The People Who Read Self-Help Books

Whether it was innate or modeled, my home was filled with self-help books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Tony Robbins on cassette tapes (I had no idea he was still relevant until last year and did firewalking. Who knew?), Zig Ziglar on Top Performance, along with several James Dobson parenting books (not advocating, just reporting).

So why, decades later, is self-help still a billion-dollar industry? Shouldn’t we have collated all this advice by now and distilled it into a proven method? And why do people who read self-help keep reading more of it?

Confession: I love self-help books.

But more than self-help books, I love people. I love that just as there are endless spins on positive thinking and habit change, every person has their own way of operating. Their own filter through which they see the world and themselves.

Here’s what’s interesting: people who read self-help are often already successful. The very audience you might least expect to be engaged in such intense self-study.

So what comes first?

Does someone hit rock bottom, pick up a self-help book, become successful, and then keep reading?

Or does the process start somewhere else?

After all, unless self-help was force-fed to you (perhaps it was to me), you chose to pick up that first book.

And then another.

I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe, like me, it was modeled. But that’s not true for everyone. Perhaps there’s something innate—a restlessness that pushes some of us to keep searching. For others, the drive comes from survival, from wrestling with their environment in hopes of creating change.

There is something in all of us that wants better, wants different, wants growth. It practically defines humanity.

But here’s what took me a while to learn about self-help:

It’s not always for me.

And it’s not always for you.

And that’s actually a good thing.

Take, for example, advice from The Gap and the Gain: write down your wins at night and your goals for the next day.

Or Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: morning pages: wake up and free-write.

As a sport psychologist aficionado, you'd think I'd geek out on writing my goals down. As a writer, you’d think lists and journaling would be natural fits. Easy. Fruitful.

But I hate lists. Truly. Making a list feels like adding “make a list” to my list of things to do. I just end up with scraps of paper reminding me what I didn’t do. I know, Dan Sullivan—that’s gap thinking! But it doesn’t work for me.

Journaling isn’t my thing either. I only have so much time to write and work on my actual projects, so I’m just going to . . . write. I’ve found other creativity practices that work better for me.

And here’s the key: some people swear by morning pages. By their lists. (Oh, my mom loves her lists. My resistance is mostly likely rooted in mild childhood rebellion.)

Because I am—and likely always will be—a self-help lover, I plan to share what I learn. But think of it like a buffet: take what you want, leave the rest. Try something once. You might go

back for seconds . . . or decide it’s not for you.

It’s also worth remembering that different seasons call for different tools. If you’re in the messy toddler phase that devours every spare minute, this is your permission to NOT meditate. Take the (very long) shower! When I was in that stage, my double jogger was my greatest self-help tool. If I could strap the kids in and go for a run, I was a much better parent. And a better human.

Above all, if you’re like me, if you’ve ever felt like you needed a self-help book on how to follow the advice in a self-help book, consider this your validation: you’re not alone.

So here’s the best advice I can offer: keep reading the self-help books. Truly. Do it. But give yourself full permission to occasionally say, nah, not for me.

Because, believe it or not, that may be the real goal of self-help—to become so aligned with your values, your energy, and your talents that you can confidently say: thanks . . . but no thanks.

This is your draft. Your story. Take what works and leave the rest.

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