I saw this quote scrolling by in my Instagram feed—posted by James Clear. I unfollowed him immediately.

It’s the kind of framing that sounds intelligent but disconnects people from their own bodies.It reinforces emotional denial and calls it perspective.That’s not wisdom. That’s harm dressed up as insight.

And I’m not letting it slide by in silence—because 99% of the people who start working with me are drowning in this exact guilt.

They’ve been trained to believe that sacrificing themselves is the noble path.To “be good” by ignoring their own needs.To earn health by proving they care more about the world than themselves.

And that ruins their chances of ever getting what they actually want:Deep, sustainable, high-voltage health.

Because you can’t access vitality by abandoning your own brilliance.

Yes. This here.

This quote implies that if you're in despair, it's because you're not seeing enough of the good—and therefore your pain, your shutdown, your grief isn't valid. That your emotional truth must be cross-checked against global positivity before it earns legitimacy.

And if you're not in motion—if you're still, recovering, tending to yourself—it reads as complacency. It treats pause as failure. It says rest equals ignorance. As if your nervous system needs to earn the right to exist by proving it sees all the suffering first.

But your emotions ARE the higher perspective.

Your despair isn't a failure of vision—it's accurate data. Your exhaustion isn't spiritual weakness—it's your system telling you the truth about unsustainable conditions.

Fuck that.

This quote implies your emotional state isn’t trustworthy unless it can be justified by global events. It demands that you calibrate your nervous system to external reality, no matter what’s happening to you.

It says if you’re despairing, you’re wrong. If you’re resting, you’re irresponsible. If you’re not in action, you’re failing the world.

Don’t help the world. Help yourself first.

Because when you do that—truly do that—you become the only kind of human who actually changes the system:Someone who doesn’t abandon themselves in the name of appearances.

This quote is everything that’s wrong with how we’re trained to relate to ourselves. It’s why there are so many mental health problems.

Look at the actual cycle:

Cultural messaging tells you to abandon yourself → You internalize that self-abandonment → Individual dysfunction → Collective dysfunction → More cultural messaging about how you need better perspective.

The system feeds itself. The very advice that claims to solve the problem IS the problem.

We grow up being taught that our emotions must be earned. That grief is indulgent. That despair is ungrateful. That rest is dangerous.

But when you start with yourself—when you honor your own despair, your exhaustion, your truth—you create a ripple of coherence through the good, the bad, and the ugly of the world.

The world becomes what it is because people have been taught this shit. Not because they’re too despairing. Not because they’re too complacent. But because they’ve been conditioned to abandon their own internal signals in order to be “responsible.”

This quote doesn’t diagnose the problem.It perpetuates it.

This kind of systems-level cold detachment was never wisdom—and it never will be.

What actually heals the system is this: You. Taking care of yourself.Even when the world is burning.Especially then.

That’s the ripple.That’s the repair. That’s the revolution.