Self-help is making you miserable in life.

Let's talk about it.

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But those who are on the waitlist will get early access and exclusive bonuses.

Join 24 creators and writers on the waitlist here.

Launch is on March 1st.

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How I Got Into Self-Help

I've always been the shy, introverted kid in school.

I had friends, but I would never be the one to start a conversation with a stranger (or classmate).

So when I was in 8th grade, I came across a guy who talked about personality types and self-help and self-improvement in general.

I binge-watched his content for years and learned a bunch of things.

Understood how people interacted. Why people get mad, upset, happy, angry. The importance of self-help and self-improvement. How successful people think. And many many other things that I forgot.

It was like I was an alien trying to figure out how to communicate and understand humans.

But looking back at it, it made almost 0 sense why I spent so much time learning how to be good at conversations instead of just going out and starting one.

Cuz whenever I did have a conversation, I would get anxious, start overthinking, and forget the concepts I had learned.

I could've condensed years' worth of learning into 2 months by applying and learning from experience.

The same thing happened before I started my fitness journey.

I would spend hours obsessing over diets, sleep, and workout splits when the most logical thing to do would be to just experiment and figure out what I liked and stick with it — this is what happened in the end…

The Problem With Self-Help

One of the best feelings in the world is the feeling of knowing that you're getting better at the things you're interested in.

It makes you feel competent.

Competence makes you more useful to yourself, your family, your friends, your community—and by extension to all of humanity.

My friend, self-help gives you the illusion that you're making progress.

You're gaining new information and learning new concepts on how to become more competent.

But you haven't become more competent because you haven't applied it yet.

If reading alone made you more competent, then researchers and historians would be the wealthiest and most successful people in the world.

And there seems to be a new wave of people that see self-help as a hobby on its own and it's the magic pill that will solve all your problems (and stop feeling shitty about yourself).

Your girlfriend left you and now you feel bad about yourself?

Read self-help books on having a better relationship so it doesn't happen again.

Your boss isn't listening to you?

"Get the book "How To Win Friends and Influence People" and become a Jedi who controls people's minds."

Feeling socially anxious?

"Read "The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck" and become free of your crippling social anxiety."

Your wife left you?

"There is this really good self-help book that you should read and it will tell how women act."

There are 3 main problems I wanna talk about with self-help (they are also all interconnected).

1) The Magic Pill That Will Solve All Your Problems

It's like people sold us this pill that you can self-help your way out of all of life's struggles.

"If you consume enough self-help books, videos, and podcasts, you'll get to the point where everyone likes you because you're charismatic, charming, and smart.

You'll become wealthy because you understand how everyone behaves and works."

But if you really dig deep and see the layer behind it, you realize it all stems from this sense of insecurity of conditional happiness.

"I'll be miserable until I get visible abs, a family, and $1M in the bank while surfing in the Caribbean"

It comes from dissatisfaction with where you are now — not saying this is bad. Most of the progress I made in my life is when I got completely fed up with where I was in life—negative emotions are the biggest drivers for change and motivation.

It becomes bad when you tell yourself "I won't be happy until I climb this mountain"—aka, "a goal I have for myself that I wanna achieve."

We all know that once you achieve your goal, this happiness won't last.

Because once you climb that mountain you realize there are just more mountains to climb.

Internal problems can't be healed with external solutions.

2) You will always have a "once" or "the next" or "the one"

When I started writing (16 months ago), I always told myself that my writing wasn't good enough.

So in the span of 5 months, I had spent almost $5,000 on writing courses.

Every time I saw a new course, I told myself "This course is what will help me write better and lead to exponential growth for my brand".

"Once I finish this course I'll have this whole writing game figured out."

And when I started going through the material, it felt like I was making progress.

"Look at all of this new information I'm gaining".

But to be honest?

90% of the courses were trash. Fancy terms that didn't make any sense. Explanations were made up and were completely false.

Now, there are only 3 courses that I actually recommend getting (soon it's going to be 4 courses after I launch my own). I'm not kidding.

I got some of the biggest creators involved in helping me make it.

So if you've always had topics you're obsessed with and want to share them with the world and be heard and seen, make an impact at scale, and want to skip beginner's hell and want to reach a point where you don't have to grind social media every day, join the waitlist here.

Launch is on March 1st.

3) Self-help is just a giant mental masturbation cycle

Feeling bad about yourself. Reading a book on how to solve your problems. Starting to feel good about yourself (because you're understanding yourself more). But once you finish the book, you dive straight into another self-help book without applying any of the solutions or advice.

In other words, self-help is just another way of avoiding what you need to do.

The Difference Between Self-Help & Self-Improvement

Self-help is different than self-improvement.

Self-help is a prerequisite to self-improvement.

Self-help is the process of:

• Having motivation (the initial momentum you need to take the first step)

• Discovering concepts that could change your life

• Understand how to apply those concepts

Real progress happens at the last step. It forms the foundation for self-improvement.

Self-help = unsustainable motivation, daydreaming about what your life could look like, and enjoying the cheap dopamine hit you get from it

Self-improvement = implementing self-help concepts, seeing results, and building intrinsic motivation (not external motivation like self-help)

That's the difference between the two.

Where Most People Go Wrong — The Thing That Traps People

Self-help books don't actually solve your problems.

They're things that the author did and found useful and they're just sharing it with you.

They tell anecdotes and personal experiences on why and how it worked for them.

It's up to you to experiment with their methods, find what you like and don't like, adjust, tweak, and tinker until you stumble across something that works for you.

But most people want the author to solve the problem for them. That's where the real problem comes in.

As cliche as it may sound, every person is different.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

You'll see some people who say that a concept doesn't work, but at the same time, you see others who swear by the same concepts and it's the reason why they're happy now.

Let's take writing online for example.

Some people swear by it, and others hate it.

Some people say writing online is the best way to improve your mental health, mood, relationships, make an impact at scale and see how you can change people's lives forever, and get paid to do the work you love.

Others say it's a complete scam and that it's a giant pyramid scheme.

How can you tell if writing online will be life-changing for you without trying it and staying consistent?

If you post every day, implement everything that you've learned, experiment with different solutions tweak and combine them, and stick with it for 6-12 months — THEN, only then you can decide if it's good or bad.

The same applies to any other concept that could change your life.

Doing it for a day, a week, or a month and not seeing instant results, deciding it doesn't work, and dropping it will keep you stuck and miserable in life.

Self-Improvement (Done The Right Way)

True self-improvement comes from being aware of your problems and solving them from experience.

Self-help makes you aware of some of the problems you may have and steps for you to follow.

It acts as a boost to your awareness.

Following the steps (and gaining real-world experience) is how you actually make progress in life.

Real-world experience tells you if it's useful or not.

It isn't useful, then you back to the awareness and figure out a different path (most people forget that they can just go back to the awareness step).

Sometimes, you'll have to create your own steps.

The worst thing you can do is write off self-improvement. Because this means you'll be being mediocre for the rest of your life.

Self-improvement is the act of continuous improvement and making your life a little bit better every day (which eventually compounds into something much larger and greater than what you have initially imagined).

Every person you look up to has a foundation of continuous self-improvement in their life.

If you can name someone, that doesn't have a foundation of always improving themselves, then they're not someone you want to aspire to be like.

Without self-improvement your relationships will suffer as you gain more responsibilities.

Without self-improvement your health will suffer if you aren't aware of the bad habits you have.

Without self-improvement your life will suffer because you're not learning new information, updating your beliefs, and forming new opinions.

Now, self-improvement isn't easy my friend, books make it feel like it's all straightforward and it's filled with sunshine and rainbows.

But doing anything worthwhile is hardly ever just sunshine and rainbows.

It's filled with struggles, doubts, mistakes, problems, and feeling lost, but if you stick to it long enough, you'll get to the other side and see that it was all worth it.

As the lyrical genius, J Cole once said:

"There's beauty in the struggle"

That's it for today.

Thank you for reading and enjoy the rest of your day.

— Hussain