How to Stop Self-Helping Yourself Into Oblivion
Time to divest from YouTube University, with its constantly mutating mobs of gurus, experts, life coaches, influencers, and wellness dorks.
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YESTERDAY, PUBLIC TELEVISION IN SEATTLE celebrated their long relationship with the now-deceased self-help writer Wayne Dyer, and to honor the author, the station was replaying one of his final talks.
The theme of his presentation eludes me. It was something about Five Steps to Something or Other, the secrets of which were contained in his then-new book. The book’s cover was the size of a refrigerator and displayed prominently behind Dyer throughout his talk.
I decided to give the show a try despite my aversion to listening to other people talk or write about ‘how’ life should be lived or experienced. (Imagine the torture I endured fashioning the title for this post).
Before the advent of the internet, this phenomenon of people advising about living was always buzzing in the background of life, but not in the florid, omnipresent way it does now.
The internet has mutated what was a boutique industry (the self-help, how-to world) into a bacchanalia of garrulous gurus and guides, with billions of bromides pinging back and forth across blogs, YouTube, and social media placards every hour.
Social media depicts a world divided into distinct camps: Those with electronic devices doing nothing and those doing nothing but writing or talking about doing stuff and then selling that information on an electronic device to people who aren’t doing anything.
While watching the PBS tribute to Wayne Dyer talking about Wayne Dyer and Wayne Dyer’s new book about doing stuff to be a better person like Wayne Dyer, my fascination and agitation landed not on Dyer but on the audience.
Because the camera periodically cut away to random pans of the crowd, I was privy to dozens of eye holes dilated in moist receptivity as Dyer spoon-fed them a list of dos and don’ts for a ‘better life.’ Their vulnerability and willingness to be told how they could improve their lives felt, well, heartbreaking.
Dyer had conveniently crafted his pointers into a list that was transformed into an illustration of a ladder with five distinct steps. And because our culture is obsessed with lists (and handymen gear like ladders), the childlike image of the scaleable apparatus remained projected behind Dyer as his proverbs tumbled forth.
Each ‘pointer’ or step on the ladder was related to Dyer’s personal existence as if I were interested. (I write this flatly, not from a place of meanspiritedness but from objective fact-sharing. I wasn't intrigued, though I'm sure many in the audience were.)
Dyer’s peculiar mix of humility and hubris was incredibly distracting. I kept thinking, “God, this is so brilliant. You missed your calling, Frederick (and million$), by not starting a church or wellness movement where people just live on Kellog’s cornflakes and Red Bull.”
And yet my eyes were dry.
Too, this interweaving of the promise of a secret to be revealed (to better oneself or reach a financial goal) with Dyer's insistent desire to give it to me was just weird.
Another thought occurred to me: When people lack a ‘long view’ of life, they lose track of the short amount of time each of us is allowed to live and participate in the symphony of life, which none of us created or are conductors of. Mystic madman G.I. Gurdjieff offered the most cogent suggestion when he told one of his students, “Your problem is that you think you have time.”
I've long suggested that no one follows the how-tos of self-help books. Books of this ilk are akin to talismans that people keep on their nightstands to remind them of something or other that is supposed to make their lives better while they continue to do what they’ve always done because, in the end, the only person anyone is interested in hearing from is themselves.
Another of Gurdjieff’s students, the writer O.R. Orage, wrote, “Imagination as we use it, is simply an excess of desire over ability.” Self-help books allow for a kind of imaginary ability that turns out to be nothing more than a hybrid form of procrastination.
This deluded state hovers in the mind for a couple of weeks, and then the book begins to gather dust on the nightstand until a new, more (seemingly) ‘me-specific’ book is discovered on YouTube or TikTok.
Finally, perhaps, maybe, you get your shit together and set the books aside, and act from your own gumption. Often, this comes via desperation or is tied in with eleventh-hour providence. But whatever: “Yay, you’re off of your ass!”
Moving about in life, creating things (or being receptive to things) takes courage, and I’m fascinated by how and why humans have lost so much courage. You can gauge the scale of this loss by tracking the bestseller status of various self-help and how-to books
So, despite what seems to be a hypocritical dichotomy, I intend to offer a spirited nudge in this post. A reminder to pay attention to the impulse to buy books (or listen incessantly to TED talks about things you should be doing) that are stand-ins for the focus required to fulfill your goals. Even if that goal means just hanging around reading books and napping while periodically working on your garden and feeding your cat.
What is the solution to escaping the tyranny of the how-to-self-help-yourself stuff? Well, if told you that you’d be in the same cycle I've outlined above. Instead, I'll offer some insights and observations that seem closer to (and are germane with) what could be considered uniquely universal but nevertheless distinct to each of us. As Aleister Crowley wrote in The Book of Thoth: