Raking in $9.9 billion dollars last year, according to Marketdata, the Personal Development industry is thriving in business, but is it actually creating $9.9 billions worth of personal change?
As someone who's consumed self-help products since they were in high school, I can tell you that reading how to be a millionaire doesn't translate to becoming one.
I've attended over $10,000 worth of self improvement seminars, read tons of books, and watched countless videos. So, is it worth it? What does engrossing oneself in self-help material actually produce in terms of results?
Similarly, as someone who is a professional Life Coach, an industry designed to help people transform and achieve goals, I can tell you that helping someone change is one of the most difficult things to do.
Point being, personal change, with or without self-help material, can be difficult, and even feel impossible to some people.
Back to the question, does self-help even help?
It helps, but it doesn't equate to change. After years of consuming such material, I've noticed that the things I absorb from books, seminars, and videos are more like a tool/weapon as opposed to a magic pill.
Change itself is an action based process, not a passive one.
Meaning, you don't build a house just by reading how to build a house, or just by buying a set of tools. You build a house by actually building it.
That's the piece no self-help book can do for a person - the building part.
Now, if you're someone who has the action piece down, self-help books can be MASSIVE help. The one thing people who fail to produce anything after reading a self-help book have trouble with is the application part.
Like Casey Neistat says in one of his many vlogs, "One thing that changed my life, that my friend told me, is that the difference between where I am now and where I want to be is just doing it."
Long story short: Self-Help helps if you Help Yourself.
:)
Sincerely,
GS
