Why You Should Be Skeptical of Most Self-Help Advice (Serious Warning)

They are loudspeakers and billboards aiming to distract you.

There is no shortage of self-help advice on here, I am sure everyone is having a fair share of them on their feed right now. I perfectly understand the reason Medium got big and popular was in part because of the initial success of self-help articles and the people writing them — a tale of read for read, stats for stats, things just kept growing in numbers.

Numbers are what make or break this world. Self-help became trendy a decade or two ago when the global GDP trend still looked “promising”, while the climate and ecological crises still looked manageable. It was the same decade as “start-up”, “innovation”, and “change-maker”, I was bombarded with these buzzwords 24/7 when I was still young and inexperienced. The sheer number of glossy success advice made the dream of becoming a self-made b/millionaire living a stress-free life very much achievable (especially if you live in the wealthy West). It was a decade of hope, and it did light up a glimmer of hope in me too. Hope sells.

Lo and behold, reality kicked in during the last few years. Some did get lucky but many of us, poor or middle-class, pale or tanned, men or women, have all slowly discovered the farce of “how to live your dream life by following these 5 tips”, or the wishy-washy New Age “quantum” intellectual babbles, all disguised under the manufactured inequality of the giant pyramid scheme known as capitalism (where the primary investment is time and energy vs. momentary pleasure as return).

Question: Ever wondered why most self-help best sellers and viral articles are from America or the other FVEY countries?

Answer: Marketing — being loud and shameless.

Flocks of “self-made” gurus/coaches placed a bet and won, at least for now. It was a gamble that cashed in on the universal animal tendency of dopamine spike during the anticipation of success/reward, not the actual success itself. Marketeers have known it for a long time even before neuro-scientists. Intentional or not, what most self-help advice does is shoot up all your feel-good neuro-transmitters up front, and leave you crippled when expectation doesn’t match reality later. When this happens time and again, you gradually become desperate to seek more and more help. That’s their lucky decade.

Did you see a pattern? It’s the same old tale of harnessing short-term pleasure at the expense of long-term contentment — a ubiquitous scene in the modern world of capitalistic idiocracy. I hate to say this cliché, but with age does come certain wisdom, some of us slowly realized that one cannot cheat Nature in the long run, although a few lucky folks might shed an illusion of hope. Nature always (yes, always) slaps you back, hard.

The friable dopamine streak hits home once you finally “learned learned-helplessness”, at which point your self-improvement endeavor comes to a halt and defeat, along with your confidence and morals — leaving you even more confused than before you embarked on the journey of “improvement”.

But why do we fall for it?

1. The mindless scrollers

Out of boredom, the untrained eyes automatically click on “How to adjust your mindset, sit on your arse and earn 6-figure” or “Do these 3 morning routines to eliminate all your worries”, without your conscious mind even registering it (let’s be honest, we’ve all been there). That’s when our subconscious brain has decided a threat, an attractive mate, or a valuable resource is in front of us, i.e., something worth our attention — they are tricking our ancient reflexes.

Once you’ve gone through the tips, you might be pleased that they repeated things you already believe (confirmation bias lights up dopamine circuitry), or you might just have a laugh at how generic and shallow the advice is, either way, it didn’t waste you that much time, 3 minutes at most perhaps.

And this is a problem.

Don’t you think that an endless amount of articles nowadays are so short, so short to the point of being pointless (except for the purpose of click for click, stat for stat)? Don’t get me wrong, I am a proponent of being concise, and I believe the length of most books and essays can be cut substantially. But not that short to the point it is under-researched and under-analyzed, which feeds into our ongoing collective crisis of shortened attention span, hence more and more people become mindless scrollers.

Notice another pattern? Our obsession with short articles i.e., quick tips and shortcuts resembles our throwaway culture built on false hope at large. That’s also the default way businesses have been earning big bucks — by selling cheap, sensationalized, planned-obsolete stuff. While your pleasure neurotransmitters may be spiking, the stats page and bank account of the gurus are also spiking. In fact, they are undergoing the same pleasure cycle as you, only one that is bigger and more potent. To be fair, I would also ride on a high horse in their shoes — they must have inevitably come to believe in the dream of self-made b/millionaires themselves.

What to do about it? While they trick into our ancient reflex and dopamine circuitry, new counter reflexes can just be established as easy — just ask yourself this one question before wasting your attention on something undeserving: what valuable knowledge can I get out of a clickbaity article on a supposedly serious topic such as health or life success in mere 3 minutes (≈ 750 words)? Most likely none. If you learn to do this step, congratulations, your new “skepticism” reflex arc is now activated.

2. Ye who need help

(Note: Ye is the archaic plural of “you”, and God knows who else) Another category is those who are dissatisfied with their current state and genuinely seeking help or improvement, I have a lot of sympathy for them. Everyone needs words of encouragement and empathy, which quite frankly the world is lacking. That’s why young men worship Jordan Peterson. Articles and videos that assure and motivate you that you really can be the top dog living your dream life are one very powerful drug and that’s why it can be hard to get off like real addiction.

The ultimate reason why so many are hooked to motivational hopium is that it is hard to see the light in this confusing world, those self-help articles/videos appear to be the easiest recognizable, well-lit path for people to climb up. It is like finding a wooden pallet in the middle of an ocean at night, next to a sinking ship — it is a safe house, a reassurance that your life is not going to end in vain.

Individualism kills. We all need to work to create a new norm of empathy and community, where people won’t be “surprised” whenever they receive the slightest encouragement or care, that’s the “help” we actually need right there — an environment that doesn’t predispose people to desperately need help in the first place. If instead, we leave this shared work of common good i.e., empathy and encouragement to a few outspoken gurus, it is no wonder that they are going to churn out repetitive preaches to earn big bucks.

Find an answer, not a cure

Wooden pallets are not the light itself either. Slowly, you realize that you are still drifting aimlessly and longing for an answer. That’s right, we all should treat whatever problems we have as questions. A question demands a thorough investigation and rational thinking — the process of finding answers is itself a powerful meditative exercise. The shift from a self-help journey to an intellectual journey is like lighting up a torch to actively find resources and direction to navigate the dark ocean, instead of clinging to the closest wooden pallet and drifting on it. Question your own judgment if you find yourself always focusing on a “fix or treatment”, that’s a gateway to self-indulgence and endlessly finding faults in yourself.

To close, sometimes having tips and rules cluttering your mind is precisely the thing blocking you from a meaningful life. You stayed in a spiral of re-living another person’s tale, overthinking every decision, and ending up not being able to make one with true intention. By pure logic, no amount of tips would help you if you fail to make that first stride. Want that dream job? Work hard to acquire the required skill and experience. Want that cute person to be your life partner? Go for it and work on building mutual trust and satisfaction. Want to keep overthinking? Fine too, then be the best thinker of all! Overthinking is only a problem if you don’t know what to think about — ask Einstein if he has a problem with overthinking. Think towards an answer, not a cure, my friend.

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