We have great faith in authority. It doesn’t matter if it’s something Einstein once said about physics, we’ll apply it somehow to self-help as long as it sounds good.
Ultimately, self help advice comes from one of two sources: people who are already successful, or people who want to be successful. The people who are already successful give advice that are, from their vantage point, good.
But success comes from more than just the simple principles that they lived by, doesn’t it? It comes from IMMENSE amounts of dedication, hard work, blind faith, and luck. For every person that comes out on top saying “it’s because I believed in myself” or “I couldn’t have done it without passion” or “give 100% and never look back”, there’s a few thousand who believed in themselves immensely into a world of hurt.
Not all Entrepreneurs end up millionaires, and most of the “secrets to success” are really quite boring– be prepared to not have more than 4 hours of sleep a day, invest heavily in a ruthless lawyer, if your best friend business partner is unnecessary, cut him out. Pinch every possible penny, work twice as hard as your competition.
Oh, and pray. Because often the best that exists is best simply because they arrived at a better time than their competition, who works just as hard as they do (and believed in themselves just as much).
A lot of self-help advice end up being self-help advice not because they’re the best, but because they’re easier to sell. No one wants to read a book about how the protagonist worked against all odds but also had a trust fund parachute. We prefer John McCain as a war hero than a man who cheated on his wife with a richer (and better connected) woman, and we prefer Barack Obama as a visionary of the community over the guy who won against his opponents through legal technicalities.
A more honest self-help advice book would be filled with “Pursue your dreams– when your current plans aren’t working out”, “Be yourself, but learn to be a more presentable self”, “Give your best, and convince others to give their best before you sacrifice them”, and “Write your book of success BEFORE you succeed, it’s much easier to convince people to give you money that way”.
And that’s ultimately the goal of the UNimprovement blog– it’s here to help you realize that there’s nothing wrong with nice quotes to hang on your wall, but not only is it insufficient, it will sometimes guide you onto the wrong path. See self-help for what it really is: that friend of yours who’s always obsessed with sharing and positivity, but disappear when you need someone to help you move.
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