Mohini Kundu

At the beginning of this year, I did an odd sort of cleanse. I got rid of every tool that I painstakingly adopted in the past half-decade to support my mental and physical health. Not quite what you’d expect from “new year, new me,” am I right?

For the last several years, I started prepping for the new year in December. I would do retrospectives of the past year and look ahead to the next. I mapped out longterm goals and broke them down into ten daily actions that would help me get there — or at least closer — by the end of the year. I used a suite of apps to support my daily routine: a psychology-based to-do list and coaching app called Fabulous, Calm for daily mediations, Future for customizable workouts, Audible for enrichment, and so on.

I even read a stack of books that led me to this approach, including but not limited to the following:

• How to Change by Katy Milkman
• The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
• Thinking In Systems by Donella H. Meadows
• The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal

I also had not one but FOUR daily journals: an influencer’s take on a bullet journal, the popular 5-Minute Journal, a custom Notion note-tracker, and a good old blank notebook for “serious thoughts.”

I’m exhausted just recounting all this (and so is my wallet), but I truly lived by these systems for years. It took a while to get there, unsurprisingly. Implementing one habit is hard enough, let alone an entire host of ambitious goals and lifestyle changes. Especially when you’re combatting an all-or-nothing attitude. For a long time, if I messed up any piece of this everyday onslaught, I would need to write off the day and wait for the next to reset.

All this to say, sometimes self-help didn’t feel very helpful.

However, this trek into insanity did eventually lead me to where I am today: the Mohini that calmly said goodbye to each one of these apps and systems — because I have actually successfully transformed my life.

I eat healthier. I ENJOY working out. I’m perfectly comfortable alone with my thoughts and feelings, even the difficult ones. I’m no longer just wading through my day. I have no trouble starting new habits and getting rid of bad ones. I write every week. I quit drinking soda, almost on a whim. I’m here, present.

When I pick up a self-help book now, I know most of the answers it’ll hold without having to read it. I’ve lived them, at least a little. Across all the books and tutorials and lessons, I found there were only a few true things that each of them states in different ways:

• Start with the smallest imaginable step, no matter how embarrassing.
• You will fail. Period. Accept that and minimize the time it takes you to try again.
• Do less, and you’ll do it better.

But here’s the most important thing I learned on this journey: What I really needed was self-trust. For me the biggest change occurred when I stopped needing someone else’s voice to guide me.

In Alan Watt’s The Way of Zen, he describes how everything you learn from others is, by nature, a distillation. As soon as we translate an idea or feeling into words, we begin a game of telephone that takes us further and further away from the real thing. When we describe a sensation as “love,” we condense a universe of feeling into a four-letter word that has different meanings to just about every individual and in any situation. Watts helped me realize that everything I’ve ever read was written by a fallible human. Instead, I could just learn to trust my own voice.

I needed to stop believing that there was a magical right way to do things somewhere out in the world. At some point, I stopped taking things in and let go of how I thought things needed to be done. I just needed some rest, a break from the noise. And the answers came.

If you’re stuck in the studying phase like I was, it’s probably because you don’t want to deal with the discomfort that comes with just doing. I was here for what felt like a lifetime. But all of that changes with practice. I’m not saying there’s no value in external learnings. Only that it’s not the be-all, end-all. By all means, read the books. But just know that a little quiet can do a world of good.