Tomorrow I’m 30. Here’s what 10 years of self-help thought me
By: G. G.
Tags: Meaninglessness, Birthday, Scams To Avoid, Self Help, Wasting Time

Photo by Jorge Ibanez on Unsplash

Ten years ago I started my self-help journey. The very first thing I learned was that time is the most precious resource, and if you are reading this type of content then you know this as well so right from the start, let me warn you — reading this post won’t save you time, won’t make you money, won’t show you a list of 7 self-help books that will change your life.

The main reason is that even though I’ve read over 30 self-help books, fallowed countless self-help blogs and seen a fair share of inspirational photos with great captions, I don’t remember most of them. This isn’t a bitter story either, I didn’t lose money, became part of a cult, quit a perfectly fine job or got COVID-19 while traveling the world. Nothing of this sorts happened, I’m writing this in order to reflect on the past 10 years.

It all started with me looking for tips on how to start a blog. I guess it’s fitting that I commemorate the last decade of my life by finally writing a blog post then.

The roads that lead to the goods and services offered by the self-help industry are many — no matter what you want to learn, you’ll inevitably be lead to someone explaining you how you can turn this into a business and how you can structure your free time, way of thinking and way of life in the pursuit of avoiding procrastination and being successful. Was this the thing you were looking for in the first place? It doesn’t matter, of course you want to be one of those success stories...

I realize that the way I structure these last sentences can seem a bit off — they imply that naïve and pure people are stumbling for the first time in a carefully curated trap set by the self-help industry. In reality, you probably aren’t walking into a dangerous or previously unexplored territory. You’ve heard a good amount of the quotes, advice and logic behind all those self-help narratives. And they are everywhere not due to a conspiracy, not due to someone trying to trap you into something but because the bar for entry is low, almost anyone can proclaim themselves a self-help expert, a guru, a success story or have the mighty “entrepreneur” tag. The demand for such advice is strong, after all isn’t money and success going to solve most if not all of your problems?

The problem is that the self-help content is rarely the solution. The success stores, list of 7 things successful people do before they go to bed, the endless tips, tricks and strategies act as a soothing lullaby that tells you everything is going to be ok as soon as you start waking up at 5 a.m., doing those daily rituals, make the right sacrifices and outsmart the people that surround you.

In many cases you are told the exact things you want to hear — you want to avoid people so of course the advice to quit social media and the quote “It’s lonely at the top. That’s why a Ferrari has 2 seats and a bus has 50.” hit you so well. College is scary, expensive and difficult? Have you heard about Steve Job’s story? Of course you have but let us just remind you of it one more time.

By reading such contest you do the exact thing you are told you shouldn’t be doing — wasting time because you are just rereading the same narrative over and over again as well as reading the solutions and advice you want to hear. So why do you do it? Do you fear that you will miss out an important part of the puzzle that will help you piece out your life together? Is it for inspiration, though has it ever truly inspired you before? Or is it because this self-help expert keeps putting out the same slightly moderated content because they can’t disappear of the face of the earth and expect that their book would still sell.

Ten years is a long time, and time helps you look back at things and be able to weight what had value and what didn’t. The thing is that reading self-help was almost a nonexperience. At a certain point all of the advice starts to blur. I didn’t have to keep reading it, it became just a media I consume for entertainment. I also started to realize that any value I might have gained from it initially is also questionable. At least for me. I don’t want to plan and measure time all the time. I want to do the things I want to do without necessarily looking for ways to monetize them. Is preforming those daily rituals, devoting your every free minute and every thought really going to make you a success story and even if it does, is it worth it, isn’t there more to life?