Why the Pursuit of Personal Growth Might Be Keeping Us Trapped

Self-help tells us that with the right habits, mindset, and discipline, we can unlock our best selves. But what if this pursuit is not freeing us but keeping us endlessly dissatisfied? What if the very act of striving to be better is reinforcing the belief that we are never enough?

This episode challenges the foundations of self-improvement, examining its historical roots, its entanglement with capitalism, and its psychological impact. Drawing from existential philosophy, cognitive science, and Buddhist thought, we explore why self-help often creates the very anxiety it claims to solve—and whether true growth requires letting go of the need to improve at all.

Jean-Paul Sartre argues in Being and Nothingness that the self is not a fixed entity but a continuous process of becoming. Similarly, Buddhist philosophy challenges the idea that the self is something to be optimized at all. If we are always in flux, what exactly are we trying to perfect?

Michel Foucault reveals how modern self-help operates as a form of self-discipline, training individuals to regulate themselves in ways that align with market-driven ideologies. Max Weber helps explain how self-improvement has been moralized, linking self-discipline and productivity to self-worth. Is self-help truly about personal growth, or is it reinforcing a system that benefits from our endless optimization?

Daniel Kahneman shows that our brains are shaped by unconscious biases and heuristics that resist deliberate change. Self-help and neuroscience often present neuroplasticity as limitless, but cognitive science suggests that change is constrained by biology and past conditioning. Can we really “reprogram” ourselves as self-help suggests, or are these promises exaggerated?

From Alan Watts to process philosophy, alternative perspectives challenge the need for self-optimization. What if the goal is not to become something more but to fully inhabit the experience of being?