’re not in to reading long books)
• Jordan B Peterson
• The Symbolic World
• John Vervaeke
• Protecting veil (Has some religious content)