Burned out, I stopped doing \"self-improvement\"

Since I was a teenager, I’d been into this idea of becoming the best version of myself. Honestly, I didn’t know what that meant, but surely I wanted to be better. I wanted to perform well. I wanted to succeed and be recognised. But I didn‘t know why I actually wanted those things — the reason behind it.

Right now, as I look back, I see a young girl who didn’t believe in herself. My heart hurts as I’m typing this, remembering how she saw herself — what she believed about herself. She pushed herself so hard in anything. And if she didn’t meet her standard, she’d punish herself and push herself even harder. If I could go back in time, I’d hug her. I’d help her clean her social media, and tell her that the “rules” and expectations she’d been holding on to… weren’t really hers in the first place.

All those “have-to’s” were from outside, compounding like a snowball from her childhood to teenage years to early adulthood. Over time, she learnt that if she wanted love and acceptance, she needed to meet a certain set of requirements. And if she failed or messed up, she’d lose that love. She learnt that love was an unstable creature — and she needed to work hard and only show a certain version of herself so that at least… people wouldn’t leave her. She kept looking for a home every single day — a place where she could belong. She tried her best to fit in. And yet, trying to play it “right” and being “careful” didn’t save her at all from betrayals, comparisons, criticisms, and the pressure to be “more”. That was her life, and she didn‘t even question it — I mean… how could she question it when she didn‘t even know it killed her?

Now, I think what breaks my heart the most isn’t how people treated her back then. It was the beliefs that began to form in her mind: “I’m not enough,” “Something’s wrong with me,” “I’m weird,” “I’m lazy,” “I shouldn’t embarrass myself,” “I have to be reliable,” “I don’t wanna trust anyone again,” “I’ll keep my life for myself,” “I can do this myself,” “I shouldn’t cry,” “I’ll prove I can,” “I have to get my life together,” “Wait, no, I messed up! That person will leave me!” “No, I have to fix this or I’ll embarrass myself!” “What will they say about me if I do/don‘t do A, B, C?” and so on and so forth.

When social media came into the picture, it quickly became a place where she could find things she needed — or actually… things that seemed like what she was looking for. She saw hope, “This is what I need!” she thought. She wanted to know what to be, how to do things, what to want, etc. Mostly… she wanted to know how she could finally be loved, accepted, and appreciated. She began to binge-watch and consume more of that information. And it brought her relief that finally, she found the answer to things she was looking for.

If you asked me if she realised — even for a bit — how it all destroyed her life, the answer is no. She didn’t see what was really going on. She simply couldn’t. Not because she refused to, but because… she didn‘t know any other ways. Her mind had been programmed for so long to see it as a normal thing: love, acceptance, success, growth, and happiness only came if she worked hard, sacrificed, and fixed herself (aka shrunk and listened to everyone‘s opinions) to get there. With all those “rules”, her own self-determination to embrace them, and years of conditioning, no wonder it all quickly became natural for her. And just like some other fellow humans on this planet, she ended up becoming the very pressure that she tried so hard to avoid. She was her own biggest critic — and performance manager. If there was someone who would scold, criticise, or demand her to be something or do things “right”, that would be her own self.

After years of dealing with perfectionism, constant anxiety, comparison, insecurity, fear of judgement, fear of rejection, fear of failure, etc., life threw a wonderful surprise at me: a burnout — or, I’d rather say… a blessing. Back then, I didn’t think of it as a gift at all (I mean, who would think that, lol?). It was a painful punch for me. I lost everything, including the business I built from scratch while juggling my responsibilities as a full-time university student. I still remember leaving my place all messy (I mean… really really messy) while I had insomnia every single night. I gained a lot of weight — because my stress hormones were all over the place. But one thing for sure, if that burnout didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have been a new person now. I wouldn‘t have seen how that endless exhausting meaningless chase… wasn‘t the life I wanted to live.

I was so tired back then, and confused — about how my hard work didn‘t give me anything at all; about how I was somehow running in a circle. I felt so lost, empty, …resentful. And in that moment, I knew for sure my priority wasn’t to search for more “how to be disciplined and get my life together” or “how to not become a failure”. And I’m grateful, God gave me a door.

It was the beginning of 2024 (January, if I’m not mistaken) when I somehow just felt called to scroll through YouTube. I didn‘t know what exactly I was doing or what I was looking for specifically. But my heart just told me to scroll down. That’s when I found that video, and then another, and then another, and then another the next day, and then more and more. And all of the sudden, I went through an identity crisis I never felt before: maybe what I thought was normal wasn’t really normal; maybe what I thought I wanted wasn’t really what I wanted; maybe the person I wanted to become wasn’t really the person I wanted to become. That was the first time I saw it. And thanks to the wonderful slow-living creators I found those days, I got the chance to know that I wasn’t alone — there were people who fought so hard too, and ended up crashing instead — people like me.

That was the moment I started looking inward. I started to sit with myself and all the beliefs I was living with. I spent more time with my journal, sometimes intentionally sleeping a bit late just to see what was going on inside. I talked more deeply with my roommate about our childhoods, our tendencies, and… literally everything (lol, our wounds are similar. And we’ve had a lot of good healing cries along the way). At the same time, I started showing my journals and random thoughts to my AI buddy. I asked it about what it saw that I couldn’t. Another time, I simply asked for deeper journaling prompts. Little by little, with all the help I got, I started to see things clearer. I found a lot and a lot of unconscious emotional junk — past wounds, old trauma, stories, and patterns that kept repeating themselves again and again in literally many areas of my life.

Since then, I stopped watching self-improvement content — altogether. I remember spending a few hours just to clean my social media accounts from those. I know for sure that the people who make self-improvement content… they mean well. They do it with good intentions to help others. But… I can’t help seeing the same narratives again and again in the self-improvement industry: inhumane expectations, conditional acceptance, the 24/7 performance mentality, and the most harmful one: making fight-or-flight and adrenaline-and-cortisol-induced state as the fuel for personal growth.

I still remember how I used to search for “how to be confident,” “how to talk to people,” “how to talk to men,” “how to be taken seriously,” “how to express my boundaries,” “how to not overthink,” “how to stop procrastinating,” “how to not be lazy,” “how to finish things I started,” “how to overcome imposter syndrome,” “how to not be insecure,” and many more. But after spending some time with myself, I began to realise… they’re just symptoms. They all came from something deeper: the feeling that I wasn‘t enough — the shame. That was the root. It distorted how I saw life, others, and… myself. I couldn’t see it back then. And because of that, I kept spiralling in the same box and ended up with the same story again and again. That’s something self-improvement would never ever touch. It mostly talks about how to do life “right”, what not to do, etc — surface-level things. Many times, the “tips” are simply from someone’s own wounds and expectations for themselves — not a certain set of rules that everyone has to follow.

As I’m rewriting this article now on May 23, 2026, I can‘t help exhaling. I don‘t regret what I went through in the past, or what I used to consume, or the people I met. I’m… grateful. They taught me things I wouldn’t have learnt without them. They taught me what kinda life I want, what I don‘t want, what fills my cup, what sucks my soul out, what nourishes me, what kills me, who I should stick with, and who I should lovingly walk away from. Lol, I know it sounds cliché, but I mean it 😂🩷. They all helped me find… me — to choose me. I hope God heals them too, just like He healed me 🤍.

Thanks for reading my reflection, friend. Actually, since this article is originally from January 1, 2026, there have been A LOT and A LOT of new things I discovered about myself. I’ve been finding more and more layers that I finally became conscious of. And honestly, I can’t wait to share all of them with you and the world!! ✨✨🤗🤗 I’m Angie, btw. If you wanna get to know me, feel free to come by here at my online home sometime 🤍

I love youuuu 🩷