Have I ever told you that you could be wiser, faster, stronger, and an all-around better person? Well, if I did, you would probably think I was a jackass, and you would have every reason to. Implying that someone is somehow incomplete or unperfected is just a form of passive aggressiveness, a way to insinuate that someone is awful without actually saying it out loud. Yet many people make a living doing this on a daily basis. They go by many names (wellness coach, lifestyle councilor, motivational speaker, etc.), but they are all members of the thirteen billion dollar self-improvement industry, and they are coming for your wallet. They are just full to the brim of all kinds of swanky technology (brain hacks, wellness apps, etc.) to turn you into the you you never thought that you could be. But there is only one problem. Self-improvement does not work. It fails every time because it assumes that you are the problem, that you are the one who needs to change. But, seriously, how much can one person change? What is the limit? How many green smoothies can you drink? How much time can you devote to meditation? How much yoga can you squeeze into your schedule? How many pep talks can you listen to? How much longer can you go on trying to be a better person? Does it ever end? If self-improvement gurus had their way, it never would. As long as you seek out their advice, these life coaches will continue to find things wrong with you. They will always have new checklists of things that you need to do to feel better because that is how they make money. As soon as your wellness journey ends, so does their payday. So, much like a drug dealer, the wellness gurus will only ever give you a taste of the good life they enjoy. This keeps you coming back for more: more books, more lectures, more coaching, more fitness programs, more breathing exercises, more yoga poses, more quasi-intellectualism, more pep talks, more, and more, and more of your money down the wellness drain. It always makes me laugh when I see someone complain about how religion has failed them only to turn around and offer me some idiotic guide to being a better person. What is the difference between self-improvement and religion? There are lengthy texts devoted to how you should live your life. They are rituals, some of which are directly pulled from eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, that you must perform to achieve enlightenment. There are strict and often unreasonable diet restrictions one must follow. There are group meetings. There are even places that one must go to hear the self-improvement hustlers spread the good word. It is exactly the same thing, and it costs just as much money too. The faithful flock is fleeced just like always. What makes this all even more scandalous is that this way of thinking offers no solutions to your very real problems, but merely treats the symptoms (anxiety, depression, insomnia, starvation, etc.) of those problems. Few people today seem to realize that treating symptoms will get you absolutely nowhere if you fail to address the problem causing said symptoms. If you are not hungry, for example, you can smoke a little weed, and your hunger will come back. But let's say that cancer is causing your lack of hunger. Did you treat the cancer with your smoke session? No, you just made yourself hungry for a brief time. You put a dollar store bandage on a gaping wound. The same thing can be said of treating things like anxiety or insomnia. Great, your magnesium supplement made you less anxious. But why were you anxious in the first place? It could be a chronic illness like mentioned earlier or it could just be that society is broken. You could be feeling all of that anxiousness because you know damn well that the person you voted for is not going to help you. That insomnia could be there because you don't even know if you're going to be able to feed your family tomorrow. It's time to learn to face life's problems head on again