Why obsessing over self-improvement could be sabotaging your brain

Our obsession with ‘maxxing’ every aspect of our lives could actually be stressing us out

By Jennifer Donnelly & The Conversation US

If you want to improve yourself, your health or your lifestyle, you need to do it to the “maxx”—according to social media, at least.

If you want to better your appearance, you need to try “looksmaxxing”. If you want to fix your diet and look after your gut, you should be “fibermaxxing”. And if you want to improve your social skills and be more charming, you really ought to be “personality-maxxing”.

But all of this maxxing might not actually be a good way to motivate yourself into healthier habits. In fact, it may have the opposite effect—and may even cause stress.

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The language of “maxxing”has roots in the gaming concept of “min-maxing”, in which players strategically maximize desirable attributes while minimizing less useful ones to create the most effective in-game character. The concept then made it’s way to the mainstream, most notably through “looksmaxxing”: making focused, and sometimes extreme, efforts to maximize physical attractiveness.

The suffix has since been adapted in multiple health and wellbeing spaces. If there is an aspect of life that could be improved, it can probably be maxxed.

The “maxxing” trend encapsulates our increasingly intense optimization culture, in which we systematically seek to improve different aspects of our thinking, feeling and functioning. This pursuit is often aided by commercial products and services that promise to produce the “best version” of ourselves.

But there’s an interesting conundrum that arises from the terminology itself. Maxxing implies there is a maximum – a point at which you have reached the peak, or perhaps even “won.”

But health, wellbeing, social relationships and lifestyle habits aren’t really something we complete. They’re continuing and fluctuating processes. Things happen outside our control, our lives and circumstances change – and we change with them.

This makes maxxing something of a double-edged sword. It can make healthy behavior engaging, provide a sense of identity and encourage people to connect with others pursuing similar goals.

But if self-improvement turns into constant self-surveillance, self-criticism and the pursuit of an idealized “optimal” self, it may come with psychological costs.

When social media constantly reminds us there’s another metric to optimize, healthy self-improvement risks fueling self-criticism and anxiety around our bodies, health and self-image. Examples of this have already been seen in “looksmaxing spaces”—online communities in which people can connect and exchange advice on improving appearance.

Source: Read the original article on www.scientificamerican.com