Are all self-help books bullshit? I need to know

>why do so many people need help?! Life is not that complicated. You get up, you go to work, eat three meals, you take one good shit and you go back to bed. What’s the fucking mystery?!

>And the part I really don’t understand, if you’re looking for self help, why would you read a book, written by somebody else?! That’s not self help, that’s help!

>There’s no such a thing as self help…if you did it yourself, you didn’t need help. You did it yourself!

>Based Carlin

>>8700777
Not if they help you or make you happy (whatever that means). Im a very cynical person but reading pop psych makes me feel better sometimes. I just dont go in to them with the attitude that it'll change my life or make me smarter. If it's a good one it helps you do the self illumination rather than some didactic shit or someone hoping that itll give them answers.

>>8700777
They're bullshit because of the very nature of the idea of what they sell.
Its the propositions that the problems in our lives are dependent on mistaken life strategies despite the fact we all have spent a vast amount of time considering these matters and have recieved a vast amount of information relating to them.
All this has come together to establish what we believe to be the optimum life strategy available to us based on our personal interests and habbits.

Thus the problem practically all people have is not that we lack the right strategy its that we all subconscious drives to both self defeat and not fail to live up to what we know already to be the "optimum" thing to do.
Understanding these drives and overcoming them are more complicated and too personal to be derived from a book which promises to sell one size fits all strategies to a mass market

>>8700783
good post

>>8700783
>>reddit

>>8700830
People just don't know enough psychology. I pretty much figured out how to fix my shit after reading Kevin Hogan's books. Mostly just understanding that everything is based in physical movement, sex, and food and that if you aren't linking one of those to what you're doing then you're failing at change.
>>8700816
>pop psych makes me feel better.
This is why motivational speakers are a thing. All big businesses have them. They always see a huge boost of profits for awhile after one of those events. Motivational speakers are almost always worth the money.

Self-help books are the same. It's a drug. You get one, it works for awhile, then you usually keep buying them. Everyone into self-help is like that, nobody actually fixes their shit from that stuff and if they do it's totally unrelated to the book.

So the answer actually is yes, they do work, but yes, they are bullshit.

>>8700777
They're helpful because not everyone has great teachers or role models or mentors. I am fortunate to have had a few good mentors, including my father. But he like everyone else has flaws so there were clearly holes in his teaching. For example hes not a very social guy which has probably helped lead me to becoming a meme lord here. But I can make use of the wisdom of authors to correct some of my faults.

Definitely not a fix all and they ultimately require discipline like anything else.

>>8701868
>meme lord
where did you hear this term? Or are you just subbing it from edgelord?

Most self help books just consists of common sense. However, sometimes when you are lost, it helps to have common sense spelled out for you.

>>8701873
I'm not sure if I read it elsewhere or if its an original synthesis of "meme master" and "edgelord". I'm sure someone else has used the phrase "meme lord" before.

Self-help books marketed as such will always fail on the long-term. They conform to the problems of the majority. The problems of the majority can be answered by a single sentence: "Do it/don't do it you stupid shit!"
This is the summary of most self-help books. They present this single sentence with anecdotes, examples, and shitty literature. The reason they work on the short-term is the motivation you get from these these words, hammered at your head by some third rate writer who wanted to make some easy buck. It's like watching motivational videos, and thinking "Wow, I wanna do that! I want to change! Tomorrow, then!"... and then you end up doing nothing. In the rare case when you do, you can't keep it up as a habit, your motivation dwindles, you're back to ground zero.

Problem is, motivation is nothing without self-control and discipline. This is why they don't work. It can not be taught. You can read about the positives and recognize their importance, but in the end it comes down to your power of will, which is presumably lacking if you're reading self-help books.
If you don't lack the willpower, then you don't need self-help books.

This is why you can safely assume that people who read self-help books are "weak" and useless, looking for answer in 250 pages instead of lifting their ass. There are exceptions of course, but in general I found this to be true.

Reading literally anything else might get you better results. I can assure you that there are millions who read a book, self-reflected, and came to some completely unrelated conclusion that helped them as a person. They just don't talk about it, because honestly it's kinda retarded.
For example I read lots of Dosto after a rough breakup, and I thought: "All this suffering, and I'm depressed because my bitch acts like a bitch."

>>8700777

When I think about 'self-help', I only think of the first 'self-book' - Self-Help by Samuel Smiles.

Have I finished the book - no. Yet, from reading the preface, I found something beautiful within the notion and it is something that modern self-help books ignore.

Smiles recounts how a few poor lads recognized that each knows something that the others didn't. They began organizing among their small group to co-educate. One of the lads would give a lecture or a talk or a demonstration of something he knows and next week another lad amongst the group would be likewise. The group grew and grew until they were a some one hundred persons attending these events. Smiles was approached by the organizers for him to speak to them.

This story is what I think of when I hear the term self-help. Help is not something we can generate for ourselves - we can maintain and decline, only the special stars among us can improve in isolation. We need community. We need the support of our peers, our friends, and our families. The tricky part is finding the golden gems among us and sticking with them.

Find a few good men and women in your community, Anon. Find them, befriend them, and commit yourselves to improving each other's lives - hold each other accountable and be there to pick them up.

That is the true meaning of self-help.