I Read 235 Self-Help Books — Here’s What I Learned

Did they actually help me help myself?

Adele Arbi
Curious Compass

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Photo by Shiromani Kant on Unsplash

I am reading a new self-help book this week, The Diary of a CEO.

And it got me thinking, I must have read hundreds of these. Are they actually helping?

I got into the rabbit hole of figuring out how many I have read exactly and what impact they had.

Thanks to Goodreads, I learned I have read a total of 704 books in my lifetime, and 235 of them are in the self-help category.

Exactly one-third of my reading has been on learning how to help myself.

So did they work? Did they actually help me help myself?

Short answer, mostly yes.

Long answer, this story.

But first, what is a self-help book?

You will see below I mention books that don’t sound like motivational books we think of when we hear the term self-help because actually, self-help includes a diverse category of books.

A dictionary description of self-help is ‘the acts of helping or bettering oneself without the aid of others’. In the context of books, self-help is a form of coping with one’s personal problems without professional help. Therefore, all books that can…

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Adele Arbi
Curious Compass

A curious soul pondering and documenting life. Quran Student, Memoirist, Bibliophile, Explorer. 100% of my Medium earnings go to charity.