| Let's face it; at one point or another, all of us have felt inferior. All of us have been in those slumps where we feel like our lives are going nowhere, nothing is going our way, and everything in general is just shitty. It's these times in our lives that we will turn to practically any form of help we can in order to get better and get our lives back on track. Unfortunately, one of those places we turn is self-help.
You pick yourself up out of your bed and head on down to the local Chapters. After false browsing for a while and working up the courage to 'stumble across' the self-help section, you through those reassuring titles to try to find something that applies to you. You have this undying hope that somebody wrote a book with your name in the title, that will apply to your particular situation. Nobody has. You read through the titles: "How to Get Your Life Back on Track", "So You're Depressed", "Become Awesome", "See the Success You Never Imagined", "You Suck; Learn How to Deal With It". You grab a few and work up the courage to waste your money on them without the cashier judging you - you know deep down that they are.
Why do we love self-help?
I have to admit - I was a self-help junkie (I still am in some ways). As with most of you, I live to improve myself. I feel like if you are not moving forward, you're moving backward. Standing still is completely counter-productive and life is too short to dilly-dally. I've been the guy buying those self-help books from Chapters. I have probably around 10 self-help books in total, gathering dust on my bookshelf as we speak.
That's because they don't actually work for most people. The reason we love self-help is because it is a temporary cure - self-help is a pain killer. These books make us feel like there is hope, like some people understand our problems, and that there is a formulaic way of getting around them. "If you just follow our simple 12-step program..." We love that feeling of momentary inspiration and uplift. We're addicted to it.
The self-help industry preys on this fact. The majority of these books are written simply to capitalize on other people's misery and the fact that we are so addicted to thinking we're making a difference just because we're reading a book. Sure, the books may have some helpful content, but the idea of 'self-help' in general is kind of an oxymoron. If anybody could really 'help themselves' by simply reading a book, the world would have far fewer problems.
The case for self-help
Look, I'm not here so much to condemn the self-help industry as I am to prevent people from veering off onto the wrong track, as I know I have. PUA is a subset of self-help, after all. We in this community are here to improve our own sex lives, based on the experiences and help of others who have done this successfully. We read posts and books, just like self-help, in order to improve our own lives.
I don't think the mindset of self-help belongs in a community like this, however. I don't believe that people should simply believe that because they have read some posts on inner and outer game and how to open a set, that they suddenly have game. Application is the key that lots of people forget - there is no application in a self-help book, just like there is no application within any of these posts. These are all just words - the application is the involvement of the reader when he physically does what the text suggests.
Pick-up is like the rebellious foster child of self-help, and that's because we as a whole have a much more applicable field of improvement than self-help. Self-help deals with extremely abstract ideas and concepts for the most part, such as improving one's life in any vague regard, whereas in pick-up, our primary goal is to improve our sex life. Meaning, simply put, 'fucking babes'.
There are some areas of self-help that will actually help game. For the most part, however, self-help and pick-up are two separate spheres. The overlap is minimal. Real, applicable concepts and ideas are all that help you here. Do yourself a favour; keep self-help to the dark corners of the local Chapters.
Feel free to add in your 2 cents.
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