Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the Apex Human podcast. I'm your host, Tramell Jackson, and today I want to talk to you about the truth about self improvement. The good, the bad and the dangerous. Okay, so just to pop things off, man, I mean, we live in a world obsessed with self improvement.
[00:00:21] You know, wake up at 4am, read more books, make more money, build more muscle, lose more fat, start a business, meditate, journal, code, plunge, optimize everything.
[00:00:31] And it can be overwhelming just to be drowned in that 247 and the feeling that any of that is a necessity in and of itself. But what if I could also tell you that some people actually spend their entire lives improving themselves without ever becoming fulfilled? Right?
[00:00:49] Because while growth is important, I think a lot of people are just chasing a version of themselves that they've never stopped to actually question.
[00:00:56] So I want to start by asking you guys, why is self import? I mean, excuse me, why is self improvement popular today? Or how. Why has it become so popular in the more recent times?
[00:01:10] So I for one believe why so many people, you know, are focused on self improvement is because we live in a very.
[00:01:18] A very lost time period. You know, societally, we are in a very lost time here. A lot of people feel lost today, essentially. And a lot of that has to do with the lack of community and direction that we have. We have social media constantly drowning us and showing us people who have quote, unquote, better lives than us. And we just live in such uncertain times that so many of us are literally just desiring for some sense of control.
[00:01:45] So why not optimize everything and feel like you're having an influential take or you're changing something or making a difference about every single aspect of your life every single day.
[00:01:57] So I personally believe that self improvement often does begin from a good place. Right? Like most people really do start trying to better themselves because they just genuinely want a better life. Right? You know, some people want to get healthier, some people want to learn to become more disciplined. Some people just want to be able to be financially secure.
[00:02:20] Other people are curious about what it takes to be a better husband, wife, father, friend, sister, what have you, right?
[00:02:27] But overall, the desire to grow is human. The problem isn't self improvement itself. The problem is what it can become, actually. Okay, so what you have to pay attention to and be careful of is when self improvement goes a little bit further onto the other end or the south end and it becomes some rejection. Okay, so I want to ask you another question.
[00:02:51] Are you improving yourself because you respect yourself or are you just trying to improve yourself because you hate who you currently are?
[00:03:05] I paused for dramatic effect, of course, for that question. Because you have to really let it resonate, you know, and like just sit there and think about it for a second. Kind of like reflect on your motives in and of themselves.
[00:03:16] I personally can speak from my own experience. I had to kind of like traverse the journey of self improvement on my own through learning the self rejection part first. Like, I.
[00:03:30] It was only because of how badly that I hated myself and my circumstances and every decision that I had made that had led me to where I was in a specific time period in my life that I had decided that I'm going to improve myself and I'm going to improve every single aspect of my life. And then I became hyper fixated on optimization in every single facet of who and how I am. I wouldn't tether myself honestly to too much of any, any negative, not negative, but let's just say deconstructive habits, right? Or deconstructive tendencies. Okay, so you know in this time period as well where you deal with that question, right? That impending question, right? Or are you doing enough?
[00:04:14] Was that last goal enough? Like are any achievements ever going to create that fulfillment for you? Or are you simply just moving the goalpost from one achievement to the other, taking your losses, taking your wins, but never counting any of them as lessons overall, right? So you know, you have those people, you know, well, I just need to lose these £20 and I'll be good or excuse me, I just need to get promoted at the job and then I'll be, I'll be happy, you know, or when I make six figures or when I make seven figures, I'll be a much better person. I can be there for my, my family, I can be there for my mom, I can be there for my dad. I can take care of these things. The problems will solve themselves once I get to this next level.
[00:04:55] When realistically you're just moving the goalpost, right?
[00:04:58] But improvement should just come from self respect, not self hatred. Okay?
[00:05:06] So let's move it to a different side of things as well and talk about the self improvement industry in and of itself, right? So the self improvement industry is really just a business of insecurity, okay? Think about it. There are entire industries built around convincing you that you're just one habit away from becoming extraordinary. Hence why you have this wave of media personnel who are telling you, hey, you got to get up at 4am, you're part of a crowd of people that have to get up at 5am, 6am and you have to have 50% of your day done before noon. Or you're useless, or you're lacking, or you're slacking, or you're not motivated, you're not disciplined. You don't want it bad enough. Right? This is the influencer culture that influences us to believe that we have to hyper optimal. Excuse me, Hyper opt. Yeah, that's a tongue twister.
[00:05:56] Hyper optimize our lifestyle in and of itself and be obsessed with productivity 24. 7. Take the endless amount of courses that people are selling to you where they're telling you just basic things about how to fix the most basic aspects of your life as though there was ever an impending problem.
[00:06:15] Maybe, maybe the issue isn't that you just need to be fixed per se.
[00:06:20] Alright, so I'm gonna ask you another question. If you're finally content, what happens to the people that are making money from your dissatisfaction?
[00:06:31] Some advice is valuable, but some of its profits, excuse me, but some of it profits from making you feel permanently inadequate.
[00:06:43] I'm gonna say that one more time. Some advice is valuable, but a lot of it actually profits from making you feel permanently inadequate.
[00:06:54] So the question is, are we growing or are we running away? Okay.
[00:07:00] Many people use improvement as a form of escapism. Okay? Working non stop to avoid the loneliness or working non stop to avoid the feelings of inadequacy or that you lack work ethic or motivation or what have you. Okay? Training constantly to avoid emotional pain. I know I did that for quite some time. And honestly, every now and again I do it still. You know, it's a very human thing for us to do. It's. It's nothing that's exclusive or original to one single person. Okay? Or simply just pursuing success to feel worthy.
[00:07:35] I'd like to think that about 80% of this entire planet is doing that.
[00:07:41] Because the metrics that you gauge success off of are often vague in today's society.
[00:07:48] Like when you really look at the barometers that we take into consideration for what deems an individual successful, they are very vague, they're very dense, they're very vain. Just in and of themselves across, okay?
[00:08:06] And sometimes we're not chasing success, sometimes we're running from ourselves. Okay?
[00:08:14] So I know for myself, you know, I was kind of like on both sides of that spectrum for quite some time and a couple years ago, and it wasn't just a matter of me just chasing my success, but I was in fact running from that version of myself. I was running Away from who was.
[00:08:32] Excuse me, I was running away from who I was then.
[00:08:38] I was trying to leave him in the past, but not out of a form of self respect, but out of a form of self hatred.
[00:08:46] Everything and every decision that I had made, everything that took me or got me to where I was in life at that time period, was telling me, you did it the wrong way. You're not doing enough. You don't have enough.
[00:09:00] I can honestly say, especially as a man, that oftentimes we only feel as valuable as we feel useful.
[00:09:07] You know, and if I'm being frank, oftentimes that makes you just feel like a fucking tool. You know, how useful is a screwdriver when everyone else around you needs a fucking hammer? You know what I'm saying?
[00:09:19] Like, it's. It's honestly very overwhelming. And I spent a large portion of my time in the past sitting and reflecting on that and considering was I just can. Was I just trying to chase the success or was I running from myself? And I was doing them both, But I remember thinking that I just wanted success overall. I was not hyper fixating on it, I was not chasing, clawing at it, but I was reflecting on it and I was looking at it. And I envisioned myself to a degree, right?
[00:09:52] And the version of myself I realized that I was running away from, technically I was supposed to be running away from him, but I had to learn to love that version of him first before I believed that God was going to allow me to walk into the next phase or to get to the next evolution in my process. Okay, so I'm asking another question right now.
[00:10:13] If everything in your life stopped tomorrow, no gym, no work, no distractions, Would you enjoy being alone with yourself?
[00:10:29] Okay, just want you to think about that.
[00:10:32] So taking things to another level, right, let's get into the comparison trap. Okay? Social media has changed everything.
[00:10:42] People compare every single thing that they see and it's so, it's so accessible. You know, you just wake up and you immediately start flooding your brain with different forms of media in which you're looking at things. And maybe you're comparing yourself to the way in which you're looking at other individuals. How they laugh, how they look, where they've gone, where they continue to go, the way that they talk, the way that they walk, the way that their bodies look, how much money they make, their relationships to others, the careers that they walk in, you know, and we compare our behind the scenes life to someone else's highlight reel. You know, it's ridiculous. It's Completely ridiculous. You have to unplug more than once out of a week. I'm going to say that again. If you want to feel as holistically capable as you actually are as a human being that lives in the real world, you have to unplug more than once a week.
[00:11:37] Begin to learn to treat your relationship to your devices as tools. Treat the devices as tools.
[00:11:43] Your life is not a tool. Your life is all you have.
[00:11:47] So when you use that tool to consume media, right? Be mindful that this is a highlight.
[00:11:54] This is a highlight.
[00:11:56] You have had highlights in your life as well. You simply were more present.
[00:12:01] So you did not record them. Or maybe you did and they don't compare realistically.
[00:12:06] Either way, the problem is the comparison itself, right? Unplug and get away.
[00:12:13] Comparison can inspire growth, but oftentimes I'd argue that it robs you of your gratitude as well.
[00:12:21] So I'm going to challenge you. Instead of comparing yourself to someone else, compare yourself to the person you were a year ago.
[00:12:29] Go find the content that you have either posted or saved in these devices.
[00:12:34] Look at your, look at your verbiage. Look at your, your.
[00:12:39] Your thought processes from then, right? Any form in which you recorded what version of yourself you were a year ago today.
[00:12:47] Go back and reflect on that and consider who you were then compared to who you are now. If you must compare somebody, okay, so the things that actually matter, right?
[00:13:02] The older I get, the more I'm starting to realize that the most important forms of self improvement aren't visible. They really aren't. Because it's really just your life. It's your life and it's your world. And you put in.
[00:13:16] Excuse me, you get out what you put in.
[00:13:19] If you are not actively engaging, being more intentional, more cognizant, more present in your current version of yourself, the next evolution will will pinned until you have revolutionized your desire.
[00:13:35] You can't reach it if you don't want to enough. You cannot passively just fall upward.
[00:13:42] You can't climb a hill mistakenly. And that's all life really is. It's just mountaintops and valleys, okay? But you can't climb the mountain to get to the other valley. Just by chance.
[00:13:54] If you're in a valley, then you must know that you have a mountain in front of you. So climb. But if you're in the middle of that mountain right now and you're going for it, keep climbing.
[00:14:04] The altitude gets higher, which means the necessity for your oxygen. Excuse me, the necessity for you to be able to breathe oxygen at that level requires more than it did when you were at the bottom of that mountain.
[00:14:17] This is just basic, like, know science. I'm not even trying to get all wordplay guru on you or anything, but realistically, the higher up you go, the more in tune you have to be.
[00:14:29] And that never stops. That's a never ending process. But the goal overall is to fall in love with the journey, not compare yourself to how far someone else is in their journey.
[00:14:40] Okay? But oftentimes, you know, when we're trying to improve ourselves, we focus on the most visible things because that's what we want. We want people to compare themselves to us, and we want people to. To look at us and to praise us. We want the glory overall. And the glory is not ours. The glory is first of all, the glory is God's, but beyond him, the glory is in the journey.
[00:15:03] Okay?
[00:15:04] Visible improvements are things like money, muscles, status, followers, and notoriety. Okay? But what you need to be focused on are the invisible improvements. And this is just what I've learned over the course of the years as I've gotten older. You need to be able to perform in terms of patience.
[00:15:24] You need to be able to do. You need to be able to have integrity in today's modern world. You need humility, you need emotional control, and you need reliability.
[00:15:36] These are the components that make up an individual who is a cornerstone of his community.
[00:15:43] You're the person that people can depend on. You're the person that your loved ones can depend on. To be able to be able to control yourself emotionally in a way in which you. You will not inflict how you feel upon someone else. You need to be able to be able. Excuse me. You need to be able to have humility. You need to be able to be humble about yourself and know that you're no greater than the next person. Okay?
[00:16:08] You can stumble, you can fall, you get back up, you bleed just like everyone else does.
[00:16:13] You need to have integrity. You need to be able to do the right thing, even if no one else is looking around you. And you need to be patient.
[00:16:20] That's a very important one. You need to be patient.
[00:16:24] It's almost like a lot of us are forgetting that the tortoise is the one who won the race.
[00:16:31] Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? It was a tortoise. We need to get back to the basics, people. And remember, the tortoise won.
[00:16:39] He won. Okay, so I'm gonna ask one more question, right, just about this particular topic. If the people closest to you described your growth over the last year, what would they say?
[00:16:55] What would they say about you if they honestly answered that question outside of your presence? If they ask, if someone asked them that question in a way where you would never know their answer and they could just, they could just have that moment of amnesty to just be honest and say, how would they describe your growth over the last year?
[00:17:21] Moving along here, guys, we're going to further break down what it means to either build a life versus building a resume.
[00:17:31] And I think an essential part of that is understanding what's sustainable and what's appropriate. Okay?
[00:17:39] So many people have impressive resumes, but they don't enjoy their lives, okay? You got people who have great income. I mean, like high achievers, excuse me, great physiques, you know, they've got their dream job and yet they're miserable.
[00:17:58] They're miserable.
[00:18:01] And I wonder why that is.
[00:18:04] A lot of us, we pursue the goals and the chances that are afforded to us, right?
[00:18:13] Without ever considering exactly what you want.
[00:18:17] You can grow up in a specific culture. You can grow up in a household that says, hey, you should be this kind of person because your mom was that kind of person, your dad was that kind of person, your sister, your family, everybody else, you've all done this thing, you have to be able to do that thing too. It's in your genes. We love to depend on that, right? As humans. It's in your genes, man. You were made for this.
[00:18:35] And so, yeah, you can, you can get maybe, you know, the high income job. You can get the same job that you, all your other family members have had, but no one else in your community really relates to or has worked in that particular field. And you can have the great physique, you can have the most impressive looking body in the world, right? But why are you miserable?
[00:18:55] Don't you have everything that you want?
[00:18:58] Can't you get anything that you want?
[00:19:01] No, because your resume is impressive.
[00:19:05] But how sustainable is your life?
[00:19:08] What if that high income and that great job and that great physique was only a byproduct of the, the amount of strain that you actually live and exist in continually? What if the trade off for all of those things before the fact were just your happiness?
[00:19:26] If you have that great body, you have that great job, you have the impressive income, but you don't like how you look in the mirror, Something's wrong with your nose, right? Even if you can, even if you can go and get your nose fixed, right? You can go to the, the plastic surgeon and have them work on it, right? You don't like the way that it looks?
[00:19:46] Or maybe you don't feel like you're the most impressive person personality wise, right?
[00:19:54] I just want to ask you guys, are you building a life that you genuinely enjoy living and you don't have to feel that you need to vacation away from it, it's sustainable in and of itself. Or are you just building a life that looks impressive to other people because success means very little if you hate the person you've become while pursuing it.
[00:20:17] So let's look at what healthy self improvement looks like. Right?
[00:20:24] I'd like to think healthy self improvement looks a lot like growth without obsession. Okay? It looks like ambition without self hatred and it looks like discipline without burnout.
[00:20:35] Achievement without losing your identity in the process.
[00:20:39] Okay.
[00:20:41] In a certain time in my life, you know, I. Yes, I. I was introduced to growth and I was introduced to self self improvement through things like obsession and self hatred. I was, Those were the.
[00:20:55] Those were the fuel sources that I used initially to get to a certain point. But then it was almost like I had a.
[00:21:04] Like I turned a new leaf in the middle of the process and realized that, you know, I'm clawing at things. I'm getting as aggressive as I can about these things about growth and about ambition and optimizing my life. But I don't want to lose myself.
[00:21:20] And I want to learn what it genuinely means to feel happy in my body. I want to be satisfied not only with who I look, who I look at when I see what's looking back at me in the mirror, but I also want to be satisfied with what I feel like when I close my eyes at night.
[00:21:37] I don't want to live in the spotlight of someone else's point of view.
[00:21:40] I'm tired of being judged whether I am successful or not based on the barometers that are afforded to me through someone else's perspective.
[00:21:49] If I'm not the most fit person, who cares? If I'm not the most educated person, who cares? If my relationships suffer in the process, I care about that.
[00:22:01] If my purpose gets lost in the process, I care about that. You don't need to become someone else. You just need to become the best version of who you already are. And that is not a unilateral process. That is not a linear process.
[00:22:16] You jump up seven steps and maybe fall down two, you still progressed.
[00:22:21] But the journey is in the chase. The journey is. Or excuse me, the. The journey is in the growth.
[00:22:29] The growth is the journey.
[00:22:31] Vice versa, however. Right, but bring it all full circle. You know, I believe in self improvement and I believe in discipline. I believe in growth. But I don't believe your worth is tied to your productivity. I don't believe your value depends on your income. And I don't believe happiness exists at the end of some endless checklist.
[00:22:58] The goal isn't to spend your life chasing perfection. The goal is just to become stronger the next day, or maybe wiser the next week, healthier the next month, or maybe just more capable overall. We're not forgetting that you're already a human being that's worthy of respect and love, okay?
[00:23:21] You have to remind yourself of these things. I mentioned in the last episode that a big part of my journey was the fake it till you make it thing, right?
[00:23:29] And it really was. I had to pretend like, like I loved myself honestly to a certain degree when it was just me, when it was just me, I had to do the things that I thought people who love themselves do. And I realized in the process, man, I loved myself. But this actually does feel like loving me.
[00:23:50] I realized to love myself right, was a freeing feeling.
[00:23:55] It casted no judgment. It only created room for me.
[00:24:00] It created so much more space for me. I stopped suffocating myself with the expectations of society and the expectations of what everyone else thinks that it means to be a man and it just be a person. And I started telling myself, you don't deserve that.
[00:24:16] You don't deserve to be choked down 247 and bogged down 247 with the expectations of those around you. Because they can love you, but no one can love you as much as you can love you. Other than other than God, no one else can.
[00:24:35] Your mom loves you. Don't get me wrong.
[00:24:37] Your family loves you, sure. Your kids love you.
[00:24:42] Your dogs love you.
[00:24:44] But until you go through the process of learning what it means to unconditionally love you and you comb through that with a fine toothed comb, you will never completely understand what point of view you are seeing yourself in versus the other that you are operating out of.
[00:25:05] You have to be able to align them and configure yourself in a manner that makes you intentionally in love with you, makes you satisfied from the moment you open your eyes.
[00:25:19] It satisfies you to know that you get to have a working and functioning body. You get to have an opportunity to still grow.
[00:25:27] If you're going to be anxious, be anxious about the way that you can improve yourself next while also understanding that you're more than worth loving and respecting now.
[00:25:39] Excuse me.
[00:25:41] So overall, Keep striving, keep growing, but don't lose yourself in the process. Okay.
[00:25:47] Thank you for listening to the Apex Human podcast. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Until next time, continue pursuing excellence, not perfection, and keep becoming the apex version of yourself.
