Why doesn't "self help" work?

"What...you thought you'd read something profound here?!" -- Phil Schwa

Since the 70s, "self help" has become a friggin' industry! And just like the "diet industry", it works well for just enough people so they can get their before-and-after shots to sell us more snake oil bullshit. So why do people keep buying it if it doesn't work? And why doesn't it work?

First, let's make an important distinction. Books like "Why Some Men Are Weinies, and Why Their Women Coddle Them" are self-help books, as are gems like "Women Are From Venus, Men Are From Mars, and Your Mother-in-law Is From Uranus." However, books like "Think and Grow Rich!" and "The Power of Possibility Thinking" are motivational books, even though they sometimes get lumped together at the bookstore.

The only reason I'm making this distinction is this: while both kinds of books tend to not ultimately give us what we want, they fail to do so for somewhat different reasons.

The primary reasons self-help doesn't work are:

1. People don't give it enough time. No matter how motivated you are, and how well you understand the material presented, it takes real time and effort to incorporate those changes into your life. Face it: if you were a natural at doing all those things, then you'd be doing them already, Junior!

2. The program assumes certain prerequisite conditions. This is probably the biggest reason self-help doesn't help. Some people cannot benefit from self-help instruction because they are simply not ready. And the usual way they are not ready is that they lack a sufficient level of self-esteem to enable them to make use of the program. Without this, they don't have the skills and stamina to apply and utilize the suggestions. (More on this later).

3. Many of these books are written more to be saleable than to be helpful. The authors have to distinguish themselves and this work, so they write something a little more sensational, then spend a lot of their promotion time (and book chapters) convincing people that this particular twist applies to them. Seriously: how many guys do you think really suffered from that "Peter Pan/Wendy" crap from a couple of decades ago? If it was "real", don't you think that stinker would still be selling gangbusters?! This is also why you see many fewer books about healing esteem problems than there should be -- because it's too "ordinary", and certainly not "popular" or terribly newsworthy.

And that's the great thing about being a Question Guy: sometimes the "answer" to a good question is discovering that you need to keep asking questions, to keep going "back" to get at the root of the issues.

Try to get some sleep!

Phil