SELF IMPROVEMENT GENERAL

Why I have nothing but contempt for self-help authors, especially those who focus on "success", "happiness" and the like. I don't mind the specialized ones so much ("How to get ripped", "How to prepare for exams", "How to build a business", etc. etc.), so long as they know what they are talking about. Those are fine for what they are. But the success and happiness ones are terrible. For firstly, these are philosophical issues that geniuses have been discussing for millennia (as opposed to "how to learn to skateboard", which they haven't). Why would you even go to nobodies for these answers? And then these answers are either outright stupid, or at best dumbed down misinterpretations of what the great thinkers have said, which the self-help author has usually heard third- or fourth-hand (i.e. he has not read the original thinker but merely someone else who has read him, etc.) In the best of cases they tell you how to be MEDIOCRE. I.e. the titles should be "How to Have Mediocre Success in Life", "How to Attain the Happiness of the Mediocre", etc. All their advice is useless to me. I would have utterly failed in all my goals if I had followed their success blueprints, and I would be miserable if I listened to their advice on how to be "happy".

What sort of advice do they give? Sleep early, cut off bad friends, focus on your goals, make notes to yourself, etc. etc., all of which I've broken countless times in my life, and still break on a daily basis. Is there any book of this kind that advises you to take your dad's jeep with your friend because you are bored and drive it through shop windows in the early hours of the morning every weekend for kicks? But that's how I got to where I am today, by doing whatever the fuck I felt like doing at any given moment.

If you want to learn how to focus, you don't learn how to focus by "learning how to focus", or by following stupid little advice like making a to-do list and waking up early in the morning to fulfill it. You know how I learned how to focus? By studying mathematics. Biology. Chemistry. Etc. I.e. by going to school.

You know how I learned to "be active"? By joining a basketball team. By taking up swimming and snowboarding.

The problem with self improvement is people are not in the mood. This is the great mystery. Not whatthey would do if they were.

Hahaha someone send that to Winston.

Maybe it will make him angry enough that he will start making (good) comics again.

Wanting to focus by learning how to focus is for degenerates who've never tried doing anything worthwhile in their lives, or for disadvantaged kids who grow up in an environment that doesn't offer physics classes or snowboarding. If you haven't already learned how to "focus" by the time you hit 18 (and indeed, be a master of it) you never will, no matter how many self-help books you read. All the "success stories" are below mediocre people. Neurotics, depressed men, drug addicts, for whom so much as holding a job is an achievement, etc. Utter losers. In whose cases the books are INDEED helpful — I am not knocking the positive steps these people have made in their lives or anything — good for them, but their titles are misleading. They'd have to be "How to be Moderately Successful if you are a Complete Loser", not how to be successful full stop.

tl;dr self-help books are for losers and I'd rather spend all day masturbating (i.e. doing the opposite of what they teach) — WHICH I HAVE DONE SEVERAL TIMES IN MY LIFE, BY THE WAY — than read them. If you want to improve yourself, enroll in a tough college degree and learn a real sport. All the rest are for losers.

Start a bioengineering degree, and don't worry: "determination", "focus", "self-possession", etc. will come — or you will fail.

If you can't get through an advanced degree, then you already know you are a failure. It is the minimum requirement to be a human. And the same goes for a proper sport (i.e. not ping pong or cricket). Hopefully both. If you can't do both you are half human. If you can do neither you are subhuman. (Though there are plenty of subhumans who can do both — all the more reason to realize that these achievements are merely the absolute minimum to be considered a human, never mind a "success").

How did I learn to focus? I went to school! Any given school system in a Western country throws so much stuff at you, that like it or not you HAVE to learn to persevere, to study, to focus, to plan, etc. etc. in order to succeed. These books are for middle-aged losers, drop-outs, depressed loners, etc. If they help them, fine, but as far REAL success is concerned (as opposed to merely not being depressed and miserable), if you need to read a manual about that in your 20s, never mind your 30s or 40s, there's not the slightest chance that you will ever "succeed" in anything going by the common definition of the word.

>Play video games
>Watch TV

There's nothing wrong with either of these so long as they're not being done as mindless time wasting activity and are not taking up massive amounts of your free time.

You're probably better off watching tv or playing games than browsing Veeky Forums a lot of the time.

Whoever doesn't love his job yet continues to do it is a criminal, a thief, just as much as actual criminals and thieves, and many of them even more. That they are lawfully defrauding their fellow citizens doesn't make them better people, only harder to be discovered and punished, as they deserve to be. Theft, after all, existed long before the invention of laws that criminalized it, and perhaps the day will yet come — in a future society of Overmen — when it will be illegal to work on something that you don't love.

Shut the fuck up user.

>But that's how I got to where I am today
Does this mean you have made breakthroughs in those fields you mentioned and/or that you are a professional athlete/coach now? At the very least can you say you have made the most of your potential? I find this hard to believe desu when you don't believe in disciplining yourself. It's almost ironic that you would post nietzsche in this context. There is nothing self-complacent to his philosophy. NOT that I have a problem with self-complacency, but this is a thread about self-improvement and they don't go hand in hand as far as I'm aware.

This

>hasn't read Ecce Homo
>talks shit

Haven't read this pasta before

Is that code for "I'm mediocre and I'm proud"?

Statistically having poor impulse control makes you likely to be poor and criminal.

Okay the stupidity ITT seems to be contagious, so I may as well clear-up.

>Does this mean you have made breakthroughs in those fields you mentioned and/or that you are a professional athlete/coach now?
For me, those fields are a means rather than a goal. Just to give you a clear example: would you still risk your body in the boxing ring if you only had a hobbyist interest rather than a professional one? Not everyone doing sports wants to be a professional, indeed it's more properly considered recreation, professionals are the fixated exceptions.

>you don't believe in disciplining yourself
False. You misunderstood the whole point.

>There is nothing self-complacent to his philosophy
Read Ecce Homo. Your dichotomies are wrong and crude.

>Statistically having poor impulse control makes you likely to be poor and criminal.
Circular reasoning. Strong, wild impulses aren't necessarily poor.

Your inability to focus on a single point yet vomit whatever you'd like to think is going on, makes you look mentally ill.

Self improvement is nonexistent and is founded on selfhatred, thus it will always be worthfree

Less alcohol
Less tobacco
Less caffeine
Less sugars
Drink a lot of water
Good friends
Pay attention to your body
Don't do the things that make you feel weak.

Less weed and shrooms
More meditation

Medimemetations by Maximus Decimus Meridius

nice thread

Did you hear him everybody? Mathematics is a means rather than a goal! Yes yes. The only competition is you. There is no better nor worse. t's all about (you). All is idiotproof. The world is your safe space.

A winner is you.

Write every day - either a journal, fiction, or on whatever you're studying for a qualification/in your spare time.

lol implying you've read anything by her

this isn't about success, it's about coming to terms with yourself and living good you dunce

>Mathematics is a means rather than a goal!
Hilarious that you think this is a refutation. Taking maths as your endgoal is how you end up with manual-labourer garbage like Principia Mathematica.

Your reply lacks context. The copypasta goes on about "I would have failed if I listened" and "look where I am today" without saying what exactly it is that he achieved and what makes him better but nevertheless insinuating that he's good at what he does because he learned to focus by "doing" or some shit like that.
So there is definitively a pretension here asking for a standard to be applied to it.

Also at the end of the second post the CP literally says "there's not the slightest chance that you will ever "succeed" in anything going by the common definition of the word."

Yes yes. The only competition is yourself and so on and so forth and a winner is ((you)).

If you feel "contempt" at a person for reading, or writing a book, and enjoying doing so, then you have obviously not matured enough to understand what you pretend to preach.

Stop being bitter. One less bitter person spouting his nonsense online will be better for everyone.

Mind == Blown

Thanks Nietzsche

Thanks Nietch!

>fell for the self improvement meme

For whose sake am I to improve myself? Why am I required to 'improve' myself? what does that even mean

Omg just like what Zarathustra preached. Anybody?

Thanks to Nutschee now I know what truth really is

In what sense do you mean the word "love?"

In what sense do you mean your sentence?

Read Nutsch

Become Übermonn.

Selbstovercoming.

The best.

But porn has enriched my life.

>If you don't jump through the hoops of some college degree you're not human

You're a special kind of dumb, friend.

This.

Also become gay, or a trap. Less competition then.

Is that alex jones

this is genuinely good advice

if you're busy doing all of this you won't ever be "depressed", which is what you feel when you aren't doing shit with your life.

>(Cardio included)
No thanks

>Math

YOU NEED MORE MATH!

Also this .

Also...

>Learn at least one language to fluency.
>Pick up a hands-on hobby. (Mine are guitar, painting, sketching - in charcoal and graphite, chess, and igo.)

And lets change "no porn" to no sex until marriage. All that energy must be channeled elsewhere in the meantime (which will make you more successful, allowing you to attract better mates for marriage instead of relentlessly mashing your privates like zoo animals).

Tell the truth.
Do not do things that you hate.
Act so that you can tell the truth about how you act.
Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.
If you have to choose, be the one who does things, instead of the one who is seen to do things.
Pay attention.
Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know. Listen to them hard enough so that they will share it with you.
Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationships.
Be careful who you share good news with.
Be careful who you share bad news with.
Make at least one thing better every single place you go.
Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.
Do not allow yourself to become arrogant or resentful.
Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
If old memories still make you cry, write them down carefully and completely.
Maintain your connections with people.
Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or artistic achievement.
Treat yourself as if you were someone that you are responsible for helping.
Ask someone to do you a small favour, so that he or she can ask you to do one in the future.
Make friends with people who want the best for you.
Do not try to rescue someone who does not want to be rescued, and be very careful about rescuing someone who does.
Nothing well done is insignificant.
Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
Dress like the person you want to be.
Be precise in your speech.
Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
Don't avoid something frightening if it stands in your way -- and don't do unnecessarily dangerous things.
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
Do not transform your wife into a maid.
Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
Read something written by someone great.
Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
Don't let bullies get away with it.
Write a letter to the government if you see something that needs fixing -- and propose a solution.
Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.
Be grateful in spite of your suffering.

>Why am I required to 'improve' myself?

You sound like the kind of guy who tells others to "beee themselves" as advice

>Do not do things that you hate.

Ermm..

There are something you may hate but are good for you.. like exercise. You may hate doing it, but you know its good for you.

>no sex until marriage
I honestly can't tell the serious posts from the bait anymore

>therapy

yeah okay

>blames self for the world

fuck this.

Improvement tasks only works if you have a decent/semi-decent job, have a work schedule and a future ahead of your life. It's useless to improve yourself while living the NEET life or as a student.

I gave up. Do me a favor and recommend me some literature that expands of the topic of being a failed human being; the kind that deems the pursuit of happiness in material terms worthless while being aware of the substantial - science and arts - an ambition he cannot accomplish, condemned to a lifetime of mediocrity.

shouldn'tthis be on Veeky Forums?

Do or don't, Lazy. Who it's for and why are both contained in the phrase itself.

I was serious. I know most people won't go for it, but if you're already abstaining from porn, the logical progression of this self-mastery of the sex drive is as follows (or something like it): auto-stimulation, fornication, lust.

At the point that even lust is extinguished, then all mental and physical energy which was being vainly exhausted in multifaceted sexual activity can be channeled to innovation, depth-of-insight, production, and other similarly superior functions.

Variations on this core belief have been, and are, held by people in nearly all times and places on the Earth.

shoot black tar heroin straight into you dik

>no videogames
>1 hour of internet per day
>no porn
>no TV

Don't forget to read 'The 27 Laws of Game: Attract Models With this One Weird Trick' by RSDTYLER every day.

hey, I recognize this from a Jordan Peterson's Quora answer.

Neither success nor failure feel real to me. I'm getting older, my health is diminishing, I have no friends, no career, and the doors of possibility are closing for me and I still can't bring myself to care. I don't know what motivates others to try.

youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8

I just quit porn, but seeing this thread makes me feel like a meme. How pointless self improvement really is.

- learn languages, mathematics;
- travel around the world;
- create something.

Have any of you actually accomplished anything with your self improvement?
What good is self improvement if you're just a shut in NEET anyway?

a job
friends
gf
hobbies

Porn should be done several times a month.

>Mathematics is a means rather than a goal!

but this is completely true

math is just like another language

it exists purely to communicate things

2+2=4 means absolutely nothing if not placed in the context of something else

is jerking to traps patrician/redpilled

Can anyone rec me self improvement books

Top kek m8

youtube.com/watch?v=KKZka_GSzCE

Smoke at least a pack a day.
Supplement that with two liters of strong coffee in the morning.
Pay attention to your career.
Manipulate others for your amusement or gain when possible.