Why wanting to feel better sometimes prevents us from feeling good

By constantly striving to feel better, we sometimes end up exhausting ourselves… In this article, transition coach Laurence Shukor reflects on the paradoxes of personal development and our contemporary relationship with well-being.

When feeling better becomes a silent injunction

“Feeling better.” The expression seems obvious, almost universal. Who wouldn’t want to get better? And yet, this aspiration has gradually become an implicit norm. It’s no longer just a matter of getting through difficulties, but of overcoming them quickly, understanding them, and learning something positive from them.

Manage your emotions better. Get organized better. Know yourself better. Live better. Gradually, well-being has become a goal to be achieved, an inner performance to be maintained. As philosopher Alain de Botton reminds us: “We are not required to be happy all the time.” This simple sentence serves as a salutary reminder: well-being is not a continuous state, nor is it a moral obligation.

The paradox of contemporary personal development

Personal development promises greater awareness, greater freedom, greater alignment. But when approached as an injunction, it often produces the opposite effect. In our quest to improve ourselves, we monitor ourselves, we evaluate ourselves, we analyze ourselves.

Am I calm enough? Aligned enough? Fulfilled enough?

This inner hypervigilance creates a subtle but constant pressure. We no longer feel, we observe. We no longer experience, we measure. And in our desire to get better too quickly, we sometimes end up not allowing ourselves to feel bad.

When wanting to get better becomes exhausting

What is tiring is not the desire for change itself, but its accumulation. An accumulation of methods, practices, readings, and advice supposed to guide us toward an improved version of ourselves.

For every discomfort, there is a solution.
For every difficulty, there is a tool.
For every drop in energy, there is a new injunction.

When it doesn’t work, a feeling of failure is added to the initial difficulty. Not only are we not feeling well, but we also feel like we don’t know how to “do” the work on ourselves “properly.” Personal development, which is supposed to be a relief, then becomes an additional burden.

Getting better is not the same as being well.

There is often confusion between improvement and balance. Getting better implies constant progress. Being well, on the other hand, accepts fluctuations. Being well does not mean being positive all the time.

It does not mean being transformed at every stage of your life. It means being able to go through neutral zones, moments of doubt or fatigue without immediately seeking to correct them. Well-being is neither linear nor measurable. It is alive, changing, deeply human.

What transition coaching offers instead

Transition coaching does not aim to produce an idealized better, but to accompany you towards what is right. The right pace. The right level of expectation. The right way of listening to what is happening in the moment.

Less desire for control.
Less internal performance.
More discernment and adjustment.

Change does not mean optimizing. It often means aligning.

What if feeling good started with letting go of the pressure?

Perhaps true well-being begins when we stop trying to feel better at all costs. When we accept that some periods don’t need to be changed, but simply lived through. Feeling good isn’t about responding to all the demands of modern well-being. It’s about rediscovering a gentler, more honest, more realistic relationship with yourself. And sometimes, the greatest progress is simply allowing yourself to be there, without immediately seeking to become something else.

Laurence Shukor is a certified coach specializing in personal and professional transition issues.