“Do this….”. “Do that… every day.”
I find that for something to be popular nowadays, it has to offer a solution or at least pretend to have one. And solutions are important! However, every piece of content nowadays seems to have traits of self-help books. They explain a negative human trait in easy-to-understand analogies and then suggest a rinse-and-repeat solution. Don’t forget to use one of the following: overcome, harness, or leverage. Ideally, all of them in that order.
How many pieces of “self-help” content are there in the world? My conservative estimate would be a lot! Yet both physical and mental health is going down the drain.
So what’s my beef with everything trying to have a solution? It positions itself automatically as something that works and should work for you. If that approach worked, we would just need one book! This somehow rings a bell.
Since there is a solution for everything in a form that fits into a TikTok video or one page of a book, how come most people keep buying more self-help books or trying to find inspiring content?
“There is nothing wrong with having a lot of them. Why should there be?” you ask.
The high demand for self-help material suggests that most of us don’t feel adequate and we feel like we’re not good enough. And now we see “solutions” all around the place, and we will try them out.
“I still don’t know why it’s bad…?”
We are drawn to self-help material for a reason, and the fact that there are hundreds or thousands of new books every year proves there’s a demand. You don’t get sucked into it when you feel good about yourself or when things are going well. You get there when you don’t feel good. When you feel like things are not going according to plan.
If you talk to someone, and they’re on their 10th solution over the last few years on how to solve their overthinking or how to be more successful (whatever that might mean), would you think that the person has been internally jolly the whole time? Or rather, do they feel that they have let themselves down for years and years because they can’t stick to some odd rules that were plucked out of thin air?
“Since there’s a solution, and the author says it works, why doesn’t it work with me?! Why am I such a piece of shit?! I fail over and over and over again!”
That might be a bit exaggerated, I’ll admit, but you would find a person who feels like that, and you wouldn’t have to go too far.
Why can’t we just be left to ponder? Let the thought grow and mature, and see where our consciousness takes it. What if we only need new information as a seed to grow somewhere slowly over the years, without any commitment or expectation? Just let our consciousness do its thing. Plant the right seeds and care for them over time.
Wait, that sounds like a solution. Fuuu….!
Just above average 