Are You Ever "Done" With Self-Improvement?

We have a pollen situation in the studio and a allergy situation and some snots. Hold for the schnoz.

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching Marie TV, the place to be if you want to create a business and a life that you love. And today is Q and A Tuesday. That means we got Q’s and A’s and today’s question comes from Liza and she writes, “Marie, your bubbly personality and pithy thoughts and advice brighten me up every week. I’m 63 years old. My question is this. While I love and appreciate your weekly advice, tips, and contemplations, I’m beginning to find all this self-improvement. Exhausting. Ha ha. It’s coming at us from all sides on the internet. Don’t eat this. Do that. Exercise this way, read this. Try this. Do’s and don’ts, et cetera. Yes, life is an evolving experience and we change along the way, but sometimes you just want to coast and smell the roses. What do you think about all this? Can we coast? Or is this what internet culture has pushed us into ,the feeling that we’re constantly not enough, that we should do better, be better, go bigger. I’d love to hear your thoughts. XO, Liza.

Liza, this is a really great question and there’s some misconceptions that we need to unpack, but first, there’s something that I want to set straight. You know, the self improvement industry isn’t responsible for making you, or me, or anyone else feel not enough. We human beings are really capable of feeling not enough all on our own. And in my own life, when I look to a book, or to a course, or to an audio program, I’m not going there because I think that there’s something deficient or something I need to fix. I’m simply looking at it as a way to enrich my life.

Number one, don’t blame the internet. So this is not about the internet or internet culture. In fact, if you think about this whole idea and concept of wanting to live better, and be better, and do better, it’s been around since the beginning of time. Take a look at the Bible, right? That’s like the original self help book and it’s the number one bestselling book of all time. And I’ll bet you can even take it back further all the way into the stone ages. There’s probably the cave man who thought he discovered fire until another cave man came along and told him this.

Fire. Okay. Fire.

So please don’t hate on the internet as though it created the self-help culture because it didn’t. It just allows you to stick your face up in it and motorboat it all day long. Which brings me to my second point, number two, step away from the self help buffet. Liza, my sweetheart, I got a little caught when you said that, “Self help is coming at me from all sides.” Little reality check here. You’re the one that signed up for all those self-helpy newsletters, and you’re probably the one that chose to follow all the self-helpy people on social media. Now here is the good news. You raised your hand for it, which means you can also put your hand down and unsubscribe or stop following those people. So if you feel like you need a little break, that’s exactly what you should do. So just remember that you are in control of what you pay attention to and what you focus on. So if you need to just step away from the self-help buffet, do it. Just make sure that you don’t victimize yourself with what you chose to pay attention to.

Finally, let’s get to the core of your question. Is it cool to coast? So number three is yes, it is cool to coast. Let me illustrate this point with a little story. So recently I was in Portland, Oregon, and they have these gorgeous waterfalls. Multnomah Falls at the Columbia River Gorge. Now you could go and hang out at the falls, or you could hike up to the top, which we did. As we hiked up the trail, I noticed that some people ran to the top, other people were power walking, other people moseyed along and they took lots of breaks along the way, and some people never got on the trail at all and just enjoy the beauty of the falls from the ground level.

The point is everybody did something different. Everybody enjoyed the falls in their own way. So you got to ask yourself, did the runners do the falls better than the moseyers? Absolutely not. So Liza, if you want to coast my dear, you should coast and you should be the coastest with the mostest, and really enjoy it. Because if your soul is telling you that you just need to take a break from all this self improvement, by all means listen to that inner wisdom. And not to get too self-helpy on you, but when you listen to that small voice inside, it is the best form of self help out there. Now let’s wrap this up with a tweetable.

Sometimes the best self help is deciding yourself doesn’t need helping. That was my A to your Q, Liza, and I really do hope it helps. Now I would love to hear from you. I have a feeling that since you’re watching Marie TV that you enjoy all things related to personal growth. So my question is this, how do you balance loving personal growth and not constantly feeling like you’re some fixer upper project or just not good enough? As always, the best discussions happen after the episode over at marieforleo.com. So come on over and leave a comment now.

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Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time on Marie TV.

And when you walk out, what are you while you’re in the bathroom? European.

I’m not wearing that on my head. I’m talking to a little Smurf in the camera.

Yeah.

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