Five Fundamental Flaws

The traditional books, videos, seminars, coaching, counseling, therapy, and other self-improvement methodologies available today are only able to get people so far. Yes, they are effective at helping people get to a certain level at the beginning of their learning journey, but after that, they are only able to help people make small, incremental improvements at best. At their worst they cause problems. People become frustrated and stuck, their bad behaviors get reinforced, they give up on trying to improve themselves, and they start causing problems for others.

 

The Five Fundamental Flaws of today’s self-improvement methodologies are:

1. Singular. They focus on only one aspect of ourselves. Business books focus on work. Personal development and self-help books focus on the conscious mind. Spiritual books focus on our soul, and so on. We can only improve one aspect of ourselves so far before our system becomes unbalanced and has difficulty making further improvements.

2. Conflicting. They often declare that one aspect of us is more important. What’s worse is that they sometimes pit one aspect of us against another, like the mind-over-body willpower shenanigans. This creates inner conflict and long-term damage for most people.

3. Superficial. They don’t address the root cause of the problem. They give us aspirin for a headache that stops the pain temporarily. They address the symptoms of the problem without fixing what is causing the headache in the first place. In other words, they give us tools to fix something that shouldn’t need fixing in the first place. Once the root cause of the problem is addressed and the problem is resolved, the tools become obsolete.

4. Temporary. They don’t address the most powerful part of us, our unconscious mind, which typically accounts for over ninety percent of our mental processing power. The conscious mind may have short-term success using willpower, but eventually it is completely overwhelmed by the unconscious mind, and we return to our old habits, often without realizing it.

5. Regressive. They have the unintended negative effect of strengthening our limiting behaviors. There is a repeating pattern: We look for a way to get better. Get excited by their claims. Hope they will help us make the large, lasting, and positive changes we’ve always wanted. We become motivated during the event or while reading the book. We may even implement one thing we’ve learned. But after a month or two, we return to our old ways. We may feel better in the short term, but that usually wears off quickly. This pattern that ends with us falling back into our old ways only makes our unhealthy behaviors stronger. Practice makes perfect, but certainly not what is wanted.