Self-Help Books are Dead

I will be the first to admit that I was a devout believer in the self-help genre.

The industry is lucrative because of the eternal need to solve personal pains.

But I will never forget the moment the inner switch occurred when I believed the Self-help genre was dead for me.

I was chatting with a friend one night about the exciting new code languages being developed.

Being a non-coder, I wanted to offer something interesting to the conversation that I felt was profound.

I shared how my friend needed to read this one book [will omit because the book still holds value to others] to improve his overall mindset.

His immediate response changed me forever;

“They are all the same. Once you read a few you’ve read them all”

Flustered and in denial I wanted to retaliate to question his dismissiveness.

But then I took a moment to really think about it…

In all the books there was common themes, parables, stories, and lessons.

They all pointed to a core [somewhat vague] description.

To summarize the realization, I feel this quote does it best;

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” — Hunter S. Thompson

The point is to get on in life you must be real and brutally honest about what you are going to achieve and then go to work to accomplish it.

I realized the amount of time I was spending reading these books versus taking action, blindly thinking I was making progress.

A delusion that I believe we may fall into [tutorial hell!].

The good news is that the creator community in the past 5 years has unanimously shifted its approach to self-improvement via the ‘taking ownership’ method.

→ Action, results, learn, more action, better results, repeat.

I no longer think that 150-page storytelling fluff in a book is useful to convey a point.

That is the beauty of the creator [especially twitter] community.

Let’s get to it.

Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog