Why People Fear The Higher Self

Nietzsche versus Laziness

Prometheus Bringing Fire To Mankind by Heinrich Fuger

Is personal growth toxic?

Today, there is so much opposition to the idea of striving to become more than you already are.

"Why do you need to be more?"

"You are perfect the way you are."

"All this striving for growth is drawing you away from the fact that you are already enough."

These are some of the most common replies every time an idea of becoming more than who and what you are is shared publicly.

And there is even the idea, which is where the opening question comes from, that striving for personal growth is toxic. Not only are you harming yourself, but you are also offending others by stating that people should work on improving themselves.

Now, hear me out. I am perfectly aware that constantly striving for improvement can become an unhealthy obsession that leads to anything but fulfillment. I know from personal experience that if you don’t learn to love yourself before you’ve improved, you will never be able to love yourself.

But I think most of his opposition to personal growth is coming from a completely different place.

Where exactly is it coming from?

"They fear the higher self, because when it speaks, it speaks demandingly." - Friedrich Nietzsche

To say that Friedrich Nietzsche was a complex and profound thinker is a massive understatement. His books should come with a warning that your head might hurt afterwards. Nietzsche will bring you to question everything you thought you knew about yourself, your culture, life and death, good and evil, and this existence as a whole.

But some of his most profound ideas are surprisingly simple.

The idea quoted above is one of those. What did Nietzsche mean when he said that people fear the higher self because it speaks demandingly? Most people are lazy. It's as simple as that.

This laziness is where all the idea of "you are perfect the way you are" comes from.

Everyone possesses the instinct to grow and develop as an individual. Everyone has heard their higher self speak at least a couple of times.

And when the higher self speaks, it speaks demandingly.

Your higher self asks you to stop talking about what you are going to do and start doing it.

Your higher self asks you to say no to mindless entertainment.

Your higher self asks you to take responsibility for the quality of your life.

Your higher self asks you to stop hitting the snooze button and wake up early to work on that side project you’ve been dreaming about.

Your higher self asks you to speak the truth, even if that means being isolated from a certain community.

Your higher self asks you to skip the dessert and go out for a walk.

Your higher self asks you to stop playing it safe and take some risks in life.

All the things that the higher self is asking from you have one thing in common: they are not easy. They require effort.

Your higher self asks of you to live every day actively, aiming for and moving towards your highest possibilities. And that’s exhausting.

If the concept of the higher self sounds too mystical to you, maybe you could accept the widely accepted psychological concept that all humans have a shared tendency toward actualizing their potentials, that is, self-actualization.

"This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming." - Abraham Maslow

If all of us have this tendency, if all of us occasionally hear our higher self, let us, in true Nietzschean fashion, deconstruct what the motivation could be behind a claim that you are perfect the way you are and that striving for personal growth is toxic.

Let's say I have been continuously ignoring the call of my higher self. Why? There is only one real reason: I don't want to put in the effort it asks of me. My higher self wants to lead me toward an exciting and meaningful, but challenging, life. I would rather settle for a boring but easy one. However, when I see someone answering the call of their higher self, it makes me feel uncomfortable. The way they live their life reminds me that I have betrayed a part of myself that wants me to grow and explore my potential. Seeing them move forward reminds me that I could be doing the same, but I am not because I'm lazy. So I have two choices:

-Start answering the call of my higher self. Embrace the challenge of growth.

-Or try to create a shift in values where I am virtuous because I refuse to grow. Hide my laziness under the pretext of wisdom, self-love, and acceptance.

Once again, the first option requires way more effort. So, if I want to keep taking the path of least resistance, I will naturally choose the second option.

This is, unfortunately, a process that many people go through. Because if they were concerned with real self-love, they would know that self-love cannot be separated from this tendency toward growth.

True self-love and acceptance will extinguish many things in you. They will extinguish envy, negative self-talk, and destructive perfectionism. But no amount of self-love and acceptance can extinguish your natural instinct toward becoming more than who and what you are right now.

Loving yourself is not antithetical to wanting to become more. Those two go hand-in-hand. If you love yourself as you are, part of that is loving the fact that you are not yet all that you could be. And, because you aren’t, the adventure of growth awaits you.

However, if you refuse the call to adventure…

"If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being. then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities. your own possibilities." - Abraham Maslow

Thank you for reading.

I cannot answer your higher self for you. But I can help with one thing the higher self always demands: consistency.

I wrote a book, The Art of Showing Up, where I share a clear and practical method for mastering the one skill without which you cannot accomplish any worthy goal in life.

Consistency changed and saved my life. It can do the same for you.

And, until 11. 28…

If you buy The Art of Showing Up,

-You'll get free access to my Consistency and Goal-Setting workshop on 11. 29. (If you can't attend live, you will receive a recording.)

-You'll also get my other book, "The Gold Pill," for free.

After the 28th, these bonuses will not be available anymore.

Buy The Art of Showing Up.

Thank you for the support.