57 - I'm Over The Self-Help Industry (what im doing instead)

I have been on a self-improvement journey for what feels like the majority of my life. And to be honest with you, I'm over it. Self-improvement burnout is absolutely real. And I am making my way out of that. And in this video, I'm going to show you how to as well. My story is probably really similar to yours. I had a lot of pain in my childhood. I had a lot of hurt. There was a lot of abuse. There was a lot of abandonment. And that inevitably led me to make choices that landed me in a therapist's office at the age of 15. And I can remember the first self-help book that he recommended to me. He said, "You have to get this book by Byron Katie called Loving What It's." That was the first self-help book that I had read. And when I read it, I felt something click into place. And now looking back, I'm like, it was probably some type of dopamine hit where I felt understood. And I felt seen. And I had these pieces in my brain that I could just feel clicking into place. I was finally having something outside of me make sense of what I was experiencing inside of me. And ever since that moment, I swear I've been chasing that same high. In fact, sometimes, like late at night, when I'm laying in my bed, I think about people who have never read a self-help book, never listened to a self-help podcast. And I think that's crazy because I've listened to all of them. I've read all of them. And there are people out there that don't go on this big, long path to improve themselves. And probably many of them should do that to some degree. But what happens when you're on the other side of that spectrum? What happens when you're on the spectrum where you can't stop? And you are constantly consuming and you can't brush your teeth without blasting a podcast in your ears. And any time you hear someone mention a book, it's in your Amazon cart for delivery tomorrow. Like, that's been me hundreds of times. And what's interesting is that so many of the books that I read, the podcasts that I listened to, the people that I looked up to in the space of helping other people were all incredible. They all had amazing things to offer. These books did change my life. But I guess at some point I had to ask myself, did it change my life or did it change my understanding of how life works? Did it give me information on how to change my life? When you think of teachers like Tony Robbins, he's a good example. One of his quotes is, "Knowledge is not power, knowledge is potential power." That is a very impactful quote. And it's literally a quote about the place where everyone goes wrong where we get the information but we don't apply the information. We feel like we know so much on how to do stuff but we're not doing it. And so these books, these podcasts, these teachers are not good or bad. A lot of them offer very life-changing information and advice and tools and techniques. But at what point does it become something that is actually not serving you? At what point does it become something that is taking away from your life instead of adding to it? Instead of improving it, at what point are you not even improving yourself with all the self-improvement? And when do you get to a point where you put down the learning and you pick up the living in your life? Because you can't only be learning constantly. And you'll know if you're someone who's just like, "I can't get enough, I can't stop learning." There's always this underlying feeling, like what it feels like to me is that maybe this book has the thing, that's how it always felt to me. Maybe this has the thing, maybe there's something in here that could change my life forever. And oftentimes it did contain something to that effect. But the hunt of it, the seeking after it, never died down. It was always just one to the next thing, which I think is a normal part of being a human. It's even when we get something that we want so badly, something that we thought would be the thing that made us content and happy forever, it's on to the next. But the target just continues moving. And that happens when you are someone who is constantly absorbing self-help content. And please know that the irony is not lost on me, that my content is also self-improvement content. So, do with that what you will, the metanus of this. And before I go any further, this is something that I'm not good at doing. But if anything on this channel has helped you, I am very close at the time of recording this to hitting 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. So if you can check real quick and see if you're subscribed and if not, hit that subscribe button. And anytime you like my videos or engage with them, that really helps me a lot. So when does learning and really immersing yourself in self-help content become a compulsive behavior for a lack of a better way to describe that? And I want to define what a compulsion is or what compulsive behavior is. And I wrote it down. It is an irresistible hard to control urge to do something. And the normal reason we're doing it is because we want to avoid how we're feeling. Normally that's around anxiety. But it can be around anything. It can be with uncomfortable sensations. It can be with pain. It can be with mental health issues where we begin doing things in a way that feels very hard not to do. A good way to know if this is a problem for you is to ask yourself, "If I, Maggie, if I were to ask you and say, "Hey, no more content for you, no more self-help, no more reading any book that tells you how to improve your life, you're not allowed to listen to a podcast, you're not allowed to do anything in regards to absorbing information about, you know, improving your life." And if that feels like, "Oh, that would be challenging. What about my favorite podcast? I don't want to miss it." And my favorite author is releasing that book and I loved her first two books. If that feels like it would be a struggle for you, you are probably someone who's consuming way more than you're creating a new life. You're taking in more information than you're able to apply. But if you're first instinct when you have a problem or an uncomfortable emotion is to run to a book or run to a recommendation or run to something that will help you fix it, self-help may have become compulsive for you. And there's this energy behind it that's just like improve, improve, improve, get better, get better, and then you become a self-improvement project. And let me tell you the biggest issue with this. When you are a self-improvement project, there's always a problem to solve. I don't know if you've seen that in your life. It's something that I've seen in my life, but also something that was reflected by my husband at one point. When he kind of let me know, like, it's kind of always something. And that wasn't to demean me or make me feel bad, like, he was right. It seemed like as soon as I would solve one problem, a new one would pop up in its place. And it's like, when you think about the aspect of your brain called the reticular activating system that basically says, like, what you prioritize, what you think about, what you pour energy into focusing on, your brain, you train it to find more of that. And we can become addicted to some extent to the identity we have of ourself being broken and needing to be fixed, and that can be a slippery slope. And I also think that there's a payoff to solving problems. We get a dopamine hit when we find a new book. When we have this thought that this could be it. This could make me feel better. This could fix something for me. We get a dopamine hit. And so we can get that over and over and over again as we continue to seek out solutions. And then we get that problem and then life just lobs up another one and we just always something to do. The reason why I think this should matter to you is that if you are consuming content 24/7, you know who you are, or if you're consuming content like 80% of your life, I want you to know that the days are getting away from you, that we are essentially running out the clock on our lives by learning how to make life better. And what I know is someone who has consumed a lot of content, I've created a lot of content, is that life keeps moving. And when we're focusing on how to make things better, we're very rarely making things better. There is a balance between consumption and creation. And I don't mean this doesn't just apply if you create content online. The consumption of how to make life better versus the creation of a better life are two different things. Those are not the same things. And we think they are learning feels like doing. Learning is not doing. Collecting that information, it is, as Tony said, potential power. It is not power in and of itself to have a bunch of information and a bunch of things you're going to get to at some point. Because the carrot just keeps moving, the post keeps moving. And as soon as you even reach that post, if you reach it, the post just moves again. And I saw this in my life and it was pretty devastating to me, I have accomplished things in my life. I have created things that I would have only dreamt of 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And yet, there was still this emptiness inside of me, there was still this feeling of who I believed that I was. And nothing ever was able to really fill that hole, which is why I kept seeking. That energy of constant fixing is another flavor of hyper vigilance. We're constantly seeing if we're doing things right, if there's something that we need to change. And what that does is it takes you out of your life, it keeps you from experiencing your life, which as I've gone through so much with experiencing chronic symptoms, which are really gave me a real problem to grab on to. 'Cause if I'm being honest with you, there were many years where yes, I struggled immensely with anxiety and depression and insomnia on and off. And those things were challenging, but I got used to living with them. I did a pretty good job of living with them. When that morphed into physical symptoms, shit got real really fast. I was like, oh, this is a real problem. And it was almost like, and this is what I've been training for. This is it, this is the moment. I always knew something would go wrong. I always knew there would be some unsolvable medical mystery, my biggest fear, by the way. Some type of medical mystery that no doctor could help me with. And suddenly it was like the universe was like, did you order something? So I dug in even deeper. And I think it was that experience that has brought this up to the surface to me, which I know you're not gonna wanna hear it, but that is the way that chronic symptoms, chronic illness can be a gift to you because it puts shit in front of your face that you cannot ignore otherwise. And I was able to see it was loud enough, finally. Like the information was so in front of my face and in my face, by the way, that I couldn't ignore it any longer. And we begin hearing about how you need to live your life and you need to live as though you don't have symptoms and you need to take your symptoms with you. And I was like, okay, we'll get to that. Tell me what to do though about the symptoms. And that's what I noticed so many of you are doing. So many of the conversations I have with people that feel stuck in the process of getting better and healing and fixing themselves, fixing what's wrong with them are neglecting this part. They don't think it's important yet, which I get it, you're in survival mode. So it's not gonna feel like it's important. But chronic symptoms have a way of pulling you back into your body because it's really hard to ignore what's going on in your body when you're dealing with uncomfortable stuff in your body. And sometimes having an experience like this as hard as it is, as awful as it is. I can't even pull the right words, just know that I get it. I get the depths of how hard this is. It can be what you finally need to put down the fixing, which isn't that crazy because we want to fix it so bad, but we don't realize that in order to fix it, we need to release the need to fix it. And one of the best ways to do that is to find ways to reengage in a meaningful life, to reengage in the things that matter to you, to reengage in the things that bring light into your life and bring nourishment into your body and bring joy back. 'Cause we don't prioritize joy when we're hurting so bad. There's a very good reason for that. They're not important for our survival and when you're stuck in survival mode, it doesn't matter if you're happy. It matters if you're alive. And so we slowly begin saying, can't do that, can't do that, can't do that. I'm unable to do that. And sometimes that's true. Sometimes there are things that we get to a point where we physically can't do them. And other times, we are dealing with things that we are so afraid to do. We're so afraid to do them feeling differently than the way we felt last time. Maybe like, you know, grabbing a cup of coffee, maybe going for a walk, maybe, you know, re-engaging in a hobby or something. It just feels like I have something so serious to figure out right now. I need to fix this. And when I do, then I can laugh again. Then I can, you know, get together with my friend and go on that walk. Then I can get back in the kitchen and make that recipe. But I can't right now. I have another book to read. I need to hear what that new podcast was. This person's interviewing that person, I can't miss it. But when you can't miss that stuff, what you're actually missing is your life. You're missing the pieces of your life that you could get back now. Not when the anxiety goes away. Not when the depression goes away. Not when the DPR goes away. Not when the fatigue goes away. Not when the migraines go away. I need I say more because I could. I could go on for hours if I listed everything that needs to be allowed while re-engaging. And it's so interesting because I have a coaching background. I'm a certified coach. I coached her six years prior to beginning to share my story and teach around this topic. And the majority of what I was taught and works fantastically well, especially if you're not in crisis mode and a bit more regulated, is really working on your thinking, working on your thoughts and asking yourself, like, what are my thoughts creating for me? A better way to say that is probably, what are my beliefs creating for me? What are the beliefs around my identity creating for me? But when we're dealing specifically with experience in chronic symptoms, I kind of like starting behavior first and letting the thinking update. And that's where I think it's really cool when you can reinstate some of these things that you've pushed off to the side for a better, more hopeful, pain-free, symptom-free future. Your beliefs start updating by themselves. We don't have to change what we think and what we believe because we become that person now. And that's something that you have to do when you're trying to recover from chronic symptoms. You have to behave as the person who doesn't have the chronic symptoms. Now, of course, I know you guys are, I know you're yelling at me right now through the screen. But Maggie, I can't do what I used to be able to do. Okay, I get it, I hear you. And what can you do, though? What can you do? The most common response I give to that kind of pushback is are you gonna look for the ways that it doesn't apply or are you gonna look for the ways that it does? Are you gonna look for the ways you can apply this to your situation or are you constantly gonna count yourself out? 'Cause if you do, you stay the same. You get to keep whatever it is you're currently dealing with. And I know you don't want that or you wouldn't be watching this video. And some of the biggest, quickest, most impactful wins that people have when they take my course is they get parts of their life back like today. Like they get parts of their life that they felt like they lost or that they wouldn't get back for a really long time today when they implement the part of my course that talks about letting life be the regulator. So what I decided to do because of all these conversations I was having with people with noticing how people neglect this part of the process so much, I decided that I wanted to host a little challenge. I thought it would be fun. Something that sounds fun to me. Like you wanna talk about letting life be the regulator? I thought it would be so fun to like connect with people, support each other, have a community, have accountability posts, do some coaching calls, just like for 14 days, all of us get together and we have a combined focus. And that focus isn't about bitching about symptoms and it isn't about talking about how discouraged we are. It's about coming together like with a combined purpose that we're gonna get our life back. We're gonna get little pieces of our life back because that creates this snowball of momentum that like cannot be matched. It's like we try so hard in this process and we're trying to force it and we have pressure and we're like trying to make our symptoms go away, we're trying to have a better life. But like we're neglecting the things that would make us feel differently now. Again, we're circling back to like how important it is to feel differently than you normally feel. You're dominant emotions right now. If you're struggling, if you're seeking out self-help content are probably pretty sucky and that's okay, it makes sense. But what would happen if you created that momentum for two weeks and helped yourself be like, "I gotta focus on not just being better with my symptoms." Like I wanna be clear, what we focus on this challenge is not gonna be the whole pie, not gonna be on everything you need to do. That is what my courses for. But this is going to be focusing on a part that I think is so important that so many people are neglecting, that I think is gonna help a lot of people start seeing massive improvements with what I know you actually want, which is you wanna feel better. And guess what, feeling better helps to eliminate chronic symptoms. So, trust me, when I tell you, I know what you want. And I also think you don't prioritize enough what would get you there. You're focusing a little bit too much on the serious stuff. Okay, so I'll put the link to the wait list. All the details will be coming out, you know, within the next week. I'm hoping to get that started soon. I'm really excited about it. Ultimately, what I'm asking of you in your life and on this process is that you begin realizing that you probably don't need much more information. You need more application. So, it's not about more knowledge or more information. It's about how do I start applying this in a way that has me getting to the end of every day. And I'll talk more about this in the challenge group 'cause I've just just been so front of mind. But what would happen if you got to the end of every day and you were like really satisfied with yourself, like really, really deeply satisfied, that you had some authentic, true, perfect for you, joy. I'm not gonna eliminate all your problems in 24 hours. I don't have that kind of power. But what would it look like to wake up excited because you have something to look forward to 'cause you're planning it intentionally, which I'll show you how to do. And then you got to the end of the day and you were like, that was good, that day had some goodness in it. And you spent more time thinking about how much you enjoyed that part of your day or those couple parts of your day or that section of your day. Instead of thinking, I hope I don't wake up with pain in the morning, hope tomorrow isn't as shitty as the last week has been, like what if, what if we stopped that? What if we tried something else? There are so many things I do now that I thought were frivolous. I'm learning so much more about myself. I'm learning so much more about self improvement through experience than I ever did from all the books that I read. And that's the honest truth. If anything, my experience is now reinforcing everything I've learned and anything I think of of anything I learned read or anything about these retreats that I've been to all of it. I'm like, oh, I get it. I understand, oh, behave as that person. Oh, your dominant emotions affect how you experience your life. Like, I'm getting it now. And that is different than understanding it kind of, getting it, embodying it, really fully being a walking example of it. It's very different than having a lot of information in that nugget. There were things that I thought, I just don't have the genes for that. Or I just never been interested in that. And the truth is, most of these things for me felt too frivolous. I posted something on Instagram the other day and it like took off. Okay, it said, may you heal so hard that you decorate your home and have a hobby is again. If you don't have a clue what this means, consider yourself fortunate. Now, my guess is that you probably know what that means. You probably have shelved a lot of what would help your soul come back alive, help your spirit blossom. And we've pushed those to the side and said, I'll get to you later. And the truth of the matter, I don't want to get morose here. I don't want to be depressing. But the truth of the matter is we aren't actually aware of how much more time we have. And we aren't aware of what the future will look like. It may be missing some people that we have in our life right now. It may be missing some abilities that we have right now. It could be astronomically better. I hope that it is. And I think the promise of the self-help industry is that your future is very bright. And I love that for us. But what about now? When I was getting my nails done yesterday, the lady next to me was super chatty. And she addressed my tattoo. This is a tattoo I got. I don't know how old I was. I must have been 27. I had just left the religion I was in. I was dealing with a lot of the same problems. I have recently finally successfully solved. And I got this tattoo and it says be here now. And we were joking. She just asked and was like, you know, in the middle of the night when you start worrying and stuff, do you ever look at your wrist and like accept that reminder? I'm like, you know what? I forget that I have this tattoo as you do when something's been on your body for 10 years. But I told her I was like, it's never bad advice. It's always a good reminder. Anytime I do notice it, I think this is it. This is life. Life is happening right now. And it probably has some stuff that you're not enjoying very much. And it probably contains things that are really painful. But what if even with the pain, even with the troubles, even with the concerns, even with the fears? You were still able to have a good life today. I think that's very important. And it's what I've always cared most about. When it comes to the way I want to help and serve people, I want to have, I want to help you have a better life today. Not when life gets better. Not when you find the relationship. Not when you lose the weight. Not when the pain is gone. Not when we'll, oh, no, no, no. Of the things that we're like, that'll be the thing. No, no. We only have the day in front of us. I want to help you live the day in front of you better. But in a non pressured way, because I know some of you guys are like, I'm going to do this perfectly. But it's important. It matters. And we don't know what the future holds. That's what I've learned through the darkest periods of my life that I've gone through over the last couple of years. And that's what I want to help people do. And that's what makes me the most, like, satisfied, like the most happy, the most fulfilled is when I get messages of people telling me they got their life back. And oftentimes, they're in the process still. And they have some symptoms. And they, and they tell me I am so much better than I used to be. And my life is so good right now. And they have this unshakable trust that cannot be sold, cannot be borrowed. It is built. It is this trust that is like, I know I'm going to be okay. I know that's just going to, it's going to be fine. And right now, I'm living a juicy ass life. And I, I wouldn't trade anything for the world because I, I'm not who I was before. And I, I mean, not in the best possible way. That's normally the experience that people have on the other side of what they would consider their worst nightmare of going through really hard things that drive them to improve, improve, improve. And you have to let go of that. And you have to get back into your life. And you have to focus on that. I'm not saying never read a self-help book again. I'm not saying, you know, podcasts are bad. I like self-improvement stuff. I like self-improvement content. It's just when does it get to a point where we're not doing anything with it. In which case, it's kind of a waste of your time. And it's not helping you to have a better life. It's helping you to have a destruction from your life. And that may make sense because you may not want to be fully in your body. You may not want to be fully in your life as it is now. But what if we change some of that? What if life could get a lot better for you? Because I, I believe that it can very quickly. So anyways, I hope this video was helpful. I will link the wait list for the challenge that I'm going to be hosting in the description. I would love to have you there. It would be fun to meet some of you guys in the community. And I will see you guys next time. Bye everybody!