Seven ways to make self-help actually helpful
When I was younger, I hated the idea of self-help. Despite having spent a fair amount of time in my local bookstore, I don’t recall ever browsing the self-help section. I thought all those authors were charlatans selling the same snake oil in a shiny new package.
After I started working, I found myself surrounded by people who could talk their way out of anything. The level of shamelessness on display was rather shocking. This experience made me rethink my stance toward self-help, mainly because I felt I needed to learn some new tricks to deal with people.
So when I plunged myself into this sea of mediocre books and lectures, all basically repeating the same talking points with a different face, I began to see the real, hidden value of self-help: making sense of moral contradictions. Here, I don’t mean morality in a vague, philosophical sense, but morality in practice, the ways we’re motivated to behave, what we perceive as opportunities and constraints, what we expect from others, and why. What’s more, the “why” doesn’t always make sense. Even though we’re born rational creatures, we’re still creatures of habit. We’re still driven by emotions, prone to bouts of self-delusion. We think we have the ability to read people’s inner thoughts and sniff out lies and inauthenticity, and while this is often proven right, it’s just as often proven wrong.
In my experience, the power of self-help does not reside in any particular piece of advice, however tempting and helpful it may be to repeat certain phrases. Where I have found the greatest source of value is in the process of applying curiosity and taking action.
And this leads me to a few reflections I’ve gained over the years. If I have to put a label on them, I would say the following are seven reminders for making self-help actually helpful:
Be aware of the limitations of any given framework. In our desire to be in control of things, we nurture a desire to find one framework that can work in all situations. We hear this desire also reflected in the realm of science, namely, the theory of everything. But even suppose that we find it, could it replace human nature? Could it reduce life to a set of predictable actions? While every self-help expert would stress that their advice doesn’t work in every situation, it’s also the case that their advice is marketed through the appeal of an all-powerful approach. It’s sold to us as “the way.” While belief can be empowering and effective, it’s also worthwhile to remember that not everyone will share our sense of belief. And when we deal with people, we’re dealing with change and the unpredictability of emotions.
Maintain a measure of skepticism. We’re not wrong to question the meaningfulness of any given advice. We have a gut instinct that should not be readily discarded simply because we have experienced some kind of failure. Nor should our instincts be repressed in favor of a more enlightened understanding of the world. Enlightenment and instinct are not polar opposites—one cannot exist without the other. No matter how much peer pressure we may feel, we stand to gain much more than we lose when we maintain a critical frame of mind toward anything that claims to help our lives.
Never fall in love with the messenger. All messengers, no matter how well-educated and well-spoken, can make you abandon reason in favor of comfort. Once we get to know someone and their ideas, we develop a kind of comfort with that person, in the same way living with someone creates a feeling of family simply by virtue of familiarity. But it’s important to remember that being familiar with someone does not make their advice any more valuable or true.
Systemic problems are not personal faults. Once we get into the mindset of “everything is my fault,” or the vague notion of “be the change we want to see,” we may end up becoming easy targets for tyranny and control. To put it bluntly, too much humility amounts to humiliation. It’s no coincidence that corporations and their HR turncoats love the idea of extreme ownership. Sometimes, the only solution to a social problem is by opposing the people in power or the ideas that made their power possible in the first place.
See the long view, but also stay in the present. A lot of the advice we get is rooted in the stoic idea of taking the long view on life. We have heard people say, “you’re going to die soon, so why care so much?” While this can be a healthy perspective (but also reductionist in nature), it can also be deeply damaging. When we seek help, our psyche is already vulnerable. Cutting the wound deeper will not make the wound go away. Reaching beyond a threshold of pain can set a dangerous precedent for what kind of pain we tolerate in the future. By then, it might be too late to change anything, and we may end up rationalizing the beauty of self-defeat. Not everything about the future is outside of our control. Nor is control a sin onto itself. If we allow taking the long view to divest ourselves from making the future better, the future will always be tyrannical.
Perception is not reality. As much as the new age of self-help wants us to believe that we can make anything come true, reality cannot always be influenced. For one, facts are facts. Unless we wish to be dictators interested in revising history, it’s incumbent on a free society to respect the objective nature of events. There is in fact great power in articulating the truth. It’s also often the case that the most ardent purveyors of “perception as reality” love to play the victim. They use their self-crafted illusion of victimhood to make you believe things you shouldn’t believe. They want the entire world to gaslight other people so they can blend in better. Learn to spot these people and never take their advice.
Learning from failure will not always provide the answer. A favorite trope of self-help is that failures can be a transformative experience. All successful people have a tendency to inflate the exceptional nature of their success by emphasizing how they failed before reaching that success. For some, a more straightforward explanation may well involve the fact that they came from a family with money and connections. The “failure” was invented or at least embellished afterwards. Failure recognizes some external benchmark by which we’re being compared. A natural part of learning involves questioning the validity of our standards. If we don’t understand why we’re striving toward some goal, what meaning is there when we reach it?
If anything, self-help reminds us about the value of learning. But let us also remember that the need to learn should never take away our agency to be true to who we are.
