The Toxic World of Self-Help

The following chart shows how our motivational thermostat is set. We have a default level — higher for some, lower for some. While consuming any kind of self-help content it goes up, it stays up for a while, and eventually, it dips and falls back to its default position.

Yet, the world is filled with self-help and motivational content — books, videos, seminars, coaching sessions, and whatnot. Why is that? Is it because the Self Help industry knows that it can keep us hooked, and is serving us small hits of dopamine to make us feel good, just like a drug dealer does. Who is self-help really helping — the people consuming the content in the ones creating and marketing it? Think about the book called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, it is 224 pages long. Isn’t it ironic? This is the same with a lot of books — these are essays inflated into books.

I found this video a while ago and it resonated with me and I have been meaning to make a sketchnote of it but just couldn’t get around to it. Now I can see that I was not the only one it resonated with, there are so many videos on youtube now that slam the fake gurus and the motivation industry.