I hate bad self-help advice. I hate overly-simplified pop psychology. I (by and large) hate self-help gurus. The idea that you can manifest anything you want or attract anything you want into your life is bullshit. Life is more complicated, more difficult, and not to mention far less fair, than that. And while you might think some of this is obvious, often this bad self-help advice is wrapped up in such a pretty bow that you can’t see just how bad it is. Because make no mistakes about it, bad self-help advice hurts people and it can hurt you too.
Bad Self-Help Advice — Manifest Anything You Want!
The headline “Manifest Anything You Want!” came across my LinkedIn this morning. It was a video by April Villarose-Matta, Co-Host of SpirituallyRAW “The Ass Whipping Truth”🔥We Expose & Explore Controversial Truths, Myths, and Theories Surrounding the Spirit World.
This woman has over 28,000 followers just on LinkedIn (and she appears to be everywhere, including Telegram, which says a lot). She is one of these nonsense, new-age, spiritual “gurus” who purport to be able to give you anything you want. She posts things like “Protect your energy. Don’t entertain negative energy,” and “Your light is gonna irritate a lot of unhealed people.”
And clearly, many people have bought into this bullshit (I have five Facebook friends in common with her, by the way.)
What all her advice boils down to is the classic like attracts like fallacy, which I have written about before. It’s a combination of victim-blaming and false self-empowerment combined with cult psychology tactics that say that if other people don’t believe as you do, there’s something wrong with those people and you should “protect your energy” and stay away from them. It posits that you know the secrets to the universe and other people just aren’t enlightened enough to know it too. (It also suggests that you better keep paying attention to your guru if you want to stay in touch with all of that.)
This is all as clear as day to me and as opaque as milk to many others. That’s how these people get followers. (It’s how cults get followers too.)
More Bad Self-Help Advice
Of course, the bad self-help advice that she is peddling is not the only kind. I would suggest that bad advice mostly flows from the above principles in one way or another. More examples of bad advice include:
- Do what you love and the money will follow. (True, if you’re Oprah Winfrey.)
- Have faith above all else. (A good idea, if you’re a character in an old book.)
- Winning is everything. (Maybe, if you’re a football team coach whose bonus is riding on it.)
- If you believe it you can achieve it. (True, if you’re also lucky and advantaged.)
- You get out of it what you put into it. (See above.)
Surely Bad Self-Help Advice Doesn’t Hurt People?
Oh really?
At its very basic level, self-help advice says that there is something wrong with you and you need to fix it. All advice is based around this notion. Talk about a way to internalize shame and inferiority.
But more than that, when people put these “principles” into practice in their lives, and they don’t get what they want, they are crushed and assume it must be their fault and that they must have done something wrong. They didn’t have enough faith, They didn’t work hard enough. They didn’t believe enough. A lot of self-help has this self-blame baked into it. You see, it’s never the guru’s fault that you didn’t succeed. It’s never the advice that didn’t work. It’s always you. You didn’t do it properly (now take my online class for $499 and I’ll tell you how to do it right).
This type of bad self-help advice is how pyramid schemes/multi-level marketing (MLM) companies and cults work (one could argue the two are very similar) also. People get trapped in these harmful organizations because they are looking for an answer to something and the MLM, pyramid scheme, or cult says they have it. Just sell our leggings and you’ll make more money than you’ll know what to do with! Just use our system and women will fall all over you! Just believe what we do and you’ll always be happy!
And so on and so on.
There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute
But all of this isn’t really about being a sucker. Being a “sucker” suggests that you’re gullible or unintelligent in some way. This isn’t true. Incredibly smart, worldly, and logical people have been caught up in these kinds of schemes and have fallen victim to these types of ideas. Some of them even thank those schemes for their success. (Rhymes with Shmientology, anyone?) So if you’ve found yourself in the grips of bad self-help advice or an interest group that cares more about your money than you, take heart, you aren’t alone.
The thing to remember is this: There is no secret. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.
Seriously.
Look at any piece of bad self-help advice. It always, always claims there’s an easy way to solve some problem, and truly, if it was that easy, then we all would be rich and happy.
Is There Good Self-Help Advice?
Yes, of course there is. A lot of what I do here is self-help. For example:
And, literally, hundreds of others.
The difference between me and bad self-help advice is:
- I don’t think anything is wrong with you. Most of the time the way people feel and what they are doing when they come here is completely understandable.
- I offer suggestions rather than things you must do.
- I tell you right off the bat that nothing works for every person. We are all individuals.
- Most of what I offer is completely free of charge.
- I know that all of us (myself included) are a work in progress.
- I don’t consider myself a self-help guru.
You may or may not think those above things matter, but I would say they definitely do.
So, the long and short of it is summed up in this great quote by Voltaire:
“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
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