As they say, good things never come easy, and if you dive head-first into self-improvement, it won’t be easy.

I was prepared for that though. I had visualized it and thought I knew what was coming.

I envisioned the strained expression on my face as I pushed myself through another set of squats in the gym.

I witnessed the crest-fallen look on my face as I realized that cake didn’t make it into my diet plan.

And I saw myself investing hours of my time trying to start a business. No more social media. No more movies. No more wasting time.

But I was ready for all of that. It’s what I wanted. I wanted to find out how great I could be.

But you know what nobody told me? Nobody told me how goddamn lonely this path was.

Looking back, I should have seen it coming. After all, getting ahead of everybody means doing the things that nobody else wants to do. Clearly, I was different from the people around me.

But this was the one thing I didn’t expect. I was so focused on the jabs flying at my face that I completely missed the right cross which could have knocked me out.

I began hardcore self-improvement when I was young. I was 14. And I wanted to get ahead of everyone else.

It came from a place of resentment and I wanted to show all the people who thought they were better than me, that in the end, I would win.

I was never a cool kid, and I never had much going for me, but I was determined to change that.

As a result, I became obsessed with this thing called ‘self-improvement’ and frontloaded all the protocols for improving myself that I could find.

Within a few months, I was going to the gym every day, meditating, eating clean, counting calories, gratitude journaling, getting sunlight, getting 10k steps in, etc.

If you can think of it, I was probably (and still probably am) doing it.

The interesting thing is, for a lot of people, doing that won’t work. They would get burnt out too quickly and revert to their old ways.

But for me, it worked flawlessly. Years later, I still do pretty much everything that I did back then, just more efficiently.

That was probably one of the fastest periods of growth for me and I am immensely grateful that I went through that phase.

But through this period of rapid growth, some things that I didn’t expect happened.

The biggest one was that, my friends… or the people who I thought were my friends… would make fun of me every time I talked about how I was trying to improve myself.

At first, I didn’t understand it.

How could trying to become a better person be something to be made fun of for?

Later I realized.

Whenever I talked about doing more work or playing fewer video games, it threatened the logic that my ‘friends’ had used to rationalize their destructive habits.

If they accepted and embraced my reasoning, it meant that they had to look inward and reflect on their values. That’s a difficult thing to do, and most people don’t want to do it.

And sure, in this situation, me and my friends were young. But this didn’t change as they got older.

Most people in this modern world have destructive habits. In fairness to them, it’s not entirely their fault.

It’s very hard not to eat junk food or be hypnotized by social media. But most people still realize that it’s wrong.

Most people who have destructive habits don’t want to hear that their habits are destructive, even if you have the best of intentions.

That’s why I say that self-improvement is a lonely path. Those of us on self-improvement can’t relate to the majority of the world, and the majority of the world doesn’t want us to spread our message of self-improvement.

When I experienced this, I realized just how fickle most of my friendships were, especially in school

They were predicated on the fact that we would all be suitable company for each other, just to get us through the school today. But when anything deeper such as personal growth came up, mockery was the first course of action.

Even amongst adults, many friendships are based on shallow, instant gratification activities.

Many people are simply friends when they are in the pub, doing drugs, or playing video games. But take those things away, and there is hardly any true connection.

This is another reason why people on self-improvement can find it so hard to quit these instant gratification, dopamine-spiking activities. Because they know, that if they did, their social circle would also come crumbling down.

This is why I say.

Self-improvement is one lonely path.

But, if you manage to make it through, you will get the opportunity to meet people who are also trying to improve, who will have a much deeper connection with you, and who truly care for you.

These relationships are worth the years of solitude if you ask me.