What is the biggest problem with self-help books and advice?

Adrian S. Potter
3 min readFeb 2, 2023

Be picky.

Photo by Seema Miah on Unsplash

If you are like many folks, you might have gone through a self-help period in your life. Or maybe, like me, you have been stuck in an endless loop of one for years.

Perhaps you bought countless books on personal development, attended lectures and courses, or hunkered down and watched motivational videos on YouTube.

I won’t deny that I have gleaned amazing tidbits of information from all the self-help material I’ve absorbed over the years. It has helped me develop new positive habits, alter my perspective, and add tools to my toolbox as I build my success.

But over time, I learned that there are limits to the self-help game. And if you do not understand those limits, you could run yourself into the ground trying to improve yourself to death.

If there is one absolute that I have learned from studying tons of personal growth media, it’s this — personal development is not one-size-fits-all.

Photo by Pramod Tiwari on Unsplash

A certain method or philosophy might help one person, or even a billion people — but it doesn’t guarantee that it will mesh well with your personality…

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Adrian S. Potter

Antisocial Extrovert · Writer and Poet, Engineer, Consultant, Public Speaker · Writing about self-improvement, gratitude, and creativity · www.adrianspotter.com