
I always believed that self-help wasn’t suitable for people with bipolar disorder. This year, however, I am experimenting on myself. In 2010, when I embraced recovery, numerous doctors and counselors advised me to avoid the personal development industry. They said a severe mental health diagnosis comes with many limitations that popular self-help practices may not account for. Additionally, some personal development offerings blend Evangelical Christianity, the prosperity gospel, and a rigid curriculum for becoming a better version of yourself. That certainly is not my style. I have observed many peers with mood disorders and other diagnoses embrace a bestselling self-help trend, only to fail. This year, I feel confident in testing a hybrid of the most popular personal development schemes on myself.
Looking ahead to a new year can be anxiety-inducing for anyone with a mental health diagnosis. Imagine you have had bouts of depression and mania over the past six months. You scroll through YouTube and see titles like How to Actually Achieve Your Goals in 2025, Time to Rebrand Your Life and Level Up By 2025, or Wake Up to a Better Life in 2025. Looking for change, you consider clicking on the videos because they have garnered millions of views in the final week of the year. After watching the videos, implementing the suggested changes seems appealing. However, it turns out to be unsustainable in the long term because you were recently discharged from the psych ward, and the basic foundations of mental health recovery were left unestablished. What I have described is a highly realistic hypothetical situation based on my lived experience.
In 2025, I will change one habit a day, every day, for the entire year.Maybe YouTube isn’t where you draw inspiration. Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario involving a Christian with a newly diagnosed mental health condition. You are leaving church, and a friend suggests popular Christian self-improvement titles like Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day, Reposition Yourself: Living Life Without Limits, or Finding God’s Will for Your Life: Discovering the Plans God Has for You. Reading these books is inspiring at first. However, the promises of the prosperity gospel seem to contradict the medical advice your psychiatrist is giving you. Tithing, devotion, prayer, meditation, and faith healing don’t seem to be compatible with the unpredictable ups and downs of mental health recovery. Soon, those books are gathering dust on your shelves, and you feel like you’re back at square one. This hypothetical situation is also gleaned from my personal journey as a pastor living openly with a mental health condition.
I know what you’re thinking: It’s ludicrous for someone in mental health recovery to experiment on themselves with personal development philosophies. Let me explain why this ambitious plan I have constructed is worth exploring. By the end of 2025, I hope to document a balanced, realistic, and healthy self-improvement strategy that is reasonable for someone in mental health recovery. This year, I will borrow strategies from the personal development community and apply them to my life to see how my mental health recovery and spiritual perspective align with the suggested practices.
There is one key to my approach: Documenting failure. Since 2010, I have implemented incredibly small changes—tinier than any personal development program I have ever come across. Counselors, peers, psychiatrists, therapists, and family have all encouraged me to normalize unfinished plans, distractions, months of unproductive behavior, slow progress, and an inability to do certain things that people without bipolar disorder type 1 find easy. I have no shame or embarrassment admitting these things and writing about them.
Many self-improvement specialists talk about failure. Here’s a quote from James Clear, the bestselling author of the excellent book Atomic Habits: “What separates the elite performers from everyone else? Not perfection, but consistency. This is why the most important thing is not to prevent mistakes altogether, but to avoid making a mistake twice in a row.” I have tried to be an elite performer since high school. Bipolar type 1 affected my acting, filmmaking, and stand-up comedy ambitions. Luckily, I adjusted my expectations and said goodbye to my childhood dreams. I found a fulfilling career as a journeyman pastor. The reality of my vocation is that I not only make mistakes twice in a row—I also make them three, four, seven, and even eighteen times in a row. I don’t make excuses for my repeated mistakes; I just don’t beat myself up when I struggle. One thing I am comfortable doing is overcoming shame and trying to get something right on the 19th try.
So, here is my detailed plan. In 2025, I will change one habit a day, every day, for the entire year. My incredibly small habits are smaller than anything James Clear has ever suggested. It sounds ambitious, but I urge you to think of these habits at the subatomic level. For instance, on January 11, I will introduce the daily habit of meditation—but I will only meditate for 30 seconds. For exercise, I will introduce only one component of a workout. For instance, on January 30, I will introduce five left-handed curls. All of my thirty habits will slowly grow incrementally every month. By the end of the year, I will be meditating for six minutes a day and doing 60 left-handed curls daily.
If you’re good at math, you’ll noticed I have five spare days left in 2025. Forced by this constraint, I developed five foundational habits for my experiment. In the first five days of 2025, I will ban all screens in bed, drink at least a liter of water daily, walk for 10 minutes daily, eat two servings of fruits/vegetables in the morning, and read my morning recovery meditation.
Whether I succeed in my self-improvement journey or abandon it remains to be seen. I have no idea if this ambitious plan will improve my mental health recovery or impede it. Over the next year, I will document every success and failure in this column. I look forward to you joining me on this journey.
Seth Perry (he/him/his), an ELCA Pastor, devotional blogger, and mental health recovery educator, embraces his journey of living well with Bipolar Type 1. He works to reduce stigma where faith, mental health, and personal growth intertwine. Pastor Seth currently serves Elim Lutheran Church in Scandia, MN. His website is: www.ourstigma.com.
Last Updated on January 14, 2025