In the soft pink hues and twinkly cityscapes of Spike Jonze’s movie Her, sad sack Theodore Twombly bumbles between skyscrapers, drawn like a moth to the warm glow of holographic projections and the floaty promise of connection.
It’s a mesmerizing movie. But there’s a particular scene that’s stuck in my head. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is hanging out with his friend Amy (Amy Adams) at her apartment. Amy tells Theodore she’s breaking up with her boyfriend, Charles. Theodore remembers he received a group email from Charles caterwauling about his decision to take a 6-month vow of silence after the breakup. Amy rolls her eyes and pulls up a photo on her computer. It’s a photo of Charles, dressed as a monk.
As passive aggressive moves go, a 6-month vow of silence is an absolute banger. Anger without argument. Attention without availability. Full comms shutdown under the cover of spiritual enlightenment. Check and mate.
I often think of Charles dressed as a monk when the topic of self-help comes up. I believe self-help needs a rethink. I’m not against the idea of improvement; it’s natural and noble. But I object to the cynical, slow and expensive way the promises are marketed and delivered.
There are many flavors of self-help, but they all boil down to these 3:
The 3 Flavors of Self Help
Get Fit
Go to the gym. Get fitness tracker. Eat chicken breast. Build muscle. Sprint. Optimize sleep. Subscribe to supplements. Fast. Sweat. Stretch. Do Crossfit. Repeat.
Get Feels
Cancel Netflix. Explore values. Seek truth. Label emotions. Write down feelings. Reject loser friends. Embrace online gurus. Pig out on psychedelics. Reflect. Journal. Meditate. Levitate.
Get Focused
Build business. Trade markets. Compose music. Expand network. Read biographies. Grow and sell wine. Study dynasties. Memorize all 374 alphabets. Master nuclear physics. Take over the world.
Okay, I got a little carried away at the end there.
But the numbers don’t lie. The global self-help market is projected to grow to $81.77 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.1%. In the US, a staggering 42% of individuals aged 25-34 have participated in a self-help or self-improvement program of some sort.
Do you know how much you’re personally spending each month on the pursuit of bit-by-bit improvement? How much is enough? And how much would be too much? Statistically, we’re more and more likely to be dropping part of our pay on productivity apps, self-care kits, supplements or coaching programs.
And that’s every month. Of every year. Until the end.
Sadness as a Subscription
That’s not all. In addition to paying cash for help with our broken bits, we’re taking on the extra cost of shrinking from society to make time for our growth. So we get less time with friends and family and fewer moments in nature. We swap them for the shackles of schedules and silent Saturday nights. People call it “Monk Mode.” I call it sad. In Her, Charles deals with his self-conflict after his break up by donning his monk robes and staging a passive aggressive coup. It’s extreme and hilarious and also pathetic.
Wouldn’t it be better to stare down reality than miss out on your one wild and precious life? This requires a more radical approach, an overhaul of mindset and way of living. But what if we could pursue self-development without the indignity of social sacrifice and subscriptions? What if we could develop a better instinct for the true value of our time and money? What if we could ignore the three best-selling flavors and focus instead on the essence of what it means to be human? And what if we could start today, right now?
What if there were a fourth way?
Enter the Fourth Way
The Fourth Way is a spiritual and philosophical system of self-development introduced by Armenian-Greek mystic and spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff in the early 20th century. He was a man with a shaved head and an immense black mustache. His eyes were described as very pale at times and almost black at others. His philosophy is not widely known but commands a fierce following from those who have studied it.
The goal of The Fourth Way is to become a healthy and harmonious individual capable of intelligent and creative responses to the chaos of life. The system can be practiced while living an ordinary life. And, most importantly, it can be implemented without retreating from the world.
It is about waking up from the sleepwalk of schedule. It shows you how to shed the unconscious patterns and routines that dominate our daily lives and replace them with better scripts for self-awareness, intentional living, embracing discomfort, questioning assumptions and cultivating presence.
It’s the dying art of being fully present even in the mundane moments: the commute, the office kitchen, the supermarket checkout. It’s about seeing through the big money marketing powers that vie for control of your psyche. It’s about feeling the extraordinary potential in every ordinary second. It’s about making your body and your weaknesses bend to your logic. As Ayn Rand would say, feelings matter, but using our brains is how we stay alive and get better.
It’s a path of constant, unscheduled, subtle effort.
There are no courses. There are no recurring costs. There are books and you can find them . . . if that’s what you want.
Whether you do or not is a choice you must make on your own.
I am reminded of one of the closing scenes of the 3rd season of The Bear. Carmy confronts his former boss, Chef David Fields. He’s been holding onto some trauma about the time he spent training him. Ulcers. Panic attacks. Nightmares. The usual sensei-student stuff. But Fields reframes the apprenticeship as tough love:
“That’s the point, right? You wanted to be great. You wanted to be excellent. So you got rid of all the bullshit and you concentrated. And you got focused. And you got great. You got excellent. It worked. You’re here.”
If you’re here and still reading and looking to get rid of all the bullshit, you may find what you’re looking for inside The Fourth Way.
