Creativity is Key: A Call to Re-evaluate the Value of Self-Improvement
We should all engage in creative pursuits and take an honest look at how important some of our current goals really are.
As a self-confessed (with a tinge of embarrassment) self-improvement and self-help fanatic, I usually have a few areas in my life where I am working towards self-imposed goals. But those goals have changed in me recently.
There was a time in my life that I was training ten times per week in the gym or track. I played American Football at Uni and always felt I was playing catch up to the other players in terms of S&C and I just thought that it was important to be in good shape.
However, I enacted a major double standard at the time as I struggled to motivate myself to get to all of my lectures or to get started on essays until it was the last minute.
Like many adults reminiscing on their experience of education — I know that I could have made more of the course that I was on. Not even just in terms of grades (which I still don’t care about too much), but in terms of the enjoyment of intellectual pursuit.
Most of my goals were quite superficial. And to be fair that is understandable, as my personal development journey was in it’s infancy and I couldn’t see any higher order goals or responsibilities in my environment and mindset at the time.
When wise gurus and role models would say things like, ‘training your body is all well and good, but training your mind is the most important thing,’ I would think that sounds great, but it’s BS right — surely the most important thing is just the external stuff (physique, money, status etc.)
To be honest, I didn’t really understand why anyone would prioritise mental aspects of training at all. I saw it as a waste of time.
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Being in ‘the zone’ or being in a ‘flow state’ is an idea that was popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and one that most people are familiar with. I’m interested in it partly because it is just such an enjoyable feeling to be engrossed in a task and making some kind of progress towards an outcome. Most adults I know rarely if ever indulge in creative outlets and those that do are certainly happier for it.
Now it’s all that I care about (in a productive sense). I had an honest reflection into what makes me happy and found that actually lots of it was doing things like writing or other creative pastimes that involve a cognitive process.
I honestly cringe to think about those hours that I have poured (historically) into the gym. And I think that lots of people do that because we’re so bombarded with media messaging telling us that it’s so important to get in the gym. And I also think it’s the easiest and lowest common denominator for ‘self-help’ messaging — fitness, because you can sell it to anyone, no matter their walk of life (mostly).
And if you want to know the honest, unfiltered reason why I cringe… it’s because I never made excellent progress and I’m unconvinced that it was the most efficient route to happiness. Because, not only are there more effective ways to become happy or more important battles to win, but sometimes self-acceptance is actually the more worthy goal in life over self-development.
And that is something that I see more clearly then ever.
