[stoicShell]

Disclaimer / TL;DR: This got out of hand. Too much time on my hands that I didn't have, today. Anyway.

The gist is: yes, there's crap in "self-help", but it's the current name for "the practical, applied branch of philosophy", i.e. methods and principles to live well, to cope, to grow, to grieve, to become. A rather ancient human tradition... There's no other name for that, as we speak. I don't think it's helpful nor relevant to blanket-judge an entire domain in such strong terms.

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[Long version]

Wait, what?

What an impeccable way to grossly reduce an entire aspect of life —becoming, getting 'better', knowing oneself— to just about the shallowest, most commercial tip of the iceberg.

But then, how shall we call the "better methods"? See, there's a tension in vocabulary here that I'm not sure one perceives when criticizing "self-help" (been there myself, before I learned better).

Philosophy at the turn of the 20th century became a purely abstract object of academic study (doing away almost completely with the millennial tradition of "philosophy as life recipes, simple practices and principles to live well and better cope with things"). The real-world / "applied" branch of philosophy has now been excised the confines of universities and professors, and has been termed "self-help". Most people no longer know (forgotten recently, a century ago) that philosophy had forever been practical first and foremost, theoretical maybe as a distant secondary / academic concern; also that it was actually taught and practiced by every day people (life was harsher, and admittedly required a little bit more psycho-maintenance given the brutality of both nature and men). Montaigne, things like that. But we somehow took offense at the apparent "simplicity" or "narrow-mindedness" of simple, "common sense" maxims and principles — the 20th century was to be positively analytical to a fault, or it wouldn't be.

Self-help, what little actual widespread practice remains of ancestral philosophy today, is just a word. Just like putting spiritual or sci-fi terms on the same concepts doesn't in any way change their value (or lack thereof).

So self-help literally designates "the oldest, practical branch of philosophy" (as opposed to the theoretical studies taught for the obtention of degrees: see the rift between a random student working to get some 3-year degree and get on to journalism or politics or whatever versus someone— you, me —facing trials in life, searching for the deeper answers inside themselves...) Theory for the student seeking good grades, but a much more "physical" experience for all of us eventually.

Self-help as we find it today is quite literally the remnants of a battle-tested accumulation of thousands of years of learning to "deal with it" (in the very words of e.g. Ancient Stoics). If you read texts from 2,500 years ago or today's good flavor of the month, the similarities are striking — people remain people and that doesn't change at all in less than 10 or 100,000 years.

So if you mean that the good parts of "methods" should be called philosophy I agree, but again the term has now long been confiscated by academia (and to think philosophy is not science, it shouldn't be gated as such). Thus the term has become a turn-down for most people (like they perceive e.g. math: too abstract, analytical, boring, and absolutely not "educating" or "self-elevating" in any useful sense of the term unless it's for your job).

2,500 years since Pythagoras and Aristotle and here we are, by all accounts not much better at educating children and adults alike (just many more, that is a victory in economic terms). But I digress.

So we're left with "self-help". It's an umbrella word, an alley name for stores, who cares that there's poop in-between diamonds in there — the former's existence doesn't make the latter any less valuable. Actually, diamonds grow in poop at the end of the day — maybe some books are great precisely because the author was appalled like you today and me yesterday, and perhaps what stands between you and me today is just the read of one such 'great' book, profound enough to change you like great philosophy does¹.

I mean, not all programming books and courses are great either, and yet... we doubled the developer population every N months for 70 years quite steadily... 'Perfect' can sometimes be the enemy of 'good', especially on hard problems like the general becoming of human beings.

The problem we face is that any 'general' account of 'how to live well' must go through so many fields (some sciences, some not really, some cultural...) that it's virtually impossible to find a good name without emphasizing one too much over the rest — psycho-something, philo-stuff, evolutionary biology (i.e. social theory of information aka genes and behaviors), etc.

I see your problem, but I don't see a solution — change the name and the iceberg will follow, like the xkcd on standards. Gate it behind a "scientific" framework and suddenly half your objects are AWOL, N/A, no can do. Great to publish as a scholar but you just lost 99% of the effectiveness generally — as Joseph Campbell showed us so eloquently, culture matters to the making of mature beings.

Besides, there's this truth: the only one who will ever really "see" you is you. "Looking inside" is an exercise that only ever has one subject-object in life, your own self, and no one else, not in nor out. "Self-help", or "self-whatever", is a rather straightforward way to convey the idea: only you can help yourself.

In many ways, the word is much closer to its object than ‘philosophy’ ever was as an ontology².

Note that I personally opted to say "self-growth" for myself, partly inspired by this very book, and to differentiate my general synthesis from the trash you decry; but you should know also that I chose a different term precisely to avoid having to defend the value of my "principles" (by having to explain association by name with otherwise trashy content). Do you see the conundrum here? What good I found is hard to share because of the stigma perpetuated by such views/comments as yours, because the source is somehow lesser. But the blanket judgment is no more valid than saying "all Americans are..." or "all women are..."

The real trick is to brucelee through life: “take the best, leave the rest”. If one only intends to learn from Shakespeare-Plato level of execution, a lot will be missed. Most notably everything that science will not or cannot consider as an object for good reasons, that might yet "work" for you. The dirty (I think wonderful) secret in philosophy as in medicine is that a good two thirds of positive results are placebo effects. The art is about becoming a master writer of such effects for oneself —which requires intricate knowledge of the subject. In that sense, even bad books teach you about yourself — that's when anything external ceases to be an excuse but becomes a welcome obstacle, a worthy trial, XP to gain if you will.

As for blue-pill / red-ill, I don't have the faintest idea how it's related to this topic. I haven't looked for years at what these people are saying, but the core take-away³ applied to a rather limited subset of philosophy; so sure learning about RP/BP dynamics is part of self-growth⁴, but it's like hard drives vs computers, different level of objects.

Sorry for a long, but hopefully informative, rambling / post.

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[1]: If I had to pick one, I personally recommend Stephen Covey's famous "7 habits" — as one of the best philosophy manuscripts I've ever read, it's just as good as the best Hellenist/Roman stuff.

[2]: Ontology = how linguists call a "namespace". (not the other meaning, related to metaphysical philo-stuff blabla). Notice that "philo sophia" (the love or pursuit of wisdom) is the general goal / process, whereas "self help" ("help yourself and the sky will help you") is already embedding a practical lesson in its very name: knowing the name is already enough to spread this one idea. It's very powerful, I think, sociologically.

[3]: That we should teach and learn "purple pill" or some higher-third way, not that you would hear it much but really it's the synthesis of this whole 'movement' IMHO.

[4]: My advice: skip RP/BP and move directly to evolutionary biology. The Moral Animal by R. Wright is a fantastic book.

[avindroth]

Cool. You know a lot about this topic. I didn't connect self-help with philosophy turning super analytical in the early 1900s, that's interesting.

My opinion is more from just my experience with self-help, and others who were also really into it. Self-help, and people engaged in it, have an undercurrent of anxiety. But that's just my experiential knowledge of it (I would say the same for psychology and philosophy majors).

Also I wouldn't place Marcus Aurelius or Aristotle or some of my favorite philosophers under the umbrella of 'self-help'. If you really wanted to take it out there, then self-help is really everything. What is the purpose of anything but to improve the set standard with which you measure the experience of a human being, a society, or a civilization? You could extend the umbrella forever, and include psychology, etc., with diminishing definitiveness.

The main gripes I have with growth-mindset is the rigidity of it. It is hard to think a positive thought while you are 'negative'. But also, it is hard to think a negative thought while you are 'positive'. To the mind, negative and positive sentiments do not matter because they are simply the responses that were generated by one's beliefs.

Now growth mindset proposes that you could magically make negative beliefs positive. This is poor psychological advice. There is a reason why those beliefs are negative. While direct examination of those beliefs (an interrogation of sorts) might not be the best way to re-form those beliefs, just plain forcing positivity on a negative belief is just as harmful as forcing negativity on a positive belief.

Forced hope is just as violent as forced hopelessness. It's one thing to encourage someone, and another to say that 'the reason for your failure is that you are not positive enough'. Or to say 'if you just change your mindset, you can succeed'. It really a) cheapens how difficult it is to change yourself and b) takes the person away from actually understanding themselves on a deeper level.

I really started changing when I stopped trying to change myself so much. Self-help (and basically zero Western philosophy) doesn't understand that.

You could take the route from modern clinical psychology (memory reconsolidation, etc.) and get there, or find a good martial arts master and learn taoism.

Yeah, thinking back on it, self-help sucks.

[stoicShell]

OK, I get it.

I totally agree with everything you said. What you are rightfully criticizing goes under different names — "positive thought", "creative thought", "the secret". It's all the same woowoo indeed, you described it perfectly.

For some reason you haven't grasped or recognized the 'correct' mechanism or technique in that book (or I guess many others in the domain), but you got it otherwise so it's likely just a matter of cultural / personal fit — language that speaks to you. Martial arts certainly is one way, not fit for everyone either, though.

The actual 'magic' IME is the discovery of that "third-eye" skill i.e. 'controlled' introspection (to look into oneself). That's why I recommend Covey because he's got some of the best paragraphs on the topic, and this one thing is literally a game-changer for people who never explored for themselves the immensely vast space (and time) that exists, when trained, between "input" (things outside, things inside too) and "output" (a response, both external and internal). This quote: (emphasis mine)

> “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It really is a superpower from a cognitive standpoint (actually trained in cognitive therapy too, immensely, but sadly for now psychology is mostly focused like medicine on curing the ill, not improving the 'normal').

The Stoics saw that space —explicitly so, all of them. In Tao too I hear, though I have yet to read the Tao Te Chin myself.

It's a skill-with-no-name (probably had/has a Greek word for it) that pervaded cultures to this day obviously. But it is the actual key to what you referred as "magically make negative beliefs positive", except it's not magic, not by a long shot: it's work, it's hard on yourself, it requires effort and time, training, lots of failure. But there's only benefits and zero side effects so...

It's a trained skill. At first, you fail miserably, like anything. After about a year, it's become second nature (still de-trainable though, one must remain self-aware on occasion). At first it's conscious effort, spent willpower, it's tiring and you want to just stop, let it go. But it gets better. Effortless eventually, like riding a bike. It's certainly closer to Zen than any form of first-degree 'blind' emotional 'management' (I mean, all therapies and such help, but they merely pave the way to a deeper understanding and meaning that only one can create for oneself).

> I really started changing when I stopped trying to change myself so much.

This, to my ears, is when you began actually doing the work for yourself, by yourself, stopped believing in some shortcut-magic trick in any one book however classic or popular. Each 'real' skill is actually just the opener to a whole other level, bigger problem space. You became the creator of your own solutions, and that, if I may, is the Graal. Like literally I think it's what a lot of 'magical' metaphors (enlightenment, elevation, etc) quite physically or biologically refer to.

There is a fuckton of self-power to be released when you get serious about that path.

I'll tell you that in my anecdotal experience, most people run the other way (back to outside gratification / validation) upon discovery that "the enemy within" generally consists of getting what feels like mentally naked (vulnerable, opened, honest-to-Self) to your deepest oldest layers, and the battle is about healing the child in you left alone for so long, and welcoming him/her back into your life, in its right place.

I profoundly think that you heed those words, wherever they come from and in whatever shape or form however imperfect and partial, when you are ready to hear them, i.e. when you need them.

It's a survival thing, I don't know of going so deep otherwise (it's not like "deep inside" has an "up" or "left"; you need a pulling force like proverbial 'gravity', gravitas, i.e. emotions that run deep, to make sense of that inner space). You eventually find your way through the maze, if it's on your path, I suppose.

But honestly, taking education seriously in that regard (I argue starting with children, as important as managing physical health; and to boot with most adults thinking of this as a health matter, like exercising or nutrition) would do a huge service to society. We can and should train people massively. IMH opinion, experience, research.

So yeah, thinking back on it, I agree self-help sucks. A century later it's nowhere near realizing the social benefits it could claim because it's been too busy giving itself a bad name.

[avindroth]

‘ This, to my ears, is when you began actually doing the work for yourself, by yourself, stopped believing in some shortcut-magic trick in any one book however classic or popular.’

I would say that’s a wrong reading of what I said. But take what you will. It’s simple, I actually just stopped trying so damn hard. Nothing fancy or crazy.

The way you are talking about self-change makes it sound really toiling and gruesome, almost too serious. That is not what I really mean.

Just you know, enjoying daily life having good meals and such. Not taking myself too seriously. Reading less. Just going about. Indulging in laziness and entertainment.

So I don’t believe in some other version of self-help (like you are presuming). I just do whatever I feel like and say whatever feels right. I don’t have high goals, I am just living day-to-day with some aspirations.

[stoicShell]

I presumed wrong, sorry, it seems I was guessing or rather projecting.

I think I see. You come from a different place than me, surely. Our initial make-up I mean, whether innate or acquired.

The thing is, I speak of a "struggle" to really put down the "get-X-quick" approach versus actual compounded effort (tiny bits but long term).

People want to eat some psychedelic or read magical incantations and get-woke-quick but the reality of becoming a well-rounded individual is closer to cooking a nice meal every day (you just need to find and learn recipes that work for you, I guess that's what you found eventually? This emotional clarity, alignement, simplicity even? That's super-zen, you should know!)

I was also speaking of another bigger and clearly 'darker' thing (as in "opaque", non-conscious, that can't be seen but rather felt). I hate the term but you'll read "quantum change" in the mainstream, the idea of a "core" or "essential" change of personality / behavior (same thing here). It happens to some "survivors" notably (of any kind, it's what the person experienced that matters). There's a before and an after — the meaning of life, what bothers you (or not), what (now) inspires you, etc. It's all so much clearer on the other side of pain.

This surely isn't zen and roses, although for me it took going down that dark path and back to really smell the roses (for what they are, and not what I wanted them to be). The terseness of comments and my will to pack too much probably blurred the line between these two experiences — daily routines versus one-off life-changing internal event and its aftermath.

[chrisweekly]

Wonderful post. I have a number of related books I'd add to your list, but this one in particular got me started on a path to the kind of practical philosophy you and I both seek and extoll:

"How to Want What You Have" (Timothy Miller)

[stoicShell]

Well, that's a +1 for my list! Thank you for the recommendation. Love the title and fourth already — it seems that Mr Miller gets it in a way that would speak to me. I've seen the same objects multiple times now, they seem close to 'invariants' to me — compassion, attention, gratitude.

In particular this counter-intuitive idea that you should strive not to "do what you love" but rather adamantly to "love what you do". Understanding that relieved me of so, so much emotional burden, like dead weight I was carrying for who-knows-what reasons. It changes people in ways that make others say "maturity" or "wisdom" about it.

If you want to add more books, please feel free!

[chrisweekly]

Right on! I also enjoyed "The Untethered Soul" (Singer), "You Are Here" (Hanh), "A New Earth" (Tolle) and "The Daily Stoic"(Holiday)

[conductr]

Side note, thanks for putting the TLDR first. I most often see it’s last which just totally defeats the purpose IMO

[jotm]

I think the point is to have the viewer at least try to read the long version. If they can't or won't, they can quickly scroll down.

TL;DRs at the top are just like attention grabbing headlines and opening paragraphs that often don't tell you the whole picture, either on purpose or simply because it's impossible to do so in a sentence/paragraph.

[stoicShell]

I'm afraid you misread my intentions.

I can plead guilty of seeking attention (I figure 'commenting' is the first such step), but I thought the very length of that post is already by far its most salient aspect. I don't think a foreword changes anything to the big picture. ;-)

Also, on HN of all places, I resent doing that (long pieces), I must delete 4 out of 5 such write ups before posting — self-restrain to keep the place neat, once done it must meet high enough standards for me to actually post, i.e. "would I learn something from this?". So there's structure, and an 'abstract' naturally emerges from that.

Now the "TL;DR" up top is really practical, I care not for sensationalism, not the slightest. I just want to inform people so they can quickly decide whether to dive or skip. I like that myself as a reader (call it anti-click-bait, honest-to-god synthesis).

[jotm]

Oh I didn't mean you specifically, just in general if TL;DRs were on top, more people would not understand or misunderstand what an article/post actually says.

[conductr]

I agree. But that’s authors goal. They spend a bunch of effort on the long form and they want it to be read.

From a reader perspective,, especially in a mobile ui setting, it would be nice to know up front the content is lengthy and there is a TLDR at the bottom. It’s not necessary to start with the TLDR. I just find a lot of content I bail on because my initial interest level did not align with the time investment. The New Yorker style of journalism.

Executive Summary slides are my analogy. They always lead, raise a ton of questions, and the answers are forthcoming if you want to sit through the presentation. But don’t be that guy who starts drilling in with granular questions during this stage of a presentation

[stoicShell]

You're welcome and I'm glad my intention quite perfectly matches your expectations.

I'm pro 'reader's choice' indeed! An informed 'skip' button up top is really just good hospitality while someone reads my post, me thinks. Like those "get started"-quick pages when hesitating to RTFM.