Are Self-help Books Nothingburgers?

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Gowdy, your order is ready.  Democratic Underground
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Self-help books are essentially 300 pages when the crucial point can be said in a sentence, of course, the more examples you have the better it will be to see how you can act on it yourself (eg. actionable advice), but at the same time, when is such a reading a distraction in the way that TikTok is a distraction?

Metalearning is important, but when you have a book that somehow makes a blog post into an entire 300 page book, they are clearly more concerned with selling than genuinely giving advice. Bookselling is a predatory industry, and self-help is the easiest genre to sell (you frankly don't need any skill or expertise in anything (Rich Dad Poor Dad author is giving financial advice despite battling bankruptcy and the only reason he stays afloat is because he sold a best seller and sells advice that ends up making him money again if people do act on said advice (a double combo that is pretty pog for him ) , which brings me into this fact, some self-help gurus have nothing going for them other than being self-help gurus.

I will say, however, that a few books are genuinely good in spite of that (Cal Newport is a decent author and a great person, I would recommend reading his blogs). I'd just read Philosophy & Psychology instead, most of self-help is commercialized stoicism, which is just one system of looking at the world and how you should act as a being inside of the world (or worlds, or no world? Philosophy gets pretty weird sometimes).

Overall, this is just my take, I still like some books considered self-help, but there's a reason there is an influx in it and the reason is not to give advice to the general public, there are other forms such as blogs, forums, etc... (youtube is even worse than books in regard to credibility, at least to write a book you have to be literate)



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7 comments
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Hot a single comment with discussion, hehe.
I did read one book by Louise Hay ('Heal Yourself' was the name...) in my later teen years - my ex advised and PR-ed it to me... I was left with some strange and gloomy aftertaste, and decided not to dive into such stuff again :D

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I wonder out of all posts I made how you ended up reading this one:)

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I cant say really, why I was attracted... lets say: my little caprice?.. 😜

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