Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement

“They’d help you concentrate.”

“Like coffee?”

“Better than coffee! It’s not without reason that 20 percent of Ivy League students use drugs like these.”

“So you would recommend them?” I asked.

“No, I wouldn’t recommend them, since you don’t have a diagnosis,” he said, clearing his throat. “But they would help you concentrate.”

In a consumerist society, we are not meant to buy one pair of jeans and then be satisfied. The same goes for self-improvement. We are not expected to improve only one area of our lives. We are encouraged to upgrade all parts of our life, all at once. We should be fitter, happier, healthier, wealthier, smarter, calmer, and more productive—all at once, all today. And we are under pressure to show that we know how to lead the perfect life.

It was the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, more than two millennia ago, who first insisted that opinions matter more than real events. Since then, advice on how to live our lives has poured out in a steady torrent. And why not? Who doesn’t want a better life? In some ways self-improvement is like drinking: it is a perfect consolation in bad times. And a great companion to good times.