I came to realize that there's a lot of programs that exist for this audience (agencies and coaches with a course). Most of these programs are steps by steps on how to do X (often sales related) or on how to improve their mindset to scale their business.
When I switched to focusing more on my craft of being an "optimizer" (problem solver) by focusing on being more a maker, I noticed that there's not much of these type of programs.
I am still new to this new "indie" and "maker" world, so maybe I simply have not been exposed to it enough, but I am curious, how many of you have been doing some inner work?
And what have been your experience so far as a creator regarding your personal growth?
You will become different. Whatever measures by which you discern 'better' before, will be irrelevant, almost laughable to the person you become. And beware too that growth can itself become a preoccupation.
If you have goals like be more productive, make more money, change the world, be more liked... then prepare yourself for at least the possibility that you will, in the course of real growth, end up rejecting those things as silly.
edit: accidentally posted as reply to wrong comment
You're using language like "personal growth" and "inner work" to describe what just sounds to be professional development.
Maybe professional capacity and personal identity are all tied up for you. That's certainly true for a lot of people here, including myself sometimes. But it's also maybe just an echo of working so long in an industry that tried to sell one as the other. It reads as an extraordinarily narrow perspective in world where we only work for a few decades and only with about 25% of our time during those decades.
If you're genuinely interested in personal growth and inner work, consider stepping back from the professional space as you look for programs. And if you're just interested in professional development in your craft, consider using language that's more specifically associated with it.
> self-development
> inner work
This is more commonly referred to as "self-improvement" or "self-help" (depending on if you think you're just improving yourself, or more specifically addressing something you consider to be a weakness or shortcoming.) It means developing your skills or learning new ones, and coming to a new understanding of a topic of interest.
You also might want to start by figuring out what role you want to be in, whether professionally or in hobbies. It's not clear if you want to be a problem solver or a creator. Having lots of aliases for what you mean isn't giving anyone clarity. Being a "maker" often means you have projects you work on because you're interested, and you want to tinker and build things. But a "creator" might be slightly different, as would a "creative." A "problem solver" in business is more likely someone that is called upon when there are problems. That's vastly different from being a "creator", "maker" or "creative."
In general, I think you're caught up in "programs" and buzz words. In my opinion, you need to take five steps back and think about what you really want to be doing and go from there.
For me, this has meant studying philosophy, religion, biology, music, and other things that do not necessarily contribute to a fully optimized life.
I too have found a wonderful community in the maker scene, and it has fed my creativity. This can certainly be a good place to spend time.
It may align with some particular philosophy that resonates with you; the nature of the "work" may fit what seems "right for you" within your particular context (not everyone needs, wants, or benefits from a psychedelic meltdown, or a ten year hardcore meditation retreat, or three months of sensory deprivation, or prayer, or splitting logs, or ...); but there is an "essential" core underlying the things that would actually matter.
"Self-development and inner work" largely amounts to clarity/awareness. Most of us are completely clueless regarding the values that drive us, and fewer of us are aware we can choose them. We don't examine the goals that drive our choices and behaviors. We don't actively monitor and adjust our physiology. We allow thinking errors in their wide variety to accumulate and distort. We over-identify with thinking/feeling/states/etc. We don't examine the beliefs we have about ourselves and the world, and again, we don't realize we can change these.
There are lots of ways to examine/inspect/alter the software you're running, installed by you, your family, your friends, your teachers, your culture, your country, your experiences, your environment, your everything else.
Find one that clicks and go for it. The idea that this will be somehow unique to "indie and maker world" is, ah, "not very helpful".
Personally, I mostly use hypnosis/self-hypnosis/some forms of meditation/inquiry and the like, but that's what suits my inclinations. (And I'm a hypnotist, so of course that's what I prefer.) I got interested in that when I was a wee teen and it's been a very fine tool. But your mileage varies because you're driving a different vehicle.
While you're at it, if you do anything along these lines, consider couples counselling too. Even if all is great. The closeness and generally better understanding its given my partner and I has been the greatest stress reducer I've ever found. It opens up my bandwidth to so many other things which more generally allows me to be more effective.
It takes me to memories and dusty corners of my brain that I rarely visit that form the foundations of my identity. The only bad part about it is one really needs a therapist to guide oneself when one goes deep and visits what IFS calls "exiles".
I have been at this for many years and I can say that doing the work requires effort and the expenditure of energy. The benefits to personal creativity have begun to become immense in recent years, as creativity comes naturally as a result of being less attached to ones' personality and being able to more freely allow energy to 'flow through your being' (that's the best I can describe it). These benefits are side effects, though, and not really the purpose of the work. If this is why you seek to do the work, it is misguided and you are probably setting yourself up to simply fuck yourself up. Seek a guide for this kind of work (I am not a guide), and be wary of those who charge money. My guide has been with me for > 10 years, has never charged a cent, and has been instrumental in my efforts. If you do the work with genuine integrity, you will find a guide.
One of the things that I find most gross about this whole industry is pushing the idea that you need to be "fixed".
This kind of industry desperately needs to sell you there's something wrong with you that needs to be repaired or improved in order to sell you the solution.
That's not to say there is no good contents out there, but in the end it can all be summed up to: have a purpose in life, work towards that purpose, be self disciplined if you want to achieve anything, be honest with yourself and other people.
There isn't really much else to "self improvement" and "happiness" than understanding what you want to be and do, working towards that goal, having introspections and cultivating meaningful and healthy relationships.
There's no secret sauce out there, no shortcut, if there was we all would've known it already after thousands of years of books, movies and phylosophical essays, reality is simple, but I guess hard work and discipline isn't as sexy and appealing like snake oil.
- the Zhuangzi, translation by Burton Watson, which I've read many times. See the last two paragraphs of https://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html about the useless tree
- Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa, which I haven't read except extracts, but it could be relevant to you (esp. if you're looking at spiritual growth).
But anyway, instead of buying new book... I'll speak of what I'm doing in a week.
I'll go for ten days in the countryside with my dear partner and leave the laptop at home. I'm quite productive these last months (just submitted something to Show HN today), I find I'm missing guidance on a few areas of my life, and I'm in dear need of slowing down and cutting the external noise.
Haven't taken real holidays in years.
It seems that you are talking about moving from a "problem-solver" workflow, to a "creator/architect" workflow.
You also mention self-help kind of stuff, and how it seems focused at problem-solvers, and not creators.
So, I assume the question is that you are planning to move from a "problem-solver," to a "creator," and want to find out about support infrastructure for "creators."
One reason that there's less of an infrastructure around creation, is that it is a lot riskier, and, for the most part, a lot less lucrative, than problem-solving. For every unicorn, prancing around SV, farting out rainbows, there's a charnel pit, with the rotting corpses of 10,000 jackasses with horns glued to their heads.
Everyone has problems, though, and are often willing to pay well, to have these problems solved.
An acquaintance recommended the Headspace app and I really like it. Hadn’t done any guided meditation before that. YMMV but I think mindfulness and meditation can be useful for anyone.
Then there are other types of inner work, such as learning empathy, or studying ethics and philosophy. I don’t really have any solid advice there. For ethics and philosophy, there are lots of books out there to further one’s knowledge and comprehension. It will expand the mind.
Some day I would like to acquaint myself with Nietzsche’s works, but so far I haven’t taken the time to do so.
It seems you are actively exploring the type of job you direct your attention towards and (hopefully) derive fulfillment from, which is way more tractable than your conative personality.
Potentially more helpful categories than “problem solver” and “indie/ maker,” which are certainly not exclusive, might be these job types: producing, improving, building, or thinking (source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130502173937-15454-there-ar...).
Good luck!
Tip: read a page, then click a link to get more info on any particular part. Like one big outline, skimmable I hope. Feedback welcome there, too.
More importantly, get a therapist that you get on with. Get a therapist you can laugh and cry with. Get a therapist you can tell tell to fuck off when they tell you things that are hard to hear.
Therapy can positively affect so much of your life and I wish I had done it sooner. I was a pretty successful person before therapy by most measures, but every day I would still do things that would actively make my life worse. I couldn't see it at the time, but I did.
Now, every week I look forward to getting advice from someone who's job it is to help me and give good guidance. His job isn't to be my friend, or to love me, or to make me work. His job is to apply his expertise to encourage me, ask me important questions, and tell me when I'm being an idiot.
I had a good childhood, I don't have much trauma. Yet even so, therapy has made my life much much better. Mine costs £60/session (one per week), and I do it via Zoom. I am absolutely certain it will save me more money than it costs me.
I know the above OP seems to be asking about work. But I think this still applies. A good therapist will help you think through the available choices in your work life too.
And, if you'll forgive me a more emotional plea: If you are a man, this all goes double. The male suicide rate isn't where it is because we're all doing fine. It is where it is because we're not doing well at all but haven't really noticed.
I’m currently on a career break and travelling in South America. It’s been worrying to step away from my career and out that gap in my cv but it’s something I did think about for pretty much all 11 years I was working and so I’m not going to look back when I’m 80 and wonder what if. And it’s been deeply restful and helped me to build confidence in who I am as a person, without hiding behind a job title.
Best investment I made was quitting drinking and drugs and getting an addictions counselor. I had taken myself to 0 financially and health wise. Doing the AA program and exploring that community helped me immensely- I love communities and I can take from programs what I need and leave the rest. Life changing book in this space to grok addiction IMO is The Biology of Desire. Not just opinions, actual neuroscience and field investigation combined from a PhD.
6 years later I have 3-4 years of runway and possible 20+ years runway in equity (at current valuations). I’m pretty fit and hike, surf and rock climb regularly. I also have amazing friendships and family relationships that I’m deeply grateful for.
Another great investment was getting a tennis coach who had broken tennis down into a cheat code of 7 rules after watching 1000s of hours of pros playing. I learned so much from his deep work making a simple “tennis principles for noobs” class. Just 7 lessons.
I have done therapy for two years recently which has felt more advanced and vague. In some areas of my life I’ve had fundamental changes in thinking that my therapist has really helped me to persevere with, without which I just wouldn’t have had the energy to keep working on. I’m still waiting to see how impactful it is - but it’s been quite a lot harder to navigate than quitting drugs because I don’t have a clear problem other than I am looking for a new direction in life.
I’ve read a ton of self help books and I’ve gleaned many principles to carry away with me. I only really return to a few of them: specifically Untethered Soul, The Courage to be Disliked and The Courage to be Happy - as does a close friend who is en route to billionaire.
Finally the best self improvement you can do is to spend time travelling, working with, socializing with or playing games with smart and driven people who are also kind, mindful. We learn fastest through experience and mirroring others and there’s no substitute from running alongside a master in something else - and sharing your experience together.
As a mental model, it has applications from very basic to extremely rich and complex.
I've worked as an eng/manager/executive coach and keep discovering new insights.
I always enjoy discussing it more if you're interested
And then there's mentorship sessions that I see are becoming more and more common in the visual arts world, where the focus is improving on a specific kind of craft and exploring mental blockages. Jayd (https://www.jaydaitkaci.com/services.html) was instrumental in my own maturity in the art world there, and I'd highly recommend those sessions if you're a maker in the visual/drawing sense.
Practically I have put this to use and made decisions in my professional life, mainly about avoiding behavior I consider unethical. I haven't been searching for meaning through my work, so not doing bad stuff is about as far as I've gotten.
Every day I saw how I was getting in my own way, and just how many opportunities I had to grow as a leader. But I couldn't actually do much of the work I needed to do while I was in the startup. It was too intense. I had to leave and reboot. So I left, and I started doing inner work in a completely open-ended way.
In the end, it took about four years. I was lucky and privileged to be able to take so much time off.
In the first year I was feeling through the darkness for clues. I had no idea what I was looking for. I only knew that I was burned out. I knew that the way I was operating wasn't serving me anymore. It hadn't served me for quite a while. I went to EMDR therapy, which was very helpful.
The first big insight: Because I had focused so strongly on engineering as a kid and into adulthood, I realized that my growth was stunted in other areas. I started reparenting myself.
The second big insight: I had learned to numb my emotions and was disconnected from my own body and my sense of intuition. I believe that's what led to burnout in the first place. I'd lost my connection with my spirit.
Being used to clear career paths and life paths, the scariest thing to confront was the reality that there's no clear map for spiritual development, and it's a winding path, and signs of progress aren't always obvious. There's only a set of tools that have worked for others. You have to be willing to go into the unknown, and try some of those tools, especially the ones that may are beyond your comfort zone. For example, a five-day meditation retreat was a huge breakthrough for me, and it felt like taking a big risk for me to go at all.
In order to really commit to this growth, I needed to let go of the idea that I'd ever return to tech. That was tough, because engineering has been such a big part of my identity. But I found, after that period, that I was able to come back to tech with a rediscovered sense of genuine curiosity. I returned as more of a whole human being. I gained a perspective that couldn't have come through more engineering work.
It's hard to describe spiritual growth, but the entire journey was well worth it. I learned how to listen with my whole body. I learned how to get fear out of the driver's seat of my life. I prioritize very different things than I used to. I am more able to remain grounded in my body as I work. I actually enjoy working out now. I play basketball, I box, I meditate. I feel more of my emotions, and more empathy and connection with others. I learned how to cry. I'm so grateful for all of this, it is such a gift. And today, I love the engineering work that I do in infosec and PKI. As long as I stay connected to purpose, I'm not worried about burnout. I can feel that my heart is in my work. And when it isn't anymore, I will follow my heart to whatever is next.
Self development is like getting a PhD in yourself. Can you spot the difference between someone with a PhD and someone without?
It is a decades long development. Decades. A few years here, a few years there, a few years loosing your way, a few years reevaluating and restructuring your life.
You do this thing so that there is more self. A capacity expands within you, in the same way you have more capacity of mind emotion and character as an adult than as a child. So too is the difference between an ordinary person and a developed and fulfilled self.
Here’s what will come to you in time:
Your body, some minimal competent exercise (if only outdoorsy activities) and a better diet (free of junk which clouds your mind and corrupts your body.) You thought your mind would expand while your body withers? It is no small thing that these developments accompany yoga or outdoors or martial arts or something. The journey is yours, competence and self reliance is the demand.
Your mind; your capacity for awareness, internal introspection, and cognitive strategy. Taking yourself seriously is no joke. Intensive and persistent mental engagement on the issue of self is educational and developmental. The mind is like a fractal, learning to learn, learning well, and learning some specific useful thing are all separate parts of the same journey, and these affect each other.
Spirit, okay let’s call it “capacity of self”, and say one who can sit quietly in a room for fifteen minutes without compulsive distraction (self sabotage) is spiritually more sound stable and capacitive than otherwise. Is practicing your patience and inward composure for beyond ten years worth while? Hmm?
You will find emotional and intellectual support through yourself, you must combat the voices in your head and loose that obsessive sense within you that there is something more exciting and purposeful anywhere else but where you are and what you are doing. This while meaningfully restructuring life to be whatever that is supposed to be for you.
The mistake everyone is making is that they expect immediate gratification, or even direct correlation. You will see change in self capacity over time, yet it will be in years not months. You might not even care about the same things in life through this development (ambition, outside recognition/validation, meaning itself may change.)
A fulfilled self is an exalted self, not necessarily a “happy” self!
Inner work is super loaded and I would need more context/examples to understand what you’re asking.
As terrence mckenna said, once you get the message hang up the phone.
It was the impetus behind Tongue Trainer: https://tonguetrainer.com.
Tongue Trainer combines Jewish laws of ethical speech (Chofetz Chaim) with Buddhist mind training (Lojong). I speak better and feel better because of it, and I don't hurt others either.
TLDR: Make every self-improvement a project.
P.S. For inner work, check out another project of mine, Critical Stimulus: https://criticalstimulus.com
Replacing out parts of myself can be frightening, as if I forget my identity or become too brittle of a whole to sustain. In reality, a superorganism consisting of maximally diverse components flourishes exactly because of, not in spite of, its multidimensionality.
I will go towards whatever is insanely cool to me, because such things inspire and motivate me to grow.
I exist solely in my subjective experience of the world. I maximize the intensity of that experience by surrounding myself with those things I feel in my innermost to be awesome, even though I don't understand why. The very fact I don't understand them enables me to learn something new through those experiences, unlike a world filled with things I already comprehend, would.
I do whatever stimulates me, because I gain energy from it. Doing anything else drains energy, and friction slows down growth.
When I reflect upon myself honestly, I see that expending effort into things that bore me empirically does not bear fruit. All such things I feel are a necessity, as opposed to a joy to perform, are external pressures set on me by others. I know in my innermost what's important to me, and I do that (and only that) with all my being.
Limits hinder growth, so I seek awareness of and let go of artificial restrictions, and accept and overcome genuine ones.
Every shore of my consciousness expands into an ocean of uncertainty where the horizon gives no clue of other continents. On the beach stands a sign, "swimming forbidden". I realize a finite, isolated island gives no room for true growth, and swim towards the unknown. If the sign turns out to be justified and the waters toxic, I will build myself a boat. Soon the impassibility of the sea eases to mere obstacle; eventually into familiar substance through which movement is as effortless as a vacuum.
I play innocently with all things, because solutions to blocks to my growth are found in unexpected places only when I have the courage to study absolutely everything.
Nothing I know of evolves faster than a child who plays. Children need not protection from dangerous things, other than those I know to be lethal. Mistakes happen during play and things break, but that's part of the learning process.
I openly receive all information, because the world around me reflects myself back to me. This facilitates introspection and accelerates my growth.
I do not limit myself artificially by ignoring any piece of data, but weigh each bit by its inherent value in my belief system, irrespective of whence it came from. Thinking about uneasy things develops in me precisely what is my current weakness.
My evolution is an ongoing process. Every moment I'm more aware of my true self, and continue growing in the best manner I'm aware of. I am never complete, and never too incomplete to keep on growing.
I do not conjure up excuses for why I couldn't evolve further right now. Every moment I integrate the world into myself and grow more aware.
I share freely everything I know to those who want to study me, so that they too could grow faster towards mutual understanding.
Mutual understanding, community and harmony are the ultimate goals of my self-development process.
Self development has nothing to do with positive thinking, visualizing success or spiritual stuff. That's a load of horse shit.
Real self-development involves choosing difficult goals and focusing all your energy on attaining them; learning new skills and improving existing skills in the process. It's about mastering some useful skills in order to give yourself a sizable competitive advantage in the marketplace and in society - This is the best way to gain control of your future.
The emotional, spiritual, positive thinking and visualization aspects of 'self improvement' are nonsense. This doesn't yield any improvement, all it does is it shows everyone that you're a gullible, delusional fool. The world doesn't give a shit about your positive thoughts; in fact they tend to cause people to be neglectful. The world cares about results.