It seems I am coming back to a lot of aspects I touched upon before. I am sorry if that feels erratic, but I feel the need to share my reflection on toxic self optimization once again.

All the good advice and lifestyle books come with very good ideas, but they come with a couple of downsides as well. Since the optimization is mostly aiming at building wealth, fame, success or whatever, it seems to me that failing or not sticking to an ascending success graph is not taken into consideration in most of the books.

Take James Clear for instance. Atomic Habits is a great work of rethinking habits and improving on your daily routines as far as you are primed for the optimum exploitation of your own personality.

That may sound a bit harsh, but I will quote one aspect which can have disastrous effects if you don’t take into consideration the other side of the same medal:

““The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.”

Yes, this quote is correct in its own right, at least if you put it into context with the whole book respectively its intention.

But since my habit changes is not so much about a neoliberal optimization to be the most productive member of my system, but rather to get in terms with a more balanced emotional state of mind, it is absolutely necessary to critically reflect statements like these, and I will tell you why:

I tend to stress myself to improve upon many aspects of my life to get a most optimized emotional state as a result. But I am not a machine to get tweaked for optimum performance to be exploited in a neo-liberal and capitalist way. I don’t intend to maximize my productivity.

So, in all the stress to optimize myself, I was forgetting that being idle and leaving room for mistakes and, try and error and the like is taking away a big deal of individuality. I think you can guess where this is leading:

Yep: Exacerbated feelings of anxiety, guilt, depression and the feeling of not being enough, because I wasn’t able to keep the straight curve of success pointing upwards.

What’s the takeaway? Well, I still think that James Clear does/did a tremendously well job with the book. I only think I need my own adjustments to the concepts to keep the equilibrium of success in optimization and not losing my sanity and individuality. If I can keep the balance on this razor’s edge, I should be fine 🙂

Until next time, keep up the faith in yourself and take one step at a time.