Photo by Gulom Nazarov on Unsplash

This Isn’t A Billionaire’s Guide To Self-Help

Breaking the cycle of self-help nonsense and actually growing.

Eric S Burdon
Published in
8 min readNov 17, 2023

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I — like so many other people — thought the wealthiest people in the world were great people. One person in particular that stood out to me was Steve Jobs.

I was a bit biased since my dad is a hardcore Apple fan — never once owning any Microsoft products ever when it came to computers. And to an extent, his exclusivity to Apple has rubbed off on me to the point I stick with Apple products and enjoy them for their simplicity.

And when I delved into self-help, that foundation formed the basis of me to think Steve Jobs was a pretty intelligent person and great visionary.

He was what entrepreneurs aspired to be.

These days, I know better than that. But the more I dig down into the rabbit hole of these individuals, the more I find them weird.

For one, Steve Jobs is more of a jerk than a genius with many of his colleagues describing plenty of situations where Jobs was more of a dick rather than this calm and pensive mind that many of his quotes portray him as.

And of course this isn’t just relegated to Steve Jobs. So many “successful” people have some unusual quirks to them.

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Eric S Burdon
Purposeful Life

I write (and sometimes do videos) about self-help for those who don't like self-help. Complete with the occasional memes and riffs on the industry that I love.