The Self-Help Trap
Chances are that if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re an avid consumer of the self-improvement genre. But tell me if this sounds familiar: the more you take in, the more this idea of lack enters your head. Maybe your journey of personal development began because you wanted to become a better communicator. Somewhere along the way, you began to realize that you’re not really in tune with your emotions, so you set out to fixing that too. Eventually, you noticed that you could benefit from more effectively organizing your time. Rinse and repeat.
Do you see the pattern here? While it’s healthy to be self-aware of our faults and shortcomings, it’s easy to get lost in them, especially when you purposely micro-analyze them. One turns into two which turns into many. Soon you reach a point where all you notice is what’s missing instead of what’s abundant.
This is the self-help trap.
Some Quick Context
I recognize the irony in me discussing the problem of self-help world while writing you a newsletter that falls into the genre, especially as it will inevitably occupy room in your inbox and mind. This self-awareness is a big reason why I started Human+. I wanted to make my mark in an area that I believe in and has the potential to change lives, but in a different way. In an intentional way.
I aim to help shed some light on the questions that we’ve all had on the human experience. Notice I didn’t say “answer”. This is because I don’t have definitive answers to these questions. Depending on your personal beliefs, maybe someone does or someone did. All I can do, genuinely, is provide my own insights on these questions in such a way that I have personally experienced, and that’s all that counts for me. By sharing my thoughts and experiences with you, it might help give you a spark of some sort to act or to contemplate.
But enough about why I feel justified in being another voice in the crowd. Let’s talk about where the need for self-help stems from, and how you can learn to be intentional with it.
Origins and Consequences
Self-help, at its core, aims to sell you something. It knows that you believe yourself to be deficient in something and so it tries to provide solutions to you- for a price. You find yourself convinced that you are broken somehow and in need of fixing. This is how religion has operated for thousands of years. Now, this same attitude has crept its way into everyday life.
Just take this statistic: in the past six years, the number of self-help books published has nearly tripled, going from 30,000 in 2016 to 85,000 in 2022. Now, there’s a fix for everything: eating (“follow THIS diet for maximum results!), sleeping (“why polyphasic sleep will make you a genius”), even breathing (Wim Hof Method).
Again, do you see the problem here? We’ve been led to believe that every last thing we do, we’re doing wrong. Doubt sets in and suddenly something that’s worked perfectly fine for us all our lives conveniently turns out to be wrong. Instead of feeling like you’re nearing a goal, the goal just gets farther and farther away until we feel like we are the ones that got farther. Basically, the gap between our present state and our ideal one widens perpetually until it eventually becomes bigger than it was at the start of our journey.
But now, something can happen. Believing we lack something, we set out to fix it. But enter the ego. It tells us, “Sure, you can put the work in and improve yourself… or you can believe that others are the problem and that you’re already better than them.” This behavior is common among narcissists. It’s impossible for them to recognize their own faults (as obvious as they may be from the outside), so they just convince themselves that they’re better than those around them.
Eventually, we might just come around to putting in a little work in improving ourselves, but again the ego steps in. Through virtue signaling, we proudly announce our superiority, thereby widening even further the supposed gap between ourselves and everyone else. So in the end, self-help here doesn’t feed insecurity, it feeds arrogance.
Self-help can also be a source of power, but not necessarily a beneficial one. Essentially, it can act as a refuge for us. It tells us what we want to to hear without any real work on our part. The text might reinforce the ideas of worthiness, inner beauty, and empowerment, but these are just free compliments. There’s no need to take action if you can receive infinite amounts of praise from a book.
Something else that can happen is what I call the loss of action. Basically, because you know so much about something, you don’t apply it. We substitute action for knowledge. This is because we fear actually implementing the advice we’re given, so we do the next best thing and just learn as much as we can about it. It’s like spending hundreds of hours reading about how to drive a car and all the rules of the road. Just go out and do it! Experience is a much better teacher than a classroom.
Note that not everyone who consumes self-help falls into these traps. It’s perfectly possible to consume it with positive ambitions. Again, this is what I aim to help with in creating for you.
The Solution (with actionables)
Now, I don’t want to bash on the self-help industry as a whole at all. There are legitimate books that have been so impactful and advice that really changed my life, and the lives of many others. But the key is to be intentional. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that more solutions must mean there are more problems. Be honest and ask yourself what’s really important for you at this point in your life. Narrow it down to three items and take as much time as you need on each one before mastering it, moving on to the next, and finally creating a new list of priorities.
For example, a list might look something like this:
Emotional intelligence
Coping with anxiety
Time management
Since these are the three most pressing issues, it makes no sense to dip your feet in 10 different things at once. This is where overstimulation is born- in the need to consume more, more, more. Though it might feel like you could be achieving more by intaking more, that is not the case. In fact, you’ll find that being 100% successful at a skill (or as close to it as you can get) is so much more rewarding than being 10% successful in 10 skills.
And remember to implement what you learned. Some things are good to learn from a book (such as philosophical and spiritual ideas), but most things are best learned from life itself (like how to deal with people).
Key Takeaways
Self-help can be deceiving. There is a fine line to approaching it; are you coming at it from a place of arrogance, insecurity, or humility? Your attitude can make all the difference in how it shapes you, and how you shape the world.
Take action instead of endlessly consuming. Putting something into practice (even if you make mistakes along the way) is infinitely more effective than knowing and theorizing about something without ever applying it.
Be selective with your attention and energy. Focus on the most impactful areas for you and do not stray from the path. In this way, you naturally add discipline to your character, thereby checking off a trait without even trying to.
Don’t believe that you’re this rigid machine in need of fixing, and don’t think that you need to have all these perfected systems of productivity. This self-talk leads to overconsumption and, consequently, worse self-esteem.
Thanks for reading,
Alan
Works Linked To In This Article
I read 100 self-help books. Here’s what I learned… by Matt D’Avella
How Self Help Brainwashed Me by Nathaniel Drew
Why self improvement is ruining your life by Better Ideas
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