On Taming the Self-Help Industry
The self-help genre has become a beast of burden in the modern world, but it did not start off that way. The sharing and pursuit of personal development is not new to human nature. Humanity has instructed and admonished one another on how best to live as individuals and members of society for as long as we have existed. By an instinct of progress for our species, we pass down wisdom for the next generation or unilaterally offer knowledge in goodwill toward those less informed.
Early civilizations shared their knowledge through oral traditions and consolidated the best of their wisdom on cave walls and tablets. After the invention of the printing press, authors shared their ideals of proper living in the form of mass-produced literature. It was not until the 19th that we began to see the first iteration of self-help as we know it today. As Western society was undergoing the restructuring of modern industrialization, the population started to feel the early side effects of capitalism and consumerism. As more people began to enter this new world, with it came increasing uncertainty about the individual purpose, family structure, societal expectations, religion, etc. Literature began to be churned out of the publishing houses to answer these burning questions–many books, such as Self Help by Samuel Smiles, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill received much acclaim, even today.
As self-help grew in popularity in mainstream consciousness, so did the financial gain. The gold rush of personal development had begun and it showed no sign of stopping. Over the next 100 years, the self-help genre continued to grow exponentially, and, in response to the demand, came more authors and speakers (of varying motivations) who wanted a piece of the fortune. Fed directly by the hand of consumerism, personal development content metastasized into a mass of information that ranged from timely and helpful advice to seedy snake oil traps that preyed on the fear of a particular era. It had become a beast and it was burdened by the sincere, the ill-intentioned, the afraid, and the lazy.
Despite all of this, it is undeniable that born from this beast is the opportunity to improve ourselves more than at any other point in human history. There are multiple solutions proposed in every form of media for every fear, weakness, or neurosis that a person can experience. The sheer amount of information on personal development leaves almost anyone without an excuse to better their lives in some relative way. The caveat is this mass of information can also become a stumbling block to personal development. Through lack of awareness and discipline, people can fall victim to information overload, choice paralysis, and the temptation of self-gratified procrastination from which the self-help industry feeds. It can and will waste the time and money of the undiscerning. The people who make the most of personal development media are those who learn to tame it for their specific purpose. They consume knowledge in such a way that they do not become consumed by it.
Those who are consumed by the beast of the self-help industry exhibit three characteristics that make them fall victim to perpetual attempts at personal development with no substantial progress. They lack introspective ability, internal motivation, and, subsequently discipline through conscientiousness.
Introspection–the ability to assess, critique, and understand the innermost thought as a third party is a prerequisite to utilizing knowledge with purpose. Knowledge alone is not power nor a catalyst for change. Knowledge is only beneficial in relation to an awareness of how it can be best applied and to what end. Those who lack introspective skills do not inspect their thoughts and feelings and, as a result, are unaware of their internal attributes–strengths, weaknesses, fears, hopes, etc. With only a desire to change in some undetermined way, they consume self-help content with abandon and the hope of spontaneous clarity. They gamble on the chance to happen upon the information they need to change instead of knowing what they need to change and seeking out the information.
Those who have high introspection have the ability to tame and tailor self-help content for a specific purpose. Of all the information that exists in the world of personal development, they select what they give their attention, time, and money to based on an awareness of what they want to improve and why. While they may have the fantasy of ubiquitous improvement, they only work on the parts of themselves that they feel drawn to in a certain stage of life and awareness. Since they can ascertain a weakness and have a vision of an outcome in mind, they only learn and apply what is needed. They do not read, watch, or listen to more information than is necessary for making progress–which is often tracked through journalling, meditation, and mindfulness practices. They actively avoid over-consumption of information and see it as a threat to development and the enjoyment of life. Once they have determined that they have made improvement in an area of life, through introspection, they have a pulse on the next theme of development which they will pivot to.
Motivation. The perfect victim of the self-help industry is a person with a lack of internal motivation. Their desire to change and improve is not maintained by an inward drive to actualize themselves. Instead, they are compelled by the sole purpose of avoiding pain. It would be easy to assume that being motivated by an avoidance of pain would be a perfectly reasonable reason to change. However, an avoidance of fear shares the face of a coin with the pursuit of cheap pleasure. They flood their serotonin receptors with motivational content to keep the shadows of their mind at bay. The books they read distract from the thoughts of fear. The podcasts they listen to help to quiet the noise of their inadequacies. And the many conferences they attend blend them into the crowd and make them feel alone. Since it feels best in the moment, they want to appear to be changing to those around them. The praise for the appearance of development is enough to not improve at all. What they seek, more than metamorphosis, is self-gratification. And so the fire to make a change in their lives falters, flickers, and fades at every minor inconvenience or discomfort.
Internal motivation is an enduring flame. Within it holds the why of perseverance. It looks different for every person. At the core, the internally motivated individual has an implacable desire to actualize or fulfill, as closely as possible, their most realized self. It goes beyond the gratification of improvement alone. The lifetime goal is to better their relationship with themselves to live in harmony internally and with the world. There is no benefit to running away from pain in pursuit of cheap pleasure. They use the information within the self-help genre to audit and rectify the parts of themselves that stand to do harm. Through introspection, they keep the vision of who they aspire to be at the forefront of their mind and use knowledge as an aid to fulfill that vision. Self-help, as such, is merely a tool to this end–a wonderful tool but useless without a skilled hand. Once they have met a goal and show progress in a certain area of life, they move on seamlessly to the next pursuit.
Discipline. Self-help is hollow without the application of discipline. Those who fall victim to the consumerist personal development rat wheel are the people who do not apply the information they learn in strategic and actionable ways. There is a subconscious and subversive belief that being a vessel for information creates the osmosis of spontaneous action–it is the idea that if one finds the right piece of information, everything will fall into place of its own accord. With the hope of a miracle, the undisciplined person continues to gamble away their time consuming as much information as possible without any self-accountability. But the miracle never arrives and if the spark of inspiration does light upon them, it dies not long after. The magic words are never said that make the suffering of change worth the effort. These people waste away, lose faith in themselves over time by their inaction, and morph into eternal victims in which life never seems to give them a break.
Those who are committed to discipline know that the change they seek can only be brought about by their direct influence. They are intentional in the transmutation of knowledge into applied action. The books they read, the videos they watch, and the podcasts they listen to are synthesized through experimentation and commitment to the processes that yield the most progress. For example, if by introspection they determine that they need to work on their relationships, they will narrow down the input of information around their weakness and find actionable steps to improve. The knowledge they find is tested through direct action and experimentation and they integrate the best actions, rituals, and habits toward their goal. They track their progress in many different ways: meditation, journaling, art, habit trackers, etc. If they find they are not making progress through no fault of their own discipline to the solution, they pivot to experiment with something else that does work for their needs. This requires internally honest feedback and the mindfulness to observe how the world responds in kind. Through curiosity, trial and error, and an insatiable desire to actualize, disciplined people can see themselves through any challenge or hardship and the road to becoming who they wish to be.
The desire of humanity to pass down wisdom will never change. It is one of our best and most enduring qualities. However, through the influence of capitalism, that innate human desire to improve and share knowledge has metastasized into a monster of consumerism that feeds on fear, laziness, and the avoidance of pain. It has become a beast of burden. Despite this, how one interacts with the personal development industry will determine its usefulness. Yes, the self-help genre can be a conduit for lack of accountability, procrastination, and self-manipulation. And, over time, it sows seeds of distrust in one’s ability to commit to improvement. But, in the right hand of the person willing to commit to change, the self-help genre offers the greatest opportunity for personal development that a human can have access to. The often overwhelming amount of information is reigned and used in a way that optimizes for a specific purpose and goal. With introspection, motivation, and discipline, anyone can have access to the wisdom of the ages. Anyone can learn to tame their own beast by it.