“The Great Self-Help Scam?” Comments, Page 1

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6 Comments on “The Great Self-Help Scam?”

  1. It is true, the market is saturated with self-help, or what I like to call bibliotherapy books. Most of them are truly useful and provide the tools one needs to work through in a particularsituation. The problem is with readers like myself, who want to know everything on a given subject, with mind like sponges. What the end result is – we’re so preoccupied absorbing new information, we forget to take what we have learned an actually apply it. That is often the case with procrastinators and/or ADDer’s like myself. Hyperfocusing on new information is exciting. Putting it to work is, well, work.

  2. Interesting that the main ad on this post is for a self-help book (The Principles Of Successful Manifesting)!

    I am also a sponge AND a book-nerd so I have read quite a few self-help books. Many of them are complete nonsense. A few offer a gentle first glimpse into your own psyche that can lead you to more technical books and further self-awareness.

  3. I agree, wholeheartedly. There are too many books in the market that are a living proof of this. And I think the dangerous side to it is the fact that some people do believe once they complete a CD course or finish a book on self-help they are licensed to “heal or cure” others as well.

  4. Yes there is so many self help scams going on.

    A lot of it is so easy to spot. However, its the really scientific sounding stuff that is the most fake and the most misleading.

    For example, neurolinguistic programming sounds really like pseudoscience if you have a science background. But if not, then it can be misleading.

    The fact is, NLP is now among a top 10 most discredited interventions.

    Higher levels of literacy, information literacy, and science literacy will sort this out eventually. In the meantime, there will be a lot of people wasting their time and resources.

  5. To add to the conversation,

    In my opinion not all of the self-help products are scams. Many of them are the honest work of an enthusiast author who desired to change the world for the better. Of course – this didn’t mean the product is good. Most of the honest ones suck as well.

    And sometimes it happens that they start liking the money.

    In the long run it’s not helping. People buy easy to digest BS, feel good about themselves 3 days and then forget.

    To add to the other spectrum, there are good self-improvement products. Most of them don’t claim they will change your world. They just aim to teach a skill or two or just enlighten you. They won’t even call themselves self-help.

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