This Isn’t A Billionaire’s Guide To Self-Help
Breaking the cycle of self-help nonsense and actually growing.
I — like so many other people — thought the wealthiest people in the world were great people. One person in particular that stood out to me was Steve Jobs.
I was a bit biased since my dad is a hardcore Apple fan — never once owning any Microsoft products ever when it came to computers. And to an extent, his exclusivity to Apple has rubbed off on me to the point I stick with Apple products and enjoy them for their simplicity.
And when I delved into self-help, that foundation formed the basis of me to think Steve Jobs was a pretty intelligent person and great visionary.
He was what entrepreneurs aspired to be.
These days, I know better than that. But the more I dig down into the rabbit hole of these individuals, the more I find them weird.
For one, Steve Jobs is more of a jerk than a genius with many of his colleagues describing plenty of situations where Jobs was more of a dick rather than this calm and pensive mind that many of his quotes portray him as.
And of course this isn’t just relegated to Steve Jobs. So many “successful” people have some unusual quirks to them.
I can understand some unique habits that can bolster productivity. But Steve Jobs routinely performed some weird habits.
There was a time he was eating nothing but carrots. By extension, Jobs also was a vegan and dabbled heavily into fruitarian diets (eating nothing but fruit).
He would also go for weeks without bathing and relieved stress by soaking his feet in toilet water.
And while any normal person confessing these habits would be weird in and of itself, the fact it was a successful and visionary genius makes these habits compelling. It’s along the same lines as intermittent fasting being touted by tech bros who claim the diet made them more productive.
Many of these individuals have cult-like followings and Jobs wasn’t the only one leveraging it.
He might’ve been the first, but people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and so many others use similar tactics as him. They have followers who will gladly repeat quotes or clips entirely out of context as these deep truths about reality and how to grow or be a better person.
There are so many people who have devoted themselves to spewing out motivational porn that affirms a billionaire’s mindset. They’ll repackage interviews, speeches, and various books to lifehacks that are easily sharable to the rest of the world.
And people will buy into them. Because, deep down, we kinda want to be like them.
And that way of thinking has been perpetuated by self-help for decades. It’s painted an image that woo-woo vision boards, manifestation, and raw individualism is the way of the world. The masters of the universe who have “made it” fully understand that and have played that game.
We call those people billionaires.
To reject or question this overall structure makes you a fool. A loser. A negative person. Someone who doesn’t understand how the world works.
But looking at Steve Jobs and his unusual habits, or the multiple hoops and logic that Elon Musk fans take to defend his Twitter purchase, or the fact lawyers are going after a comedian over the amount of money their client lost on a failing social media site really makes me think all of this is bizarre.
These individuals are the peak of humanity? Truly?
Because when I look at these people, I feel nothing but pity for those who want to die on that hill thinking that these people are great and worth emulating.
If You Want To Be Rich, You Can’t Do It Alone
Ever since self-help became popular it instilled ideas of individualism and continues to do so with each crisis. The most famous starting point is the popularity of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Through his book, during the time of the Great Depression, he encouraged readers to being more personable and that was the route to success.
Next was Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich where he encouraged people to write out how much money they wanted to make and the means of getting it. The emphasis was on manifestation to the point you would do what needs to get done. This book came at a time where there was a rise of economic insecurity. The book is still popular today primarily because we’re still in economically sensitive times.
But the peak that we are at right now has shifted away from the spiritual aspect to associating ourselves with business infleunces. Primarily because we’re so scared of downsizes, mass layoffs and late-stage capitalism exploitations. As a result, we herald those with different perspectives or people who make an effort to soothe the workers.
We like people like Dan Price who speak out about corporate greed. And for a lot of us we were blindsided by who Price actually is. We vie to be working for companies that offer Buddhist seminars or offer great vacation packages for workers. We like influential people to stress the importance of optimism and thinking positively.
And while I won’t argue that these things are inherently bad — after all, I was a Dan Price fan and would love a vacation one of these days — it’s made us complacent and vulnerable to various agendas and implications.
Such as the idea that self-help is something we can only do on our own.
And it’s easy to think that way, especially when you look to those “great entrepreneurial minds”. Because for years now these famous entrepreneurs have been putting out books on everything beyond business.
And now, CEOs are paid over 300 times more than a typical worker.
And it was only 70 or so years ago where the gap was much smaller.
For many of us, we believed this to be that CEOs work way more than the typical worker. After all, you have Elon Musk touting that he works 80 hours a week and other things like that.
He’s a “self-made billionaire”. He had grit. He worked on himself.
No. What he and so many other CEOs did was exploit workers. Obviously CEOs would make a killing if they workers since those times were getting raises in the nickels and dimes every few months for several decades.
The only reason we fell for that is because while all that happened, big name entrepreneurs released book after book pushing a positive and individualistic mindset. That this is what it takes to be prosperous. And they used their own exploitation tactics to gaslight people that individual focus and positive thinking is the way.
When in reality what has helped us so much time and time again is working together. After all, those CEO’s theories would’ve crumbled if workers saw those stagnated wages and simply stopped working.
What is a more effective strategy that we’ve seen has been working together. It’s why unions right now are making big victories because people are tired of being exploited. They know what’s going on.
They know billionaire positivity gospel is bullshit.
Sometimes We Stumble Into Our Own Growth And Prosperity
These stories work wonders because in the billionaire’s world, growth and their success stems from a meritocratic and rational outlook. It makes sense since it feels like it’s grounded in reality.
Work hard. Hustle all you want. Pour your soul into your work and you’ll get there. Every big name entrepreneur did exactly that.
That sort of messaging is effective because we don’t often question where someone’s wealth comes from. What their actual story is.
Because the reality is very few of these wealthy individuals actually were rag-to-riches story. Many had rich parents, went to incredible schools, and inherited their wealth because their parents didn’t want to transfer that wealth to the government.
They had several advantages that they were simply born into.
Better success stories come from people that we have never heard of. The people in your community. Your neighbours even. People that don’t draw that much attention to their wealth because their lifestyle is so modest.
How those people made it to that position to have that much wealth has good chances of coming down to one thing.
They had a lucky break.
But lucky breaks don’t really sell that much. It doesn’t fit with the gritty, work hard, grindfest that billionaires present in their books. It’s contradictory to the entire regimen. That’s why those stories aren’t often brought up. That’s why you have to dig for them.
But the reality isn’t what billionaires proclaim. Growth happens as a result of your actions, sure. But to actually witness it and experience it takes time.
It’s those small habits you do every day. It’s the small steps you take. It’s working through the mindset of getting something done even if nothing happens that day.
To “maximize” those growths is to stoop to billionaire’s levels by exploiting those around them. To gaslight to others those ultra-wealthy deserve to be there because of their contributions.
And sure some of those contributions are helpful in some cases. In niche situations, maybe their foundations were actually helpful.
But they’re wrong. If they were right, then why is that so many people are poor? If everything was based on how hard you are working, why aren’t small business owners making millions? Why are there millions of people in poverty? Why are teachers and nurses underpaid? Why are service workers who keep our entire ecosystem functional paid so much less and have to put up with so much crap every day?
Growth in the face of these sorts of things doesn’t alway come from putting in the work. Sometimes it’s taking a step in a different direction and trying something new. To make another attempt at something that didn’t work before.
To see maybe if we get lucky this time and get the ball rolling towards something better for ourselves.
Self-help is an industry that will continue to stick around and change with the times. As long as we face issues, self-help is going to provide some kind of answer. But despite its name, self-help is something that we are allowed to frame however we so choose.
It’s what we think is helpful for us sure. But that doesn’t mean we are the only people who can help ourselves or deal with the various issues in the world.
The current form of self-help, spurred by billionaires and peddled by many prolific self-help gurus, isn’t the best solution. It leads to a lot of guilt-tripping and gaslighting. If you fail it’s because you didn’t try hard enough. That or gurus prey on people’s own guilt for putting things off or being in these difficult situations that honestly were mostly due to systemic issues or out of ones control.
We’re already feeling the long-term impact of listening to what billionaires think is the best way to live one’s life. It sounds good since it’s so relentlessly optimistic. But a billionaire’s guide to living your best life is one where you need to suspend your belief on so many things.
This isn’t a billionaire’s guide to living a billionaire’s life. It’s being practical and thinking about what billionaires have said over the years and what they are actually doing. What they have to say on this matter is nothing but self-help nonsense.
Take it from someone who now thinks Steve Jobs is a very weird man rather than a brilliant visionary.
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