What is /lit/’s main stance on self-help books? To put it in context, I’m someone who has been isolated for a long time, and I want to gradually emerge from this darkness through literature—literature that helps me develop healthy habits: habits that allow me to grow personally and climb the social ladder. I don’t intend to become dependent on self-help literature, nor do I expect results to appear by magic; I need to get my ass out there and start interacting with people. But, on the other hand, self-help books also have a bad reputation for being considered a scam with no real substance or concrete advice. So I’d like to hear your opinion on the matter, or what unconventional books or literary genres you’d recommend that actually benefit a person.
>>25163273Anything found in the Self-Help section is garbage. The truly helpful books are to be found anywhere else.
>>25163273Also, if you use self-help videos and books to develop social skills, you will become one of the most annoying and boring people on the planet earth.
>>25163273There hasn't been a new idea in one since the Victorian times. There was actually a lot back then and you can get them for free from Duke Ebooks. But still, it's just repackaged philosophy. Epictetus is better than any of them, so if you can understand him then there's no point in looking elsewhere.
>>25163273scams that exploit the intellectual dependence and insecurity of modern people
>>25163273self help books can be summarized in a single sentence. But they're stretched out to 100 pages so morons think it contains more than a single sentence of advice.
>>25163273Go out for a walk every dayJoin a Mcdojo or a proper one if your town has one or just join a club you enjoy.Those books are a waste of time. Whatever you want to do with your life just do a little bit towards that goal each day.
>>25163273Ultimately it has a purpose but you read one and you pretty much seen it all>how to get shit donejust like start doing what it is that you are supposed to be doing, you don't need a massive ass book to tell you how to be productive>how to meet people and get friendsdon't be a repulsive asshole>how to get in shape/fit/ sticky>how to X/Y/Zask chatgpt/peers/friends/relativesmy point is that you likely know what you should be doing and the things that you need to fix in your life to get what you want, spending that time reading a self help book is just a form of procrastinationit's not necessarily a scam but beyond immediate practical steps that could be summarized on a single page there's just no substance in them, sprinkle some ego mastubration with achievements and credentials from the author and pseudo/bro science with anecdotal evidence on top and you get a self help booknobody will remember Atomic Habits in 100 years, meanwhile the classics will be as relevant as before
>>25163273sapiens isn't self-help but it's dumb enough to belong in the same category
>>25163273I trust the interplay between myself, my therapist and my life more than I would any self-help book written with broad appeal in mind. People are way too complex, you get a wrench stuck in a particular gear and develop a blind spot to it. Takes finding the right therapist though, I went through several before someone clicked
>>25163915Pop-science/history/philosophy has a 1-1 overlap with self-help in terms of readership
>>25163963exactly, it's all entry-level shit for people who want the feeling of getting smarter without any of the discipline
>>25163966Unfortunately Marcus Aurelius' Meditations also basically belongs to those people now, the gladiator won
>>25163968that book is shilled for its veneer of prestige. it predates the self-help industrial complex so people who read it can talk as if they're absorbing ancient wisdom, even though you will never get them to read aristotle or plotinus. they still just want infinite sequels to 12 rules for life or subtle art of not giving a fuck, they approach these books the same way disney adults approach star wars spin-offs.
>>25163302No. I think that's a dumb opinion. People skills are like any other skill. There's no point stumbling around in the dark trying to figure it all out on your own. When you can just read what others have wrote. Learn from the collective wisdom. Maybe incorporate that knowledge into your own actions, if you want to. Thinking that doing that sort of dilutes your natural self. Is retarded. I was a friendless loser. I lost my virginity like one or two months after reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. I truly credit that book with giving me the ability to hold a conversation with a stranger. I was hopeless before. Lost. And I never would've gotten better, because I lacked enough confidence to even try. To practice enough to get better. But, that book gave me the framework of what to do. And it worked and the confidence developed from that. Other than being better socially, I'm probably just as boring and annoying as I was always going to be.
>>25163302spbp>>25164006autism and cope
>>25164009Autism? Yeah, maybe a little bit. Not diagnosed but. But, cope? No. It was pragmatic action. I knew I needed better people skills. Went and learnt them, used them and they were effective. The cope is dismissing it because you've convinced yourself that it won't work. Because you don't want to try. Because really you're scared of failing.
>>25164027>literally not an argumentcope
>>25163273Infinite Jest helped me turn things around much more than any self-help book. You know those people who tell you "oh if you have trouble talking to people just go up to them and say hello" like that's supposed to be some deep revelation? That's pretty much self-help, in my experience. But I think most socially anxious and/or withdrawn people have internal barriers other than just lack of skill that keeps them from even being able to start. Where self-help looks for simple, quantitative ways to treat the problem ("no bullshit, just give me five easy steps to a personal transformation"), the problem is internal and psychological/spiritual in nature and requires one to slow down and dig deep to try to address.Recovering from being isolated and trapped in your own head for years takes real, transformative experiences to get out of, which maybe the habits they tell you might lead to, but a combination of great literature and going out into the real world and forming relationships and joining communities is far more effective than wasting your time with Carnegie.
>>25164200>wasting your time with CarnegieYou can read it in an afternoon. Like you're that busy. And obviously also do all that other shit you said too. They're not mutually exclusive. It's retarded you'd think that. 'Just go form relationships, bro'. So dumb.
Nothing inherently wrong with self-help books - they can give your practical advice.However, they are not transformative in the same way that literary fiction is. I truly believe you will learn more about yourself by reading As I Lay Dying by Faulkner than by reading 12 Rules For Life.
>>25164241>"just form relationships, bro"That isn't what I meant, I should have phrased it differently. What I should have said is, "finding avenues to regularly interact with a group of people." Relationships can often form naturally theough repeat interactions, it's not as though you have to be romantically involved with someone or close friend to interact with them on some level and learn to navigate basic social situations.Yeah, you could still read self-help books if you find their practical advice useful. A lot of people, though, it seems to me, end up wasting a lot of time by reading self-help and feeling like they're making progress instead of doing the hard task of putting it into action and actually improving anything.
>>25164306Yeh, if that's you're point. Paralysis by analysis. Just read, read, read. Not doing. I agree. Practical application is everything. Taking the advice and using it. And if you don't have relationships and don't have community, and you want them. Need them. Reading a book on people-skills should be the first thing you do. I honestly believe that. Because you're probably a weirdo. And you can't just stomp out into the world like Ignatius J Reilly and expect to to turn out good.
>>25163273You're too complicated for a self-help book to solve. The reason any self-help recipe doesn't work is a reason hidden by the complexities of you that you're not even aware of. You need deep self-analysis to be able to discern what would actually solve your issues and what's productivity porn.As a start, you should find someone with a similar nature and situation as you, who turned out successful, and copy their playbook. Look at your own situation and try different ways of framing it so that it becomes predictable and manipulable. Use self-help as a way of giving a form to your problems, but not as a starting point.It's hard to tell the difference between productivity porn and deep life principles. It's hard to tell what principles are just lies to sell copies and what are real. If you read a book that tries to sell you principle, you should be very skeptical and only accept one if the author passes the strictest screening possible.You need a thorough understanding of yourself, of your life, in terms of the mechanisms of cause and effect. If the book sells you techniques, you need to check to see if they match you and your idiosyncratic circumstances.There's only cause and effect. The deeper you understand yourself and the world as mechanism, the better your results get. This is your real starting point, a mechanical understanding of yourself. Self-help books give you ways of framing different parts of yourself and your problems.
Go to church. Even ignoring spirituality it's the best place to try and re-intergrate back into society a bit because of how open people are to talk with you and accept you in
>>25165099PS. As a general rule, the best self-help comes from one-trick pony authors. These are people who have long personal experience grappling with the problem and really just want to share how they did it. They have no marketing, show up low in search results, have shitty cover images, and shitty writing. In self-help, the shittier the cover, the better the book.
As long as it isnt that grifter Tony Robbins and anyone in his orbit.
>>25163273>What is /lit/’s main stance on self-help books?Midwit garbage for business majors.You will genuinely get better results just asking people you know for tips on social manouvering and putting yourself out there, getting practice in social situations and getting used to it than you will by reading How to make friends and influence people or The subtle art of not giving a F*ck
Self-help is good if you need an emotional spike, like a burst of motivation to get you out of a mental rut, usually in early adulthood. I think most people grow out of self-help after a few books.
