Personal Development: Vigilance and Critical Thinking

Ah, personal development, that warm and welcoming space where everyone transforms into a devoted mentor, ready to help you achieve wisdom, and why not, the best version of yourself. One could almost believe that the entire world has suddenly agreed on one thing: it's high time to help you get there! But behind this façade of benevolence, could there be a hint of ironic contradiction, or perhaps a touch of subtly disguised manipulation?

The paradise of well-being

Imagine a world where every person you meet genuinely cares about your happiness. If this were the case outside the digital realm, wouldn't it be particularly unsettling? In this universe, life coaches, influencers, and personal development experts proliferate like mushrooms after the rain, each armed with their own mantras and precepts. "Learn resilience," "Eat healthy," "Meditate every morning," and, of course, the ever-present, multi-contextual use of the word "positive."

Even "positive sexuality" has become a concept—how necessary. All these tips and injunctions are offered to you with a disconcerting benevolence, as if your personal fulfillment were the only thing that mattered.

But at its core, what is this flood of well-intentioned advice? Is it truly a selfless quest for your well-being? Or is it a new form of social norm, subtly imposed by those who, under the guise of benevolence, seek to shape your thoughts, habits, and ultimately, your life, in exchange for status and, above all, remuneration that allows them to escape the rat race and work from wherever they want?

After all, there’s no better way to quit your job than by starting your own business in personal services, building an Instagram community around yourself and your universe, with daily advice, courses, and VIP content. Bonus: even without formal training, it’s possible, and you don’t have to worry about Qualiopi certification to sell it. Ultimately, personal development is above all the entrepreneur's paradise.

Benevolent knowledge: a new form of power?

Beneath the smooth surface of personal development lies a subtle game of power. Because yes, by telling you what’s good for you, by explaining how to be happy, to refocus, to find yourself, aren’t the well-being experts, in the most courteous way, exerting a certain form of control? After all, when someone tells you how to think, how to eat, how to act in this or that situation, and how to be, aren’t they subtly imposing a certain worldview?

A worldview filled with biases, beliefs, and preconceived ideas, formalized into commands.

Because you’ll notice that everything is always categorical; you are never presented with the pros and cons, the basis for these tips, the raw data, along with an invitation to question it all and form your own opinion. Encouraging you to think critically isn’t exactly a winning concept; the principle is that followers gather with those who think alike, so this thinking must be guided, it must have its own ideological identity.

"Be yourself," they say, but not too much. You must be yourself... according to their rules. And that’s where the subtlety lies. Personal development doesn’t just give you advice on how to live better according to certain principles; it offers you a neatly packaged version of what life, your life, should be.

The injunction to happiness

This modern chimera that everyone wants to achieve is happiness. For it to become such a widespread obsession, things must really be bad. And if you ever forget that it’s the goal, you’ll be reminded, presented with a neatly circumscribed form of it, and then you’ll have no choice but to compare it with your own considerations or your life, to start evaluating it, possibly leading to some changes. It’s quite a simple mechanism, really.

"You must be happy!" And you must know what it is, be able to identify it, or you might miss it. Happiness has become the ultimate luxury, even though luxury doesn’t lead to it. Personal development then becomes a series of commands: be this, do that, and of course, be spontaneous, be radiant, be natural, but above all, don’t be who you naturally are if it doesn’t fit the standards of happiness or the best version of yourself that is being imposed on you, while letting a nebulous ambiguity linger, because all of this also fits into a context of inclusion, with unique individualities and differences. But what remains for everyone is that you must find your inner path, your true self.

I also recall a time when the trend was: "Don’t change anything, just stay as you are."

Didn’t understand the last paragraph? Neither did I, and yet I wrote it. Perhaps that’s normal—sometimes it’s so contradictory that there’s no logical understanding to be found. The ambiguity and incomprehension of fluctuating concepts are the art of divination; they allow everyone to understand what they want and, above all, to remain in need of these little words that will regularly provide a fragment of reflection on oneself, on life, on relationships, between two episodes of the latest series.

A unique individuality is great, finding oneself, accepting oneself, not changing a thing, becoming better—but isn’t it adaptation that primarily drives evolution? Do all these commands align with adaptation?

Can one truly be oneself when the steps to get there are dictated to you? This obsession with happiness, this imperative of well-being—could it not, ultimately, be a new form of constraint, disguised as benevolent advice?

Yet deep down…

Perhaps true well-being doesn’t lie in this frantic race to become better, happier, more fulfilled? Maybe the key is to accept oneself as one is, with flaws, imperfections, and above all, the inalienable right not to be constantly in pursuit of something better?

Because this consumer society pushes us to always want more, always better, immediately.

All this content can and should make you think, but always use your critical thinking, and take it as avenues to explore further.

And what if, instead of following all this advice, you simply decided not to follow it? What if you chose to live at your own pace, on your own terms, without worrying about what others think is good for you? Perhaps true wisdom lies in this simple rebellion, in this polite but firm refusal to be told how to live, even by those who, of course, want the best for you.

Let’s not forget that the freedom to think, to live as one wishes, and even not to be perfect, is a social and anthropological given.