When it comes to the field of self-growth, there are many terms that are used: self-help, self-improvement, self-development, and ultimately self-challenge.

What is the difference between all these terms and why is it important to identify with the right approach for you?

Logically the goal human beings would be to improve the state of mind, body and spirit. But alas, self-perception plays a huge role in the motivational system we use and self-esteem is commonly found to be too high or too low. It is therefore often a challenge to accept who we are as unique individuals. We do not need to be praised to exist, we do not need to follow a given status quo, we do not need to correspond to a standard to feel we belong.

Habits, conventions and routines are like walls: they can shelter us but also imprison us.

Without challenge there would be no scientific innovation, no change of ideology, no variety.

Self-challenge lies in accepting that we do not need to build our self-esteem, we need to focus on our actions and productivity alone. Our stomach does not need self-esteem to digest food, our muscles do not need self-esteem to contract, and they perform these actions instinctively when needed. Our body is programmed to respond to many challenges and we as people should do the same.

The difference between the terminologies used contributes to a difference in the perspective one takes in the application of a program.

Self-help, for instance, assumes that help is needed in order to reach a desired target, but it’s a real paradox to think we can use something we do not have. We would not ask a poor man begging on the street to give himself some money would we?  If we genuinely and honestly did want to help him, we would have him to devise a way to challenge his problems overcoming the negative routine that has been created.

Self-improvement and self-development have similar connotations in that they begin with a basic level of self-understanding of who we are as individuals. Once an individual is able to see the Self objectively, a point zero is established. Objectivity would come with the demise of this disproportionate self-importance that we, as humans were born with. Conscious abdication of human self-righteousness is a huge challenge in itself already, a challenge so powerful that would make many conflicts on Earth disappear in a short time.

We are taught from an early age to fill our repertoire with precious instructions on how to build a skill-set but seldom educated on how and when to drop beliefs and dogmas after they have been proven wrong. If pursued by a tiger in a jungle, a man clinging obsessively to a heavy coffer full of gold will only be hampered in his escape and have higher chances of being eaten.

It requires a belief to build a mindset and it requires a challenge to transform it when needed. It requires self-challenge to accept a mistake with integrity, it requires self-challenge to accept defeat and to rise again after having fallen, it requires self-challenge to drop an entire system of beliefs when faced with concrete opposite evidence and restart a new one.

Self-challenge addresses the realistic notion that negative habits, our own and other’s critical thoughts, physical injury, disease and trauma cannot be conquered without a challenge, cannot be solved without any change.

This means that to seek success and progress we must first address the issues that hold us back, that make us heavy and generate ineffective or negative behavioral patterns.