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Why Growing Feels Like We’re Going Nowhere

Escaping the grind mindset and seeing the bigger picture takes time.

Eric S Burdon
6 min readAug 12, 2024

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It’s quarter after noon as I begin typing up this article. Since then, I’ve been up for the past six hours.

I went for an hour long walk, devised some topics to write articles for a client, had breakfast, and played some games while I was mulling over today’s topic. All in all, these tasks shouldn’t have taken me the length of time that they did.

Well aside from walking.

But the other things shouldn’t have been so bad.

Aside from playing those games in the morning, I’ve somewhat optimized my life. There’s some adjustments that I can make, but I know I’ll get there eventually (if I even want to).

Years of dwelling in self-help, understanding the talking points and ideas has led me to this sentiment that I have now. I don’t have to be fully optimized to chase after my idealized self. In fact, my idealized self is likely slightly ahead of me and not this omnipotent and perfect being.

But that can’t be said about others.

Since then we’ve had people like Tony Robbins and his hot coals enter the scene. We’ve had people cram ideas of ‘self-care’ and ‘levelling up’ into our faces. We’ve had…

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Eric S Burdon

I write (and sometimes do videos) about self-help for those who don't like self-help. Complete with the occasional memes and riffs on the industry that I love.