#8: Escaping The Self-Improvement Trap

You've read the books. Listened to the podcasts. Taken the courses. You know what you need to do to build your business, be present in your relationships, or take care of yourself. But you still can't make yourself do it.

So what's the problem?

The self-improvement industry has convinced you that awareness equals transformation. That if you just find the right framework or strategy, everything will click into place.

But here's the truth: you don't need more tactics. You need to change the belief that's creating the behavior.

In this episode, I share:

• Why I spent $5,000 on a course I knew wouldn't work (and sold zero of them)
• The difference between time management problems and prioritization problems
• How a law firm owner tripled her billable hours by changing one belief
• Why the cycle keeps repeating no matter how many strategies you try
• The real reason you can't stick to what you know you should do

If you're stuck in the self-improvement trap, and are  constantly consuming information but never seeing real change...this episode is for you.

Enjoy!

Newsletter: Build With Brennan: Helping people who feel like work is consuming their life take back control of their well-being.

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Business Website: Is your business or career consuming your life? | I help people stop surviving and start living through various coaching services. 

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Transcript

Naming The Self-Improvement Trap

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Today, I'm going to talk about the self-improvement industry and what I like to call the self-improvement trap. And what I mean by the self-improvement trap is not that self-improvement in general is bad. I just think that a lot of it today is very service level. I'm what you consider a self-improvement veteran. So I'm somebody who has spent thousands of dollars on courses, coaches, self-help books, listening to podcasts, reading different types of things. And while I definitely think that those things are valuable, I think that for a lot of people, it's not actually helping them address the root problem of why they're not where they want to be in their life. And I know for me, when I first started working out aggressively, when I started to join the Marine Corps, when I started my career, I was very much so in the habit of absorbing a ton of information, of attaining a lot of knowledge. And that was great. However, I got to this point where no matter how much information and knowledge I had, I had a really hard time applying what I learned. And it's almost like I was absorbing so much information that it kind of got lost in the sauce. It's almost like when you go to school and you spend a ton of time studying for a test. And then as soon as you're done taking the test, you just dump the information afterwards. That's how it started to feel for me for the self-improvement industry. And so today I want to talk about my perception of why that happens and what really helps us with improving our lives and improving ourselves. So if you're listening to this, maybe you're the person who's read a lot of the self-help books, you've gone to therapy, you've listened to the podcast, you consider yourself ambitious and a high achiever. However, you still feel stuck. You have all this knowledge, but you don't know how to apply it. So this episode is definitely for you. Um and I don't think that the industry is purposefully doing this. I don't think that people who are selling different funnels or courses or things like that are going into it thinking, yeah, I'm really gonna just only give people a part of the solution. I just think that it's easier to package up frameworks and surface level tactics as opposed to the messy, deep transformational work that actually causes sustainable change. I think it's a lot easier to sell somebody a course on how to be more productive and how to improve their time management, as opposed to selling somebody a course on, hey, this is why you can't stick to the schedule that you put out for yourself. Right? It's just it's just a little bit more confrontational, it's a little bit more complicated. And so I think in general, yeah, it's easier to package up strategy than it is to package up deep belief work. And the paradox to that is without addressing the beliefs that are causing us to not follow through with the things that we're learning, the beliefs that are keeping us from being aware of what we need to change and actually changing it, without doing that, then every strategy in the world isn't going to fix it. And I know for me that was true. I I kept looking for different strategies, thinking that if I found the perfect strategy or if I knew enough information, then I would be able to stick to actually yeah, stick to that strategy, stick to actual implementation. And and just for me, that wasn't the case. Um I think the industry doesn't sell belief work because belief work is hard to package again. Um beliefs are kind of messy. So you get another boundary framework instead of help with why you can't set boundaries, right? A lot of times, a lot of the self-improvement gurus out there, they're selling, they're selling surface level things that treat the symptom, but they don't actually provide real solutions. They don't actually get to the root of the problem. Um, I want to give you guys a personal story real quick of when I started to realize that I was stuck in the self-improvement trap. So for my business, I have a strategy that works pretty well. In order to get clients for my business, what I love to do is I love to build keynote talks. I love to go in front of people and speak. And then people will typically see themselves and identify with my story and the things I talk about. I invite people to book a free consultation with me, and then people typically will come up to me if they're ready for it and book. Seems pretty straightforward, pretty simple. Here's the problem: it also requires a shit ton of vulnerability. It requires the understanding that not everybody is gonna resonate with what I have to say, and it's gonna require me maybe looking like a fool sometimes. If I'm going up there and and doing a brand new talk just like I did yesterday at the University of Richmond, and it's kind of messy, it's choppy because it's the first time ever presenting it, then there's a strong chance that it's not gonna be super polished and it's gonna feel kind of rigid, or maybe it's not gonna flow well, or whatever. And so, even though the strategy is super simple, which is either put on my own event and invite people to go that I haven't met before, or put myself in front of somebody else's audience that I feel would resonate with what I have to say, and then speak and then invite people to work deeper with me, even though that's super simple in theory, it's it's really difficult to do if there are some beliefs that I have around if I'm worthy of doing that, or maybe there's beliefs I have that that think, hey, like maybe this offer isn't valuable, or maybe people won't care about what I'm gonna have to say, or maybe it's too simple. Maybe I have to be more complex and have these super advanced marketing funnels to capture people at the end of the talk, or I get lost in the sauce of strategy as opposed to just focusing on showing up as my whole self imperfectly. And the paradox of this is showing up imperfectly as my whole self is actually gonna create the magnetism that will allow the people that are actually meant to be helped by me to be seen, heard, and understood, because they're gonna see their imperfections in my imperfections. They're gonna actually think I'm a human being as opposed to just this robot who can memorize a script that can stand up on stage and just regurgitate information that isn't actually based off of real lived experience. And so for me, um, every time for a while my business, and this is actually something I'm still working through, is like every single time I would find a strategy that worked in my business, I would freak out. So every time I would do something that was really simple and that would work for me, it's almost like my nervous system didn't feel that that was safe. It's almost like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's like there's no way it could be the this easy. There's no way I could just build a talk, go up in front of a group of like 20 people, pour my heart out, and then get clients. Like, there's no way. Like that's too simple. I have to overcomplicate it. And so what would happen is because I didn't feel safe holding the revenue that I would make from these talks, because I didn't feel safe with it being so simple and easy for me, so peaceful, what I would do is I would convince myself that the strategy wasn't good enough. And so I would change it. So um, very specific example for me. Um, when I first started to really build momentum and getting one-to-one clients after speaking, I felt like it wasn't going fast enough. I convinced myself that I didn't really enjoy one-on-one coaching as much. I didn't enjoy speaking that much, and I needed to do what everybody else was doing on the internet, which was I needed to put together a course and sell it. I needed to learn how to sell on social media because that's what you hear everybody talking about. Uh, it's we're constantly being berated by people who are saying, hey, if you're not selling online, then you're missing out. So because of the fear of missing out, because of the lack of trust within the process I had already created that I know knew worked, because of those things, I gave in. I was like, all right, well, let me buy this$4,000 course on how to build a course and how to sell it online. Even though I knew deep down that that wasn't the right thing for my business. Because a lot of the people that I work with, they're people who overbook their calendar. They're people who don't give themselves permission to slow down. They're people who are using work and productivity and busyness as a way to avoid a lot of the feelings that they have underneath of it all. And so me trying to sell them a course, which requires them to sit down and really confront themselves, is kind of counterproductive. And I knew that, but I tried to do it anyway. Um realized I didn't lack information. Like I logically knew how to market myself and sell a course, even though I didn't really enjoy it that much. I don't like being behind a screen, which is ironic because I'm talking to you guys behind a screen. I just mean like short form content and social media. That's not a huge passion of mine. I know it's necessary to get my name out there and to provide value. However, doing that all the time as a career isn't super appealing to me. And I like actively being in front of crowds and clients and just having that face-to-face interaction. So, yeah, that the course was kind of already unaligned. Uh, the idea itself wasn't wrong, the timing just wasn't right. And um I wasn't buying a course, I was buying a way to avoid the real problem that I was having, which was a deep belief that what I had to offer wasn't valuable enough for people. It's like for some reason, I thought I had to have all these different offers, especially in the coaching space. They always talk about, yeah, you got to have a low-ticket offer, you have to have a medium ticket offer, and then you have to have a high-ticket offer. It's not enough just to sell a high-ticket 12-week transformation program with a specific niche, somebody who is a high achiever who feels like work is consuming their life, helping them take back control of their well-being. That's not enough. You have to create this offer and this funnel and this thing. And yeah, so instead of keeping my business simple, I was trying to overcomplicate it. And the course was just a more expensive way for me to stay stuck. Personally, that was my experience. Um, I don't think the the industry is malicious. Again, like I don't think that I think there's a lot of people who provide a ton of value with the courses that they sell. And I think it's super beneficial, and I think it works for a ton of people. The point is, I knew deep down it wouldn't work for me, and it was just a cover-up. So I ended up spending five grand building this course. It was called From Overcommitted to In Control. The problem I was helping people solve was stop overcommitting yourself and your schedule. And I want you guys to guess how many of this course I sold. After spending five grand building it, putting in probably 30 plus hours of filming videos, I sold zero. I sold zero of these courses because it wasn't aligned with the way that I wanted to build my business. I knew that I didn't want to try to market to people online necessarily to sell my stuff yet. I'm not in that phase. I like to go and talk to people. I like to invite them in to work deeper with me. And that's how I like to get business. I don't like to cold call, I don't like to cold email, I don't, I don't like to play the social media game in the sense of I love making videos to provide value, but not necessarily solely for the purpose of, hey, like I want to get your business. And maybe that's going to change in the future. That's just kind of where I am right now. So that's an example of me trying to change my strategy when in reality what I needed to do was to change my belief. I needed to change my belief from my offer isn't valuable enough to the right people will be more than happy to take me up on my free consultations. The right people will resonate not only with what I offer, but also the way that I get people and invite them into my offer. And uh, I wish I would have known that before I spent five grand. So um, yeah, my my second point here is if you're still stuck, it's not you, it's the approach. Um, I had a client who went through five time management courses or something, and they still felt burned out. They still felt like they weren't doing enough. Uh, this was a client who was the owner of a law firm. She came to me saying, Brennan, I just feel like I never have time for anything. I don't have enough time for my kids. I don't have enough time to serve my clients. And she told me that she went through a lot of courses to help her, help her optimize her schedule. And even though she went through all those courses, she still felt stuck. It helped her slightly, a little bit. However, it didn't address the root cause, which for her, um, the belief that was running underneath was my worth equals my output. My worth equals what I do for others. So she was resisting improving her schedule and optimizing it because she felt an inner conflict because she believed that her belief came from how much she served others. So no matter how much she optimized her schedule, if she believes deep down that her worth is tied to that, then it doesn't matter how much she optimizes her schedule, she's always gonna feel like crap. And then also, she didn't have a time management issue. She had a prioritization issue. Time management says, let me take what I'm already doing and make it more efficient. Prioritization says, let me make sure the stuff that I'm doing is actually aligned with me to begin with. So she thought she had a time management issue, but really she had a prioritization issue. She didn't prioritize her own well-being, and she didn't prioritize doing the stuff she loved to do in her business and her life. And she thought that the fix and solution to that was to be more efficient. When in reality, it was just reinforcing the belief that says, Well, I can feel better when I do more. And that just wasn't the case. So we we looked at her belief, we changed helped change the belief. And then what happened was she actually started to see results in her business. So she had, I think she tripled her billable hours within eight weeks in her business, and she felt more present with her kids, more peace at home, and she didn't constantly have mental tabs open in her head when she was with her family. She actually felt like she could be where her feet were instead of trying to always figure out how to optimize her schedule. So that's just an example of like when we try to treat root problems with surface level solutions, it is only a temporary fix. It's like taking, it's like when you're dehydrated if you're dehydrated and you have a headache, it's like trying to take an ibuprofen. The ibuprofen will make your headache go away, but that doesn't change the fact that you're dehydrated. You have to drink more water. That's the problem. The problem is not that the headache, the headache is the symptom of the deeper root problem, which is I'm dehydrated. Um, let's see, what else we got? Um, yeah, if you find yourself repeating the same cycle, if you find yourself dealing with the same problem over and over again, no matter how much you change the strategy, just know that the cycle is repeating itself because the belief within you that is creating that cycle is not changing. So you're trying to optimize your behavior on top of a belief that isn't changing, which is the same thing as trying to pump the gas while at the same time you're hitting the brakes. If you're trying to move forward with something in your life, the goal is you want to get rid of the resistance and then pump the gas, meaning you want to take action and then not have resistance towards taking that action. So a lot of us, especially if you're an ambitious high achiever, we try to willpower our way out of a belief that's not serving us. So we end up wasting a ton of gas, a ton of energy. And let's say that we're still able to get to where we want to go. The way that we get there is not sustainable. It's not, it's not effortless, it's not, it's not aligned, it's not enjoyable. So by the time we get there, we're so burned out and exhausted anyway that all the stuff that we just did to get there, we're not gonna be able to recreate. I see this all the time. It's the push, stop, and start cycle. So it's people push really hard to get to a certain goal, and they get there in a way that's very self-sacrificial. They work really late, they uh sacrifice time with family and friends just to get to a certain goal that they think is gonna make them happy. And then what happens is they get to that goal only to feel burned out and exhausted, and then they start slacking, they stop doing the things that help them get to that goal because the things that they were doing were out of alignment with their beliefs, and then they start falling behind, and then they go back into the cycle of overworking themselves. And this is very much so um a sign, if you resonate with that, it's very much so a sign that there's beliefs underneath that are running your behavior. So instead of continuing to try to white knuckle your way to get to the results that you want, I want you to evaluate what is the belief underneath of these behaviors that are causing inner resistance. So that's something, again, I don't feel the self-improvement industry talks about that much. It only talks about things from a surface-level behavior standpoint. It doesn't talk about the beliefs and the why underneath. Like we have this narrative that says we have to become better versions of ourself. And I want to challenge that narrative because I don't think the problem has ever been we have to become better versions of ourself. I think the problem has been there's things that are in the way of being who we naturally are. Self-improvement is less so about becoming somebody new and more so about becoming the person we've always been. Uh, and and I describe this a lot when it comes to burnout, too. A lot of people think burnout, for example, comes from doing too much or overworking ourselves. And the way I describe burnout to people is like this. So imagine that your true self is the flame of a candle. So that's who you actually are. And when there's no lid on the candle, you can burn brightly, you can burn freely. You're your natural essence. And what happens is based off of conditioning, beliefs, and behaviors that aren't really us, those things are the lid to the candle. And so the more that we give in to our conditioning, the more that we are operating in a way where we're someone we're not, that acts the same way as like putting a lid on top of the flame. And so, what happens when you put a lid on top of the flame is it burns out. And a lot of people try to address that problem by putting more on top of the lid. So they're like, well, if I just tighten up the lid a little bit more, then I'm gonna feel better. And the problem has never been the candle and the flame, the problem has been the lid that's on top of it. So the way that we address burnout, for example, is we don't put more on top of the lid, we actually take off the lid. And that's what's gonna allow the oxygen to get to the flame, and that's what's gonna allow it to burn brightly again. And so a lot of times, how you know you're in this self-improvement trap is if you feel like your soul is suffocated. If you feel like you have to willpower yourself through every single action you take in the day, if you feel like every single thing you do is hard, if you feel like you're just trudging through mud just trying to get by, just know it's because you have exhausted yourself by trying to willpower your way out of a belief issue, which you can't outwork limiting beliefs. I don't care what the Alex Hermosis tell you, I don't care what uh the Gary V's tell you. If you have beliefs that contradict the things that you want, until you change the beliefs, you'll never actually have what you want sustainably. Or you'll have what you want, but you'll feel like an imposter when you get it, so you'll figure out a way to get rid of it. I've seen that happen so many times, and it's happened to me. So yeah, the cycle repeats because the belief never changes. So self-improvement is not just about the outer work, it's not just about optimizing our behavior, and it's not just about changing our strategy. I would say strategy and behavior. Behavior is really important, but it's around what's the foundation that the behavior is being built off of. So behavior is only gonna truly stick if the belief matches up the behavior. And so if we just focus on strategy, I would argue and say that strategy is maybe 10% of it. 10% of our results that we get, 10% of the reason why our reality is the way that it is in our life, is because of strategy. 90% of it is because of identity. 90% of it is because of the inner stuff. And I really think that we need to flip our focus here because if we spent the amount of time and energy on our identity as much as we spend it on our strategy, then a lot of us would be way more fulfilled and way happier in our lives. So if you are somebody listening to this and you're someone who feels stuck, you're somebody who has a hard time sticking to a certain strategy, if you're somebody who feels like no matter what you're doing, it's not working, however, you know the thing that you're pursuing is is true to you, it's truly a desire that you have on your heart, then I invite you to not look at the behaviors, but I want you to look at what are the beliefs underneath that are causing me um essentially to not get to where I want to go. What are the beliefs underneath that are causing me to not get to where I want to go? And what are the beliefs underneath that are holding me back? So the whole summary of this is I spent four thousand dollars to learn that the strategy was never the problem. The beliefs underneath the strategy were the problem. You don't need more tactics, you need to change the belief that's creating the behavior. And then at that point, when you change the beliefs, you just got to make sure that the behaviors and the strategy line up with the thing that you want. There's this guy that I listen to, his name is David Baer. We do very similar work, and his formula for getting what you want is desire plus non-resistance equals desired result. Super simple. What we want with the least amount of resistance possible towards getting what we want is how we get the desired result. And what he means is by knowing what we want and then making sure the beliefs within us is congruent with the things that we want, that's the simplest way for us to get to the result that we want. And there's a caveat here. That doesn't mean this doesn't require hard work. It means that the hard work is typically not in the strategy or the behaviors. It's the confronting the parts of ourselves that don't actually align with what we want. So again, if we emphasize inner work over outer work, typically we're going to have a lot better of a time getting to what we want. And then it's going to be way better than we can even realize it's going to be, or it's going to be way better than we thought it was going to be. So if you keep investing in the next thing and the next strategy and the next course and nothing sticks, that's a signal for you that you have to look within instead of looking outside of you for solutions. So it's time to address the root, not the symptom. And if this landed with you, if if you find this stuff helpful, then I would love for you to follow along on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I would love for you to leave a review. Please subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube. And yeah, it's time for us to challenge this narrative that self improvement is about becoming a better version of ourselves. Again, I don't believe that's true. I believe that it's all about becoming the person that we've always been and then figuring out what's been in the way of helping us be that person. Thanks, guys. I'll talk to you next time.