Self-help

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Self-help has become a massive industry.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand it is great that more people than ever are sharing knowledge and wisdom, and are able to build a living around doing so. I consume a lot of self-help books and material, and get a lot of value from others sharing their wisdom.

The issue is that most of us don't have personalised systems of learning that help us get the most out of this. The actual value of self-help falls away when we remove the self. We read a book and nothing changes, we start to implement some new ideas but can't keep the momentum going, or it just doesn't work for us.

Most self-help content is marketed as the solution to a problem or challenges that we face in the moment (and they are getting better at figuring out what this is). Some double down on this by inventing the problems that they purportedly will help us with (you are not rich enough, healthy enough, fit enough, attractive enough, productive enough, focused enough...). These are subtle attacks at our sense of self. Most of us are not equipped with the self-defence to protect our own mind from this.

Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be better in any of these areas of life. It is true that we could all be better, and should work to be better.

Many self-help resources provide great insights and wisdom. But we are more likely to pick up a book or be sucked into online videos on the topic that we are feeling the worst about in our life. The top of the mountain is likely to feel further away when we are feeling at our lowest. It is harder to be encouraged to take the first step or keep going.

It is ironic that the wisdom that we need the most is often the most difficult to implement. The flip side is that information that feels less relevant when we are not going through a personal crisis related to the topic, we are often not primed to absorb, and so it is easily forgotten, and harder for us to get future value from it.

It seems to me that strengthening our mental models is important to fight the reactionary approach to solving our own problems. The best way I've found so far is to build the feedback loops of self-directed learning systems and self-reflection, as our own self-help tools.