Peruse the self-help aisle at your local neighborhood bookstore, and you’ll likely find tomes giving you all kinds of advice. Titles that tell us to “let them” or develop “atomic habits” or offer an expletive-laden guide to caring less.
For all the critiques of the multibillion-dollar self-help industry, it sells, launching the high-profile careers of authors and influencers and ways of life for its followers. What is it about self-help that we find irresistible?
That’s the question author Jessica Lamb-Shapiro set out to answer with her book Promise Land: My Journey Through America’s Self-Help Culture. It’s a topic she has personal investment in. “My dad was a child psychologist, and he wrote parenting books. And I later found out that he used me as an example,” she says. Her experience left her skeptical of self-help culture, so she set out to explore it by trying the guidance in several self-help guides.
Though her experience was unique, she says it’s not all that different from the culture of self-help we all interact with. “That kind of stuff percolates, even if you’re not reading self-help books,” Lamb tells Vox. “It’s so woven into the fabric of our experience that I think everyone grew up with self-help, even if they didn’t grow up reading self-help books or having a self-help book writer for a dad.”
It seems that when it comes to self-improvement, we just can’t help ourselves. But is this attempt at optimization actually leading to our isolation? That’s what we discuss on this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation with Lamb-Shapiro, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
How long have self-help books been around?
The first incarnation of self-help was in the mid-1800s. There was a writer named Samuel Smiles. He wrote for the Leeds Times, and there was a society called the Mutual Improvement Society. They invited him to give a lecture, and he told these anecdotes about working men rising from poverty into positions of power. It was hugely successful. People loved the stories. So he started doing more and more lectures and then eventually made it into a book. The book was called Self-Help. It came out in 1859. It was immediately a bestseller.
So it was popular way before I thought. You can also find predecessors in the Greek Stoics, from around 160, 180 AD. There was a Roman emperor named Marcus Aurelius who wrote a book called Meditations. That book is actually sold as a self-help book today. If you go to your bookstore and you look in the self-help section, you could find Marcus Aurelius’s self-help.
Every man I know reads about stoicism. So yes, I do know that name quite well.
When I was writing the book, I was like, oh, this is Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. Do you remember that book?
It was a bestselling book when I was growing up – so ’80s, ’90s. And it basically is the same thing with a different, more dire message: “We’re all going to die one day, so who cares?” It’s repackaged for today’s happy America, but it is basically the same message. So any self-help book you find today, there’s always a predecessor of a hundred years or earlier.
How big is the self-help industry?
The global self-help industry is worth between $45 billion and $59 billion. It’s also called personal growth or self-improvement, not always self-help. And this isn’t just books, but it’s also courses and TikToks and affirmation-a-day calendars.
You did all of this work, and part of it was to find out if self-help books are a scam. Are they?
This is a very difficult question. I wouldn’t say that they’re a scam. There are so many self-help books. There’s good ones, there’s bad ones, there’s bad ones that have some good qualities. If you don’t take everything as gospel, you can kind of pick and choose what’s helpful and what’s not helpful.
You could be richer, you could be hotter, you could be smarter, you could be more popular, you could be faster.
Why are we so drawn to these books?
The idea that whatever your life is, it could be better is really appealing. You could be richer, you could be hotter, you could be smarter, you could be more popular, you could be faster. It’s just an idea that’s very appealing to us as human beings: that we could just be more awesome than we are right now or have more awesome stuff than we have right now. I mean, I’m always trying to do things better. I’m trying to learn, I’m trying to be smarter. I’m trying to be more social, leave my house more, be a better dog owner.
It’s interesting because you started out pretty skeptical of self-help, going into writing this book. Do you still feel that way or have you found redeeming things in it?
I’ve definitely found redeeming things in it. I also absolutely think you should always retain a bit of skepticism and a little bit of cynicism when you’re encountering self-help. I was in my 30s when I wrote the book. I’m in my forties now, and a lot has happened politically and socially. The pandemic happened, and those were some tough times for me and for everybody. So I feel like I have a lot more sympathy for the urge to self-help and the idea of it, even if it doesn’t get realized in the books.
What’s changed about self-help in recent years? Anything at all?
One thing I’ve noticed is that self-help has become better and more mainstream. I’m thinking of someone like Brené Brown, who is an academic researcher and actually has studies to back up the things she’s saying, but also is sometimes seen as a self-help writer. Certainly, her books have helped people. So there’s kind of an elevation of the discussion, where it’s a little bit more intellectual. I think that appeals to more people. They’ve brought in a whole new audience to self-help, and I think in a way the books have become better as a result.
Do you think we’re overdoing it on self-help? Are we trying too hard to fully optimize ourselves to be our best selves?
Yes, absolutely. I think we’re obsessed with betterment and productivity. I don’t think that’s healthy, necessarily. Self-help books are appealing if you’re thinking, “I’m going to go to therapy for years and I’m going to spend thousands of dollars, or I could just buy this book for 20 bucks, and feel better immediately, and maybe get something out of it.”
We’re obsessed with betterment and productivity. I don’t think that’s healthy, necessarily.
But I think we’re really losing the community aspect. When you’re talking about self-help, everything is done by yourself. When you do that, you lose the opportunity to have a community and to strengthen your relationships with other people. When I try to help myself on my own, I’m still by myself. Whereas if I ask for help, I am strengthening my relationships, and I’m getting a lot more out of it than just the help that I was looking for.
That sense of community is really important, and so many people are feeling lonely and alienated. To actually make contact with another person or an organization is really beneficial. Not just to society – because it’s definitely beneficial to society to have people invested in the community – but also to the individual to feel like they have community support and they’re not just completely isolated and alone.
