A few years ago, I was asking around for inspiration on topics to cover in my blog. A friend at the time suggested writing a blog sharing from my perspective as a Life and Success Coach what I felt were some of the most useful and productive ways people could spend their time to improve themselves and their lives.
If you’ve followed my blogs for awhile you probably never saw this blog. And that is because I didn’t write it.
So, why did I never write this blog and why four years or so later do I remember the suggestion and why am I writing about it now?…
The simple answer as to “why now?” is because after more than seven years working in the self-development industry, hearing the millions of suggestions, advice and information people follow and hearing about how often that goes terribly wrong I felt it’s time.
The simple answer as to why I didn’t write the blog years ago but why I remember the suggestion today is that I feel much the same now as I felt back then and that is I don’t believe the world needs more of being told what to do.
I don’t believe the world needs more generic and sweeping advice about what we should be doing from people who we’ve never met and who know nothing about us.
Their Self-Development Is Not Your Self-Development (and Vice Versa)
But I get it. I get the desire to have the information on what to do. Truly I do. We all have a desire to improve ourselves and our lives and little tips and tricks on how to improve ourselves and our lives are enticing (and often useful).
Having had my own experience with spending fifteen years of my life trying to recover from an eating disorder and feeling like my life was out of my hands I love self-improvement as much as the next person, possibly more. I love learning and I love growth.
I wouldn’t be where I am today had I not invested a great deal of time, money and effort into self-development.
And having worked in the field of self-development for many years now I also love helping others overcome limitations, grow and succeed. I see the real-life incredible changes people who invest in their self-development make to their lives every single day. It is incredible.
I just sometimes wonder if there is too much emphasis on how we can improve, improve, improve.
I wonder if this fixation on improving and especially in ways that someone else has suggested and especially, especially in any what that is labelled as or is obviously a “hack” may be coming at a huge cost to just being ourselves. Even at the detriment to improving because we are so caught up in doing things that don’t actually matter that it takes away from what does matter.
I wonder if it sometimes comes at a cost to actually living an authentic life, being ok with our imperfectness and doing and being good enough.
My Story
I certainly know that pivotal to my recovery from anorexia nervosa was learning to let go of all the advice I had been given (with good intentions) and learning to trust and be myself.
I also know that part of what got me into the place of developing an eating disorder in the first place was an obsession with getting things right which meant changing what I was doing to follow outside advice.
I developed an eating disorder in part because I followed outside advice on how to eat and how not to eat. That may feel like something that would never happen to you (and that may be true because if you don’t have the genetic predisposition you’re not going to develop an eating disorder even if you follow outside advice that puts you into a calorie deficit) but I want you to consider if there are areas of your life where you are taking outside advice that is harming rather than helping you.
I see constantly this person endorsing this or pushing that product, this thing or that way of doing things and then it only takes a bit of time to pass – whether that be weeks, months or years before information to come out about how harmful that thing they were saying was wonderful actually is.
No one out there has all the answers (even if and often especially if they truly believe they have the answer).
An Example of What I’m Talking About
Being a dietitian the example that comes to my mind is the story of Tony Robbins (a well-known American inspirational speaker) who with the best of intentions ate a lot of fish in his daily diet to the point where he ended up with mercury poisoning (mercury accumulates in fish as you go up the food chain and then in humans overtime when we eat those fish).
Prior to the mercury poisoning eating substantial amounts of fish was something that Tony Robbins was promoting as healthy.
He believed it was healthy and good for you, so he promoted it and given the position of power and influence he is in it is very likely that others followed his advice.
Later when new information came to light (and he almost died of mercury poisoning), he changed his eating habits and I would guess he also stopped promoting that way of doing things but this story is a good example of not having all the information or just believing there is a right or wrong or good or bad way of doing things and then promoting that.
As a dietitian I could share thousands of similar examples even with what I see promoted on Instagram or TikTok that I know are harmful but someone else believes are good or in some cases of course they are just pushing their own agenda (such as to sell a product and make money and doesn’t really care about the harm or help). Some of these it may be blatantly obvious that they are ridiculous or simply time wasters in the grand scheme of things or they can be downright harmful and some it’s not obvious unless you have a high nutrition literacy and are in a really good strong place to be objective.
What to Do?…
Turns out that after all that I do have some advice and that is to focus on the foundations.
There are some fundamentals that as human beings we all do need.
These include such things as getting enough sleep, movement, some time outside/in nature and with friends/family/people who care about us and who we care about, meeting our nutritional requirements and some time to ourselves to process and reflect.
So, if I was ever to write a list of the top things I suggest people focus their time, money and energy on it would be the fundamentals.
The “how” you in your individual life with your individual circumstances are going to go about this well, that is a different story.
The “how” is unique to you. No one can tell you what to do there.
At the core of it my work is all about two things:
One is ensuring my clients have the best information on how to recover from an eating disorder and
Two (the mor important part) is facilitating them to apply this in their own way and/or find their own path!
I am a dietitian, I am a clinical hypnotherapist (a habits changing expert) and I am a life and success coach so you’d think my role would be playing the expert and dolling out “to do lists”. It’s not. It could be and that would sell far better and genuinely be easier but what it would also be in all honesty is far less useful to the people I work with and at large to the world.
My whole aim is helping people to empower themselves and regain control over their own lives. At the big picture level my desire is to be a part of steering the world as a whole to become a more safe, functional and successful place to live. I have no desire to add more nonsense and confusion to a life that is already hard (fun and exciting but undeniably hard).
Is This Working for Me?
Over the years since I have been working in the field of self-development the biggest thing, I see people get “wrong” is trying to do all the extra bells and whistle stuff without having the foundations down.
You get the foundations down you are 98% of the way there.
The extra stuff? Sure, go nuts with it but only when you have the foundations in place.
If you are eating turmeric powder, fish oil, drinking celery juice, getting sunlight on your bum or whatever else the reality is you are doing yourself no favours if you also aren’t getting enough sleep, meeting your nutritional needs and feeling like you belong somewhere.
If you don’t get the foundations down, you’re always going to feel like something is missing (because it is). You can drink copious amounts of lemon water, make sure all your sweet potato is cooked and cooled to increase resistant starch, sit in an infrared sauna and ice-bath daily but you’re not going to experience health in the same way you could by simply doing the fundamentals.
A question I often encourage my clients to ask themselves is “is this working for me?”
We often get so caught up in an idea or belief that something is the way we should do it that we ignore the fact that we have all the evidence in our life showing us that this thing isn’t actually working for us.
We get so caught up in trusting that someone else said it should work and is the best way of doing things that we persist and we persist and we persist.
In many cases the best thing we can do is stop persisting, stop telling ourselves the reason it’s not working for us lies with us and not the thing. It’s likely the thing is the issue, not you.
Take Home Points
Health is 98% about the fundamentals. This an entirely made-up number fyi. The point I am trying to get across is don’t waste your time with the time-wasting stuff that takes away from your life because living your life is more important to your health than what time you eat your meals or how many grams of protein you have in a day.
The fundamentals include – sleep, nutrition, movement, time in nature but they also include things like feeling a sense of connection, belonging and purpose in your life (if you are interested in where to focus your energy have a look at my earlier blog on the “Human Needs” – “The 11 Needs You Probably Didn’t Know You Have and What to Do Now You Know You Do” because yes, I’m a dietitian but I also know that food isn’t the be all and end all of health and if you are sacrificing other aspects of your life to eat “healthy” you’re not creating the health you are intending to…)
Get these down and you can advance with whatever bells and whistles you desire but until you get these at a “good enough” level (again we’re not going for perfect, we are going for realistic and achievable) the extra stuff you do isn’t going to matter. The extra stuff isn’t where health and a good life is created. As I mentioned not only can it be non-useful and time wasting it very regularly comes out later down the track that a lot of that “extra stuff” is actually harmful.
My Real Advice Under My Advice
Get to know yourself.
Develop your strong sense of self so you can run all the advice that comes at you from every angle daily through your internal filtering system and easily and quickly decide what would be and wouldn’t be of value to you on your journey of experiencing and enjoying your one precious life.
So, in a nutshell I am not saying don’t follow any outside advice. There is some awesome advice out there but be selective in what you follow. Will it really make your life better?
The way to be selective is to have a strong sense of self and okness in yourself.
If you don’t and you find yourself easily influenced by the outside and taking apple cider vinegar daily because you’re afraid what will happen if you don’t then where I would suggest you put as your priority working to increase your sense of self.
Having been in the position of having no sense of self, trying to fulfill other peoples standards and what I thought they wanted of me and copying what others did, trying to please others and feeling like the answers were outside of myself I can attest that if it feels hard to you or you don’t know where to start that’s because it is hard and because you don’t know where to start.
Consider getting help to do this because above all else you can do to improve your health and succeed in life I honestly see developing a strong sense of self so you can pick and choose how you spend your time as top priority. From there everything else becomes much easier.
PS
Ps if you have a topic you’d like me to cover or a question you’d like me to answer in a blog post please feel welcome to put it in the comments below.
I would love to make sure I am covering topics you are genuinely interested in.
It can be about my personal experience living with and recovering from an eating disorder, my work – either a nutrition related topic, clinical hypnotherapy or coaching or about my life now on the other side of an eating disorder (or anything else you come up with). Thank you!
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
