Why Self-Development is Keeping you Stuck

If you are anything like me, you probably have tried a lot of things to find yourself and your purpose in the world – as so many gurus, teachers and influencers have told you to. Meditation, retreats, journaling, visualization, manifestation, vision boards. In your professional career, there might have been strength-based skill assessments, further trainings, travels and hobbies. Just so many things to reach that next level, to eventually find yourself and become whole (again). To show up with the confidence to be who you are supposed to be. 

Yes, some of them might be able to help you, to support you, but they are not the main part. They are the addition. 

We don’t simply find ourselves or our place in the world. That is a fairy tale. Nothing will simply click into place without your input. Ever. Yes, meditation can get you connected to source, retreats might help you reconnect with your body and calm down and thus open up possibilities, vision boards might inspire you into action, skill assessments might be able to reaffirm something about yourself that you already suspected. 

But are they really going to change your world? Set you on a new path? Enable you to create a path that has not been walked yet? 

I doubt it actually. And somehow I know it – because that was me.

Searching for the next best tool to illuminate my next step, to help me find myself. 

The thing about the elusive “finding yourself” is that it actually is a two-parter. One part is revealing your own individual blueprint that you cannot shake and that determines your every move and breath. And the other part is pure and magical creation. It is about bringing to form within our human lifetime something that only you were meant to do. 

The difference between life authorship and passive living

Passive living is accepting the lines that have been drawn by others and working within them. It does not really demand a lot from you – despite you potentially burning on all cylinders and getting yourself worked into the ground. Let me tell you why. It teaches you to fit in, to become a workable cog in the machine. It is you being told by others what might be the next right move, what might lead to fulfilment, what you need to be happy. Because that is what is generally happening, right?

And yes – most of us think we are doing everything right, working on becoming an enlightened self. But, if you look at it from a bird’s-eye view, from a macro-perspective. it’s still the same. Wolf in sheep clothing. We are buying into the things that pop up in our feed, that get hyped, that creators peddel on various platforms using kick-back-schemes, royalty and affiliation plans. We are using them as crutches – to not have to listen to ourselves, to follow the lead. To become likeable in the broad sense of what is deemed socially acceptable these days. 

The absolute pinnacle of this, which should be quite an obvious example, are high street fashion stores. You shop there, thinking that this is truly “YOU”, this new outfit, this quirky new shirt, this out-of-this-world bag, hat or accessory. But, if you look at a crowd – they all look the same. They are homogenised with only slight variations. And this happens in life – a lot. They go to the same Yoga classes, the same vegan cafes, the same gluten-free cocktail bars. 

Life authorship is the opposite. It is about conscious decisions, rooted in who you have been, who you are and who you want to be. It is drawing outside the given frame of expectations. It is personal. It is taking radical responsibility and accountability for your own life and to create a masterpiece out of it that you truly believe in, that you truly flourish in and that is tailored to you. Nobody else needs to approve. 

1 – It is personal.

Life authorship work as I practice it involves four main pillars – astrology, human design, somatic work and narrative identity work. Nobody will have the exact same basis, the same experiences, the same stories and desires, the same blueprint, the same view on the world. The wonderful thing about any of those tools is that you don’t have to believe in any of it. This is not a religion, a faith or a cult that you need to follow. This is truly simply giving you insights into how you are built, why you are the way you are and what might be the correct way to move forward. Just imagine you as an entity in human form here on earth get a manual. There is one for the general species of mankind. And most of it applies, most of it does not harm you. But it doesn’t really get out your specific features. Because you are not any car, but a custom, high-end Bugatti old-timer. Not stream-lined, not line-manufactured, but one-of-a-kind, made with love and details. So, yes, most of the information from the generic manual for a car in general might apply. But will it really unlock the possibilities of a powerful Bugatti, which the engineers have equipped with little surprises and details for the owner to discover? Yes, you can drive it, but the full experience – well, probably the manual will not include those, right? This is the difference – for me at least – between mainstream self-development that I see within the younger demographics as simple lifestyle additions and true life authorship, where you want to understand and need to understand how everything works. Because you want the full power. This goes from understanding your mind and your emotions to your feelings and thoughts around money, your triggers, your fears, your response to life, your success strategy right up to where you are supposed to live to have your best life. 

2 – Identity is malleable

Life authorship accounts for that. We are often primed to think that we are one thing, one purpose, one job or career, one thing. Because that would be so easy for society to put us into a box. That is also why so many people are struggling – because they cannot fit into a box, they are many things. And that is simply human reality. Most of the time, we have not just one strength, but severals strengths, interests and inclinations. These are activated at different times in our lives, because as we mature we unlock new levels of understanding – just like unlocking a new level in a video game. And our identity changes with it. We might become fiercer or softer, wiser and more experienced. And these changes need to be accounted for, not doubted, not treated as a problem because the old life does not fit anymore. But as the next level that it is. And each new chapter has different priorities, different skills and tools that we need to learn and use. Just like in a video game – you might get new weapons or skills to help you with this new level of challenges. In life, we are usually not as clear about having entered a new level, needing new tools and mechanisms to guide us through. We usually think we are crazy, become depressed, meditate and might go to therapy. And, yes, I know this is very generalising – but I want to give you a picture from my experience and the experience of some of my clients. 

3 – Life-authorship is about creating your life.

It is about integrating your story, about making yourself visible and feel-able to yourself in all stages, again and again. Most of these tools and self-development angles are one-sided. Because the person who sells them to you as the one thing that helped him or her had a different starting point, was at a different level, had a different challenge altogether – and yes, it might have been the missing piece in the puzzle for them, but it’s just one tool that might not move the dial at all for you because your starting point and your whole story is something completely different. When you get older, have born children and worked in the standard economy, you know that it’s all streamlined, everybody is kind of conforming to one way of living – earning money, distracting oneself, trying to control emotions and the inner feeling that this cannot be all. And that is the point. We are not meant for this. To me, the mainstreaming of many truly powerful tools in and of itself is truly the reason why they are not helping really. Because they are taken out of context, out of the very reason why they were integrated into societies and life in earlier times. Yoga for example is powerful, but the westernised version not so much. It has become a fitness class most of the time, disconnected from the mindset and lifestyle and the intention behind it. I say most of the time, because of course there are teachers and schools that also teach and integrate it in the traditional sense – but if you look at wider society and how yoga is treated, it is mostly an afternoon or evening activity that you go to, one day it’s weights, the other it’s yoga. What I want for you is to consciously choose tools that will help you create a life that truly reflects who you are and what you need in this lifetime. 

Generalisation and the Past

If I look at various manifestation techniques, vision boards and tools – I know that they will keep you stuck in where you already are. More times than not, you keep swimming in a pool of generalization and your own experiences all mixed into one murky soup of existence. What do I mean by that? On the one hand it’s generalisation because, of course, these are tools that in their westernized state are supposed to benefit and work for everybody, which they do on some level. But, because they do, they are non-specific, they are based on what is already there, what others have benefitted from – who might be completely different from you. On the other hand, it’s about rehashing a lot of the past, digging and pathologising most of it. 

As someone who has spent years in various forms of therapy, I can assure you that therapy is not always the end-all-be-all for all healing and self-development. I absolutely recommend consulting a mental health professional and being treated for illnesses. They are life-saving in many instances. But I nevertheless recommend you taking responsibility, researching and forming your own opinion – becoming the best advocate for your own health. Especially we as women have been dismissed and misdiagnosed for decades – all the while being told to trust the authorities. Well, I recommend you listen, you try – but, ultimately, trust in yourself more than someone who simply received a very narrow education, which is becoming more limited by the day. 

Is all of it bad? No, definitely not. I have also spent a lot of money on courses and tools, which I must admit, have gotten me on the path, but they lacked the individuality and nuance that is needed to truly get you somewhere. And that is the personal and creative independence needed to truly create an aligned life. 

You are not just another client, another buyer or persona – you are very specific, very unique and you need to write your own story, you need to take responsibility in creating this whole masterpiece. And that takes a lifetime. There is a reason for life going in seasons, happening in chapters and providing wisdom in the end. 

Any self-development tool that claims to get you on the path of success instantly is a scam. 

The question then is: Are you still merely developing or starting to self-author this unique magical story that is your life?