Just watched this video, and found it to a very enlightening video essay. One of the main points of the video I took away is that the self improvement industry is built on selling you a sense of hope through videos, books, seminars, etc. The sense that you can pull yourself out of a dark place in order to shine. But the fact is that it is an industry. Much like the medical industry, they kind of profit off of the sickness of the people, and not the wellness. What y'all think?

About to watch it OP, I'll give my thoughts afterwards

self improvement is about recognizing your own flaws and working towards fixing them, watching videos/reading books isn't really gonna do s*** imo

For sure. It's all about taking action rather than thinking about it. I think it's easy for people to fool themselves into thinking they've made progress just because they've watched a video about it.

I know in the world of programming, it's common for people starting out to fall into a similar pattern. They watch follow along videos of people making apps, and get a sense of accomplishment from simply copying someone else's code and following along. But then they struggle to build an app by themselves because they don't consistently put things into practice.

I was like that for awhile before I really got started actually building s***, and occasionally still fall into it when I'm learning something new.

But you do pull yourself out of a dark place to shine that’s how it work

Imma peep the video tho bro

self improvement is great. but self improvement books are a lot of trash and "grind" p***

There are self improvement classics that you should know about

And then the rest which dilutes and rehashes those classics

Recommendations?

The bit about working hard is so true. Most successful people are successful because they innovated, had connections or inherited wealth and got lucky as well as hard work. There's also the skill of marketing your company or personal skills.

What topic?

Interesting vid. I personally don’t really care for self help at all, and agree with his points about the ultimate futility and meaningless of much of the messaging, especially within hustle culture.

However, I think it’s a false equivalence to jump to the conclusion that because the industry is profitable, it has to rely on exploitation to stay afloat. The fact that someone makes money off something doesn’t automatically make it shady. It’s a bit like when you see people deriding climate change because it’s an industry that makes money for a lot of people - the idea being that this evidence of it being bullshit and just a money making scam. It’s true it’s making huge profits for people, but that doesn’t make it evil or exploitative by definition, and the obvious flipside is that the climate change denial industry also makes huge profits for different people.

I’d also say that the video kind of just extrapolates that one guy’s experience and presents it as a universal truth. Presumably there are many people who have used self help techniques and media and have seen positive results, as I don’t believe the industry could be that profitable purely off selling people dreams that never work out for hem. The guy acknowledged that after the first year he felt amazing, and it only came crashing down when he had to come to terms with the fact that his acting career was never going to take off. This is a pretty unique situation and acting is an incredibly hard field to excel in.

i’d Wager there are many people who got to the stage of happiness he was at after a year, and were actually able to follow through and achieve their perhaps more realistic goals - i’d imagine those people would have a much more positive outlook on the industry

I always was of the opinion that this whole self book idea was kinda off. Like read actual books or do actual things instead of reading multiple books like 10 and more of how to improve yourself. No progress.

And the truth is most people need to be able to rely on others to improve.

Thanks for sharing your take. There's no doubt that self help content has helped many people find direction and take control of their lives. That population of people who are vulnerable definitely exists, and there are scum bags who will take advantage of that, but not a universal truth of the industry.

What about any essentials on the topic of being yourself. Been struggling with that over the last couple of years, being out of school and in the corporate world.

Very true and I think this is just an increasingly prevalent problem across the whole of life now.

As he pointed out with the fitness blogs there’s just so many sources for literally everything on the internet, I’d imagine people vulnerable to it could literally get addicted to anything online.

Will pm

Done watching the video and I must say, it really opened up my eyes to the world of self-help. What he says about action faking is quite true, like I watched some video about improving my own habits and gave me an illusion where I accomplished something and actually improved myself. It all traces back to the concept of getting a dopamine rush from something.

I can imagine it's the same tactics dating coaches use too, where I'd watch a couple of videos from them and will suddenly fool me into thinking that b****es will appear magically, when in reality you have to go out there and apply the techniques.

It's all about taking the action

I agree with him on the stigma surrounding quitting, like sometimes it's actually ok to quit and realize this thing isn't for you

Change title to "The Dark Side of the Self Improvement Business" I thought this was going to be an insightful conversation about perception VS being, I don't need to watch a video to learn that business have vested interests in keeping you invested in what they're selling

sorry for the misleading title didn't know it would come off that way