Whether we want to admit it or not, we all believe we’re special somehow. This delusion evaporates the moment you start reading because that’s the moment you realize there’s nothing exceptional about you. You’re another confused human in a world that’s always been that way. So you look for answers and turn to the self-help industry. You start reading books, watching YouTube channels, and listening to podcasts. As you’ll soon discover, there’s a serious problem with this approach, since consuming content isn’t the same as working on your problems. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Think about the problem you’re trying to solve. Chances are there’s a deluge of content around that topic. That’s because every problem under the sun has already been covered and in most cases, solved. People have written about subjects like happiness, anxiety, and confidence for thousands of years. The problem you thought of came up in philosophy or religious books. Nevertheless, reading old books is hard and most people don’t want to go through Beyond Good and Evil or The Art of War. What most people want is to read something sexy, short, and most of all, entertaining.
Whatever problem you’re experiencing can’t be solved by reading a 200-page book. Chances are your problem is an emotional one and as such, you won’t be able to solve it by ticking a series of boxes or repeating affirmations in front of the mirror each morning. To solve emotional problems you must confront them and this is harder than it seems. If you lack confidence, you’ll have to put yourself in social situations often which is uncomfortable at first. Breaking this barrier is one of the most difficult things you’ll do in life (not the mention, one of the most rewarding ones). To tear down emotional barriers, you must experience emotional pain. There’s no way around it, but the self-help world doesn’t encourage that. It recycles old ideas and makes us the center of everything. You won’t find the answers you need in anything external.
Going back to the example of confidence, what someone needs to hear isn’t that they’re special and that everything will sort out by itself. What they need to hear is that humans flourished in tribes and that’s why they care about what others think of them. Nowadays though, we can choose our tribe and not thriving in one tribe means we can easily move to another without any life-or-death repercussions. So people in the modern world need to put themselves out there, socialize, and accept not only what they have, but also what they lack. As counterintuitive as it sounds, embracing your flaws and inadequacies is where confidence and inner strength come from.
So don’t go into the self-help world believing you’re not enough because the more content you consume, the more inferior you’ll feel. You are a person and as such, you make mistakes. We all do and you don’t have to watch hours of videos or read hundreds of pages to get to that conclusion. Second, don’t use self-help to run away from your problems. As painful as it is, confront those issues head-on. They will hurt, there’s no way around it, but you’ll come out the other end a better person. Finally, take responsibility for everything that happens to you and believe that everything will be fine, no matter what.
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