For a while now, I’ve been wanting to dedicate more time to writing about the things that endlessly take up space in my head: making sense of my experiences, pursuits, curiosities, and what I’m learning as I cultivate a meaningful life. I’ve always been drawn to personal growth and experimenting with new ideas, observing how they land (or don’t) in my own life.

A few years ago, I started to notice something that didn’t sit quite right. So much of the personal growth content online seemed focused on optimizing, fixing, and forcing ourselves into improvement. Quick tips and bite-sized advice pouring from every corner of the internet with a goal of stealing our attention and pulling us further away from our values rather than adding to our lives.

I was sucked into the loop of traditional self-improvement approaches. But no matter how much I poured myself into it, it never felt like me. It felt rigid, strict, and oddly performative. I felt like I was on a never-ending loop of more, faster, better. On the surface, it looked like a self-honoring pursuit of “becoming the best version of myself,” but underneath, it was fueled by constant self-analysis, critique, and the pressure to get somewhere. The more I worked on myself, the more satisfaction, enjoyment, and purpose seemed out of reach. One day, in the midst of the confusion, something became profoundly clear - “This is making my life worse.”

Instead of feeling liberated, I felt trapped.

I realized that all of that “working on myself” wasn’t really working, and instead was making me feel burned out and chronically dissatisfied.

I started questioning things I’d been taught by self-proclaimed personal development gurus. Almost overnight, I became disillusioned with the online self-help world. I turned away from people I once looked up to and instead turned inward.