When you really try to look into the mirror, all you do is stand there and look at another person who does or doesn’t know what they’re doing.
There are people who portray self improvement as a desperately guarded secret. Get fit, put down that T.V remote and read a damn book, get up earlier stop doom scrolling on the Internet and make something of yourself. Everyone looks at self improvement as a matter of willpower or laziness rather than acknowledging that it’s going to be much more complicated than just that.
I had tried to wake up early as part of a morning routine and for three weeks I mostly felt that I got tired earlier in the day.
There seems to be an unspoken acceptance that eventually you’ll get somewhere in your self improvement journey and arrive at that destination to wake up one day fixed and everything will manifest itself correctly. I’ve been waiting for this to happen since 2019 and I’m still waiting, we're in 2026, that's getting close to a decade of waiting.
Last year at my sister's wedding, a man told me that after travelling solo throughout Southeast Asia, he had found himself. He looked the same when he returned from his trip, the only difference was he was a bit more sunburnt and kept telling the same story over and over. I don’t know if he really changed but it’s hard to tell from face value.
As far as the mirror goes, it reflects what’s there but it doesn’t really give you much context other than that. You walk away from the mirror presumably still being the same person behaving the same way and complaining about the same things you’ve been complaining about since high school.
So what exactly is change? Is it starting a new job or moving to another city or simply going to sleep without obsessing about the same things you were thinking about all day? Some days I’m not sure if the question itself is valid.
But one thing we can all agree on is that everyone has a desire of what they want and a better version of themselves they can be. Strive for that.
