Choose Your Own (Self Help) Adventure
It's both a responsibility and a privilege ~ and there's no one way to grow.
The More|Better substack is a weekly dose of fitness, wellness, and wellbeing content here to help you make sense of all the nonsense. Written by personal trainer, wellness coach, and positive psychology practitioner Darlene Marshall.
I grew up in love with the library and learning and one of my all time favorite book series was Choose Your Own Adventure. If your unfamiliar, they had titles like Space and Beyond or Mystery of the Maya and were written in the second person so you’d feel like you were in the drivers seat of the story. The first chapter would set up the basic premise of the story arch and at the end you’d be given a choice: flip to pay X if you go into the temple, flip to page Y if you explore outside. The story would then unfold based off your choices. It made me feel like I was the one empowered with a special destiny.
Some 20-odd-years-later I’ve come to feel life is often a blind Choose Your Own Adventure ~ and in many ways the wellness and self help spaces have become that. We’re bombarded with supplements, podcasts, books, and feed posts about what we should be doing, should be stretching, should be taking, and should be reading.
Everyone presents as an expert and constantly claws for the content that will take them viral.
The problem?
A lot of them are pushing practices without frameworks or approaches.
Is there anything wrong with that? No, not necessarily.
But more and more I’m seeing clients, friends, family, and students who’re totally confused about what to do next. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure with 100 page options - their eyes glaze over.
Barry Schwartz refers to this as “choice fallacy”. The false belief that having more options will make us happier when in reality it gives us decision fatigue and overwhelm. (For some reason choice fallacy always reminds me of Audioslaves’ “Show Me How to Live” - I don’t know why, but enjoy the 90s flashback at least.)
I thought going into grad school that the brain trust behind Positive Psychology would give me the secrets to building a happy life - a framework to interpret all the different practices and know which ones to weave into my own life and those of my clients. Instead, I came to understand why a theory of everything doesn’t really work. I sum it up in my practice with a simple axiom: Not everything works for everyone all the time.
The trick for ourselves and our clients is to have the right practices, at the right times, for the right reasons that move us from where we are towards where we want to be.
Big responsibility.
But it’s also a privilege to have that responsibility. To live in a time where we know so much that we can ask such specific questions about what it means to live a good life. To live in a place where that exploration is an option. I often think of all the grandmothers who came before me who didn’t grow up able to start a business or even have resources in their name. What they would give to have my “problems” now.
The solution?
When you find yourself drawn to self work, time to choose the adventure.
Get clear on the challenge, your goals, or both: often our self work is other directed. We pick up the latest book or something someone recommended and follow along. What kind of adventure I’m going will be heavily influenced by whom I choose to follow. I find if you’re clear on your goals, what you’re challenged with, or both you can find resources that actually match what you need and what you’re working on
Find a way to assess where you are and where you’re going: this one comes straight out of my days as a personal trainer. Trainers measure everything so they can prove results to their clients. Gauging progress doesn’t have to be measurable - your subjective sense of things can also be valuable information.
Find people you can trust, then do what they say: If you know where you are and where you’re going (or what you’re moving away from) then it’s time to get good information. Qualified professionals can help you navigate the choppy water or know which mountain pass to climb and when. This can be a book, podcast, online course, or yes coaching.
At the end of the day, it’s your life. You’re the only one that can know if the guidance being given actually works on your adventure. The coach, influencer, or trainer isn’t actually responsible for what happens next - yes, there are a lot of exploitative grifters out there. Yes, telling the difference can be challenging.
But it’s your adventure.
Choose wisely.
Need help on your own self work adventure. Put some time on my calendar.