why self-help books are ruining f*cking everything
[help yo self]
So you’ve decided to write a self-help book. Great, keep it to your f*cking self. Help yourself with it. That’s the meaning of self-help, no? Your meditations on how to become a better person are useless to anybody that is not you. But, that doesn’t mean they are not valuable.
It’s just that you need not litter the field with your personal f*cking hygiene products. You aren’t going to help anyone else towards anything other than learning to hate reading and becoming more discontented with the state that they are living in. A state that happens to be exactly where they need to be at this moment.
So stop trying to change people. You shouldn’t want to, even if you could. Because you are no better than the worst man, no worse than the best. You are just another human being. Yet you are trying to change people into your own image. God complex, much?
(Note: I’m painfully aware that my own God-complex is present here, as I attempt to tell you self-help writers what to do. But f*ck it, who cares. And The Paradox Press is an entirely new form, which I’ve decided to categorize as Self-UNhelpful. So somehow that makes me feel alright about it.)
But the bottom line is there is an entire generation of readers that now believe reading means being lectured at, thanks to the multitudes of self-help books that populate our collective landfills. They think reading means slogging through books telling you all the things you should be doing that you aren’t — and all the things that you shouldn’t be doing that you are. Where each page is painful. Where five pages is an accomplishment.
Learning how to be better. Smarter. More efficient. In better shape. How to stop being them, and start being someone else.
If I want to figure out how to be a better person, I’ll give some time to Marcus Aurelius — someone worth listening to. Because if I wanted to learn the ten habits of highly successful people, I’ll start with him. Whatever your career is, it pales in comparison with the former emperor of Rome. So, I’ll probably start there. Not with you. Haha.
I would never have found a love for reading if it meant tenuously turning the pages of a lecture on how to be a better person. I found a love for reading in Harry Potter, Dan Brown (yikes), and really any books that transported me into a different reality. I learned from these books because they weren’t trying to teach me anything.
Pick up a Jonathan Franzen, a Michael Chabon, or a Hemingway. Learn from the humanity that pours out of them — you know, the humanity that you’ve lost as you travel further and further from your fellow man through the perceived closeness that is offered on screens.
We all want to be better, but this is our journey. And apparently your journey is preying on people’s desires for self-improvement by peddling your prattle. You are the flashy tech product full of plastic that doesn’t work when it arrives, you are an instagram ad; you are a multi-level-marketing company, selling your lies of opportunity to vulnerable people.
The subtext in your books is always quite clear: you are not good enough in your current form. I do not care how many times you tell your reader to love themselves. A cheap f*cking saying. On the very next page, you are giving them the steps to become something else. In your mind, it might be a better something else, but that is in your mind. Empathy is the key. Not instructions.
Most people already love themselves too much anyways. In the same way that a new parent loves their child — it’s instinctive, and unavoidable. We all love the baby within; admire its uniqueness, coddle it when it’s fussy, pity it, placate it, feed it whatever it likes, etc. It is liking ourselves that is the problem. And feeling less-than-you is not the way to getting us to like ourselves more.
Plus, how much of your self-help advice is simply regurgitation? How much of it is truly original? You are the curator of something that is simply an amalgamation of all the things that people have tried to tell you over the years. Why not create something that is new, something that is inherently you?
The mental file cabinet of advice that I have been given and not followed is already overflowing. Most of ours are. I can’t fit anything else in there, nor would I want to even if I could. I’ve been given incredibly sage advice in my life — advice from people I trust; advice that is worth following. On the odd day that I wake up and decide to follow someone else’s recommendations, I will reach into that f*cking file cabinet before I reach into yours.
Do we need your advice? Or do you just need to take your own?
Want to know how to turn off the ears of pretty much anybody? Tell them what to do. There is a reason why the most effective forms of psychotherapy do not explicitly tell people what to do. They passively lead you to your own answers.
Giving me the answers is a gift that I do not want, and am not capable of receiving even if I did. I will find them for myself, and you go on finding them for yourself.
