Sidenotes to a quest for authenticity

A little note on what you can expect from this blog. It will be about balancing authenticity and self-improvement. You will see that I call my posts sidenotes, because that’s what they are, sidenotes to my quest for authentic self-improvement. They can be thoughts, inspiration, reviews, questions, experiences, how-to’s, and so on.

Surely, I’m not the first and certainly not the last to start a blog (or site) about self-improvement, motivation, goal-setting, success, greatness or whatever tag you can make up. Some of them offer (very) good information, but there are also quite some that I don’t like. My allergies are worst on the ones that:

• Represent a distorted image of reality
  Every theory is a simplified representation of reality, and as such not perfect. My allergy is on the incorrect simplifications.
• Have critical hidden assumptions
  Some critical criteria are (obviously) not told, and they are necessary for success (often more so than the theory or system in itself)
• Teach me I must do something, and do it their way
  Don’t tell me I must do something…I hate that.

I think authenticity is very important, to me it is anyway. Self-improvement is important to me too, however I have a tendency to get overenthusiastic about new theories, methodologies, systems and techniques. So much so, that I “lose myself” in them, and that’s where the authenticity part comes in. Does anyone recognize this?

The way I deal with it, is what I like to call a fanacritical attitude. It’s partly fanatical, as I want to understand and experience what they (the books, the gurus, the blogs, etc) want to teach me, and partly critical, as I don’t want to lose myself in them (and I want to verify their assumptions and claims).

I hope that this blog will be valuable to you, and that we can join each other in getting the best out of ourselves, while remaining our original self.