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A few years ago, I realized that I needed
to make some changes in my life.
Without getting too specific, I wasn’t taking
good care of myself mentally or physically,
and I had a lot of really counter-productive
and often destructive habits.
Now I’m usually good at recognizing problems
in my life and developing solutions to them,
but I often need to seek advice or do some
research.
And at that time, I needed to find a way to
do that that was free.
So around about that time, I became interested
in self-help and personal development content.
I’d check out books from the library, I’d
watch YouTube videos—anything to get some
pointers on how to improve myself.
A lot of people describe the entire self-help
industry as a huge scam.
This idea that these so-called life-coaches
and motivational speakers offer misleading
or incomplete information that doesn’t actually
help anyone.
And supposedly, people pay their hard earned
money for these books and seminars while getting
nothing of value in return.
You might argue that if self-help content
worked, then the self-help industry itself
would eventually have no purpose.
Now I’m still working on a lot of things,
but I’ve definitely improved myself in many
important ways over the years.
I can’t definitively say that the content
I consumed is part of the reason why, but
I will say that many of the ideas that were
shared, to this day, seem to me like good
advice.
Also, a lot of it was bullshit.
So, like most things, it’s complicated.
Hi I’m T1J.
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Just wanted to let you know.
To a lot of people, “Self-help” has become
kind of a cliché and trite phrase, so you’ll
often see more modern terms like “Self-Improvement”
or “Personal Development.”
Whatever it’s called, it’s a very broad
genre, perhaps too broad to even be considered
its own genre.
But you might know what I mean in general.
Books, videos, streams, talks, seminars, that
include purported advice on topics like finance,
relationships, or health and well-being.
The common thread throughout all these topics
is this notion that conventional wisdom has
failed us, and by making some simple changes
in your mindset and behavior, at least simple
enough to fit in a single book, you can quickly
transform your life.
Now, for better or for worse, I’m the type
of guy that likes to see results.
It’s really hard for me to learn a skill,
work on a project, or develop a habit, if
I don’t see at least incremental progress
along the way.
A great example of this is, I own a lot of
guitars, because I decided a long time ago
that I was gonna learn how to play.
But come to find out, that shit’s hard.
And you kind have to struggle through a lot
of frustration and failure before you come
anything close to being able to sound like
you know what you’re doing.
Or at least that was my experience.
So I tried on and off for years and years
to get betters, but just could never keep
up with it.
So if anyone wants to hear me alternate between
the A minor and E minor chords, I know how
to do that pretty good, but that’s about
it.
Isn’t that right Sir Applesauce.
So I can understand the appeal of easy methods
for quick results.
And this type of thing might seem too good
to be true, but sometimes you can begin to
see results quickly, if you’re using the
correct process.
For example, say you have two chess players
who just play each other for fun and don’t
know much about theory or strategy.
But if one day you pull one of them aside
and say, “Hey, try to control the center
of the board, develop your knights and bishops
early, and then castle to protect the king.”
That player is going to start winning a lot
more than the other, instantly.
Now, you could say, life is a lot more complicated
than the game of chess.
I dunno, chess is pretty f*ckin complicated
– but I do think that sometimes very simple
changes can be made in our lives that can
have a major impact.
I’ve historically been really bad at saving
money.
It’s hard for me to conceive of money that
I’m not allowed to spend.
It’s like, I see it, it’s there, it’s
mine, what do you mean I can’t spend it?!
So a few years ago I came up with the solution
to make it so that I don’t see it.
I created an online savings account and set
up an automatic monthly transfer.
I rarely look at this account, and while I
rationally know it exists, it doesn’t register
to me subconsciously as money I’m allowed
to spend unless there’s an emergency.
I don’t even think about it.
Because of literally spending 4 minutes setting
up an online savings account, I became a person
who saves money.
Which, for me, was a huge development.
It worked for me, may not work for you.
And that’s one of the problems with self-help
content actually.
A lot of it suggests one-size-fits-all solutions
to people’s problems.
Now it’s likely that something that worked
for one person will probably work for some
other people, so there’s nothing wrong with
offering suggestions.
But a lot of these self-help gurus present
themselves as having the secrets to life and
the universe, not just people merely offering
advice.
A lot of times you can analyze a product by
looking at trends among the people who consume
and engage with it.
And when it comes to self-help, you often
find people who are pretty much addicted to
it.
They spend ridiculous amounts of money on
books, seminars and other materials.
They quote the catchphrases of their favorite
authors and treat their advice as if it’s
gospel.
There’s an issue though, when someone consumes
so much of this content but never seems to
reach a point where they don’t need it anymore.
It similar to how some people who are addicted
to cigarettes, switch to nicotine gum or nicotine
patches, and then get addicted to those.
A sure sign of a predatory unethical business
model is one that creates or perpetuates the
problem you’re paying to solve.
For example, Payday loan companies are, in
my opinion, despicable, because they loan
people money that they know the people likely
won’t be able to pay back.
So the next month, they offer to loan those
people more money in order to pay back the
previous loan (plus a ridiculous amount of
interest).
And thus a cycle begins.
Seriously, why is this legal?
Some people say the self-help industry is
guilty of this, albeit in a less conspicuous
way.
In order for the self-help industry to thrive,
there needs to be enough people out there
who either believe or can be convinced that
there is something wrong with them, and who
can also be convinced that spending money
or doing some other beneficial action can
fix whatever that is.
So it’s advantageous for these self-help
gurus to perpetuate feelings of inadequacy
and failure within its customer base.
And this definitely happens.
The before and after weight-loss photos, the
guy talking to you in front of his mansion
and fleet of Lamborghinis.
The muscle-bound guy surrounded by super models.
It’s all designed to make you feel inadequate
and ineffectual.
That sucks in and of itself, but the feeling
can be compounded when you actually try these
products and realize that you didn’t actually
make 10,000 dollars this month, or didn’t
actually lose 50 pounds, or didn’t magically
cure your anxiety and depression.
So part of way the self-help industry perpetuates
itself is by convincing people that they’re
lacking in some area, and then offering unrealistic
solutions, which can then make people feel
even more flawed.
In many ways the self-help industry thrives
on the back of America’s unique brand of
capitalism.
The idea that, if there’s some kind of shortcoming
in your life, it’s because you’re doing
something wrong.
The game’s fair, you just have to play it
correctly.
But of course the game isn’t fair.
Your plight in life and the difficulty associated
with achieving your goals is going to change
drastically depending your background.
Your financial situation, your race, your
gender, your genetics, your age, whether you’re
disabled or have a mental illness.
And any guru that leaves that part out isn’t
telling you the whole story.
But that’s not really unique to this industry
I guess.
Middle-to-upper class, neurotypical, able-bodied,
cis-hetero white men, are considered the default
human for most things.
But most of the time, I don’t think it’s
a matter of misplaced demographics.
So far I’ve framed this as self-help gurus
using unethical methods to make money off
of unhappy people.
But those people are still people.
They have brains and agency, they make choices
for themselves.
I don’t generally have a problem with paying
for books and videos and seminars and things
like that.
Those things take a lot of work to create,
and I generally think people ought to be paid
for doing work.
I also have no intention of telling people
how to spend their own money.
The thing that we have to consider is that
these people continue to pay for this content
because the industry gives them exactly what
they want.
I’ve complained a lot about how cynical
and sad social media can be.
There’s often an inclination towards pessimism
and anger, and the mere suggestion of being
kind and patient and searching for happiness
can literally make people mad, as if positivity
is somehow unreasonable.
Now social media magnifies these concepts,
but I think that’s the common reaction for
unhappy people, who are the target audience
for the self-help industry.
So when an industry creates content that encourages
you to feel inadequate and fails to deliver
results, making you feel even more hopeless.
For some people, that’s exactly what they
thrive on.
Most people don’t really want to change,
if they can’t wave a magic wand and make
it happen overnight.
Now most savvy people these days see the old
school self-help types like Dr. Phil and Tony
Robbins, as living memes who are hard to take
very seriously.
But any smart business person evolves with
the times, and while the social media generations
may not be in Tony Robbins target audience,
the self-help industry (as I mentioned now
rebranded as personal development) lives on.
Human brains like stories, we like things
that make sense, that can be unpacked and
explained, that have established beginnings
and satisfying ends.
And this isn’t a bad thing, this way of
thinking helps us understand and analyze the
world in a coherent way.
The problem is sometimes the story doesn’t
quite line up with reality, but our brains
want to believe the story because that’s
what appeals to us.
And this unconscious preference humans have
for stories is taken advantage of in numerous
ways.
Again, not always a bad thing.
YouTubers like myself, frame our videos so
they have a beginning, middle, and end.
We use storytelling techniques like symbolism
and foreshadowing, even in nonfiction video
essays.
And we do it, in part, for our own profit.
Buy the way check out my new Sir Applesauce
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But a thing that I’ve tried to stress over
and over again is that I’m not some expert
or guru.
I’m just a dude with some thoughts.
And maybe being likeable and okay at putting
ideas together has made my thoughts a little
more popular than some other peoples, but
I think of myself as just another person contributing
to the conversation.
So you have to understand that people who
create content that’s supposed to teach
you something, might not actually be experts.
They might just be good storytellers and good
businesspeople.
But at the same time, being a good storyteller
and having good ideas are not mutually exclusive.
Ironically a lot of that same cynicism and
negativity bias that I mentioned before can
also be the reason people avoid taking advice
from others.
It’s a weird paradox.
Some people get addicted to fixes that don’t
work because it reinforces their own unhappiness.
While others never trusted it in the first
place.
But I’m a big proponent of seeking out help,
if the source is reliable.
So it’s up to us as consumers of content
to figure out when we’re actually getting
good advice.
Here’s a few tips that I’ve learned in
my experience in the self-help rabbit hole.
1.
If someone tells you that significant long
standing change is easy or fast.
They’re probably selling you snake oil.
Because it pretty much never is.
Real self-improvement is an ongoing, gradual
process.
You’re not going to transform your entire
personality overnight, you’re not going
get rich quick, you’re not going to lose
80 lbs in a month.
Now you can become a better person, you can
improve your financial situation, you can
become more physically fit, but they take
time and commitment, and again depending on
your background, they could be much harder
or much easier.
2.
A good way to figure out if advice is bunk,
especially advice related to health or psychology,
is if it has no basis in science.
A lot of self-help content tries to increase
the perceived credibility of their claims
by making dubious connections to science.
Maybe the most famous example of this is the
Law of Attraction, as promoted by best-selling
books like The Secret.
It’s the idea that positive or negative
thoughts can directly cause positive or negative
experiences.
This is often explained using sciency sounding
things like the energy of electrical brainwaves,
or metaphysical quantum mechanics.
And of course this is true in a superficial
sense, like if you’re nice to people, they’re
more likely to be nice to you.
But the idea that you can literally create
positive energy with your brain that attracts
other positive energy, has no basis in science.
It’s made up.
And I’m not saying the person has to be
a scientist or quote science literature all
the time.
Different people have different styles of
communication, and sometimes things are worth
considering even if they haven’t been definitively
proven.
But sometimes people just make shit up, so
keep an eye out for that.
3.
If you’re still paying money for basic advice,
you’re fucking up.
Before the social media era, gurus and experts
could get away with keeping their content
behind a pay wall, because really there was
no easy way to disseminate it.
These days, it is easy and basically free
to share information with large audience.
So any person whose goal in life is to help
people improve themselves, should be doing
it largely without charging for it.
(I kind of feel this way about content in
general).
Now if you have a premium product that costs
a decent amount of money to organize, market
and/or produce, that you think will bring
value to people, like a book, or a documentary,
or a device, or a speaking event, I have no
problem with charging money for that.
And usually you build customers for those
premium products based on the value you’ve
brought to people with your free content.
But if you see a supposed guru who like only
has a website with no useful information on
it where all the real content is locked behind
paywalls.
I’d be very suspicious of that.
In fact, and I’m gonna digress a little
bit here.
But in my opinion, it’s borderline immoral
to lock personal development advice behind
paywalls.
Because either the strategies you suggest
don’t work, which makes you a grifter, or
they do work, meaning you have an opportunity
to make someone’s life better, and you’re
refusing to do so until they pay you.
Which just seems shitty to me, similar to
why I think health care should be free.
But that’s a whole ‘nother messy conversation.
But again, getting paid for time and effort
and materials is fine, which is why it’s
cool that things like Adsense and Brand deals
and Patreon exist, because it allows independent
creators to get paid for their time and effort
without having to put their content behind
a paywall.
I really do think there is some great content
out there that could be classified as “self-help”.
Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability and
empathy is science-based and inspiring.
Tim Ferris’s book The 4-Hour Chef
single-handedly got me interested in learning
to cook, and made me rethink my process of
acquiring new skills in general.
So there’s good stuff out there, you just
have to be diligent in finding it.
In general though, I’ve found that the self-help
industry makes grandiose promises and under-delivers
on the results.
In reality, if you have personal issues, rather
than trusting a self-proclaimed guru, you
should consider investing in a licensed profession
whose job is actually to help people and not
to sell-books.
If you have health problems see a doctor or
therapist.
If you have money problems, speak with a financial
counselor or planner.
If you want to get in shape, speak with a
personal trainer or nutritionist.
Of course, sometimes we don’t have the budget
for those things, although I suggest really
thinking about where your financial priorities
lie.
Sometimes “I can’t afford it, or I don’t
time for it” basically just means, “its
not a priority for me.”
But in my experience, personal development
is about creating better habits.
You have to remove yourself from situations
that create bad habits and put yourself into
the correct mindset to create good ones.
It takes times, and effort, and willpower.
It’s hard.
And anyone who tells you otherwise is probably
trying to rip you off.
DAS JUS ME DOE.
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