Why Self-Help Books Will Ruin Your Life

December 25, 2022August 27, 2022 by NelsonQuest

Why Self-Help Books Will Ruin Your Life

Written by NelsonQuest
August 27, 2022

So, I’ve received thousands of messages from people asking me for book recommendations.

And not one of them has ever given me ANY sort of context – no mention of any specific challenge they’re trying to solve – or particular skill they’re trying to develop.

And I’ll tell you why – it’s because they’re not really looking to accomplish anything.

What actually they’re looking for, unbeknownst to then, is for things to somehow be accomplished for them.

Searching for a magical book that will awaken them to a secret knowledge that will somehow unlock their ability to take infinite, effortless action.

This book does not exist.

And the reality of MOST modern self-help books is actually the opposite of what most people believe them to be.

Where the more that we consume them, the less able we are to actually do things.

Self help? More like self-destruction.

In this video, I’ll show you exactly what’s happening, and what you can do to get off the hamster-wheel of consumption, and back onto the path towards accomplishment.

1. Most Modern Self-Help Books Cause More Harm Than Good

“The 5 Second Rule” by Mel Robbins is a perfect example of how a well-intentioned book can cause more harm than good.

This book can be summarized in a single sentence:

The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 and physically move or your brain will stop you.

It’s actually a pretty amazing piece of advice – I think that anyone who has actually applied it would agree.

But why, for a concept that can be FULLY summarized in a single sentence, do we need 239 f*cking pages?

I’ve read the book – the first 33 pages are literally just a build-up to how effective the 5 second rule is, along with how Mel discovered the rule – – then on page 34 comes the explanation, and the remaining 205 pages are basically just an all-out-assault on the intelligence of anyone who reads them –

Testimonial after testimonial of people talking about how the 5 second rule changed their life.

Some of them told from the perspective of Mel, some of them copy and pasted from the Facebook group.

Now here’s the thing – anyone who actually reads the book through to the end, is going to be WEAKER as a result.

Let me explain:

Assuming the length of the audio book, the average person will have spent 7 hours and 35 minutes of their life… reading a book… whose SOLE piece of actionable advice, is that you should take action on things within 5 seconds.

In other words, you’re reading a book that repeats over and over the importance of taking action within 5 seconds, while spending 7 hours and 35 minutes positively reinforcing not taking action.

And there are SO many other modern self-help books that follow this same format – blog posts that have somehow been bloated out to hundreds of pages.

Half the book consists of useless anecdotes, while the other half is just the same information repeated over and over.

I could name names – but instead, I’d love for you guys to comment below with the worst self-help books that you guys have read – and if someone else has already posted that book, give their comment a thumbs up if you agree.

I’m curious to see who you guys think the worst offenders are.

So, now that we’ve established why these books are preaching action while conditioning inaction – , It’s time to take a good look at what makes them so popular.

2. People Read Modern Self-Help Books To Feel Good, Not To Improve

In the modern age- there’s never a moment where we can’t immediately access something that makes us feel good.

We are born into a system where profit is the goal – and so by time we’ve reached the age where we get to start making decisions for ourselves, we’ve been fully indoctrinated… HARDWIRED… to believe that we should always seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Nowhere is this belief more destructive than when it comes ANYTHING having to do with improving ourselves, where we should actually be SEEKING OUT pain and discomfort.

To grow we must challenge the beliefs we MOST cherish, push ourselves PAST our perceived limits.

Pain and discomfort are INDICATORS that we are ACTUALLY growing!

Modern books understand that we’ve been conditioned to seek out pleasure in every moment, and so their authors have been conditioned to help us achieve just that.

This is why most of them are packed to the gills with ‘filler’ content like ‘success stories’.

And hey – as a business owner, I completely understand the value of using social proof to help shape expectation.

As humans, we’re much more likely to embrace a particular concept or strategy if we’re given examples of how other people have transformed their lives by using them.

And using ‘social proof’ in self-help books isn’t anything new.

Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” – published in 1937 – starts off with a couple of amazing success stories of people who successfully applied the knowledge that the author is about to share.

But unlike most modern self-help books, Hill then proceeds to actually share that knowledge, with extreme attention to detail.

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is a simple system designed to help you achieve a specific goal by facilitating the development of relevant habits and creating the perfect environment to make failure impossible.

This guide is about actually walking the path. It creates a perfect environment devoid of excuses and forces you to face who you are and what you need to do in a way that’s sustainable.

I’m ashamed to admit this, but there was a time, where I thought that ‘The Secret’ was the greatest book ever.

Why? Because others had told me that it was the greatest book ever.

Why did they think that? Because Oprah told them.

After reading it, the idea that I could ‘visualize’ an open parking space at the destination I was headed to – and then magically, sometimes finding one, made me a believer.

Years later, I mentioned my love of ‘The Secret’ to a girlfriend – who then proceeded to show me, point by point, why she thought the book was garbage.

How it conditions people to expect the universe to make things happen for them instead of making them happen for themselves.

Up until this point I had never heard ANYONE critique The Secret… which made me realize that I had never even had the faintest idea to think critically about it myself.

This is where I started to realize that most people don’t read self-help books critically –

They read them to feel good.

They don’t read self-help books to actually improve themselves.

They read them to FEEL like they’re improving themselves, without actually having to do anything.

Ok, so here’s my official “book recommendation”

First, make sure you have a goal.

Then, choose a book whose information you can read SLOWLY – no more than a chapter a day – and apply CONSISTENTLY towards the realization of that goal.

The only way to actually learn something is to apply it –

Over time you’ll find that some of what you apply will stick, and most of what you apply, you’ll forget.

This is normal – and it’s part of the process of bringing information from theory to reality.

Part of the process of becoming your own person, with your own strengths and weaknesses.

I find that a lot of people, especially those who are ‘new’ to the concept of self-improvement, have the idea that they should read modern books because the knowledge is more recent, and thus more relevant.

This could not be further from the truth.

Classic self-help books are considered ‘classics’ because the information within those books is timeless. You’ll find that these books are JUST as relevant today as when they were written.

Books like “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, “Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz, and “The Tao of Pooh” by Benjamin are all books that I’ve read and consider to contain incredible knowledge when read slowly and applied consistently.

Then you can graduate to books like “The Tao Te Ching” or Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil” –

These are books that will require you to have already taken a massive amount of action in life to possibly even BEGIN to be able to understand – and if you’re not ready, trust me, they will let you know.

If you need help figuring out goals I recommend that you check out my ‘Dark Mode’ system – which is a productivity system I developed for myself to help me set and then achieve big goals. You can grab it for free.

And as always – if you want more content like this and to be notified FIRST when that next video comes out, subscribe to my YT channel.

Unless your favorite book ever is ‘the 5 second rule’ – in that case you should probably leave this page.

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A (Real) Guide To Becoming Your Best Version

August 23, 2022August 23, 2022 by NelsonQuest

A (Real) Guide To Becoming Your Best Version

Written by NelsonQuest
August 23, 2022

I spent most of my life feeling like I’d never really amount to much – and this feeling only got worse after graduating high school – where it seemed like with each passing year, everyone around me was moving forward while I just stayed the same.

So if you told my younger self that one day I would move to another country, learn spanish and salsa, box and climb mountains , build a massive business, learn philosophy and discover spirituality.

That, as a lifelong introvert, one day I would make YouTube videos where I helped to illuminate this path for others.

If you told all of this to my younger self, I would have told you that you were out of your fucking mind.

Anyway – all of the big questions of personal development – ‘how can I develop confidence? Discipline? Work ethic? ‘How can I stop procrastinating? Stop making bad decisions. Stop feeling depressed?’

All of these questions are all rooted in a much deeper question – perhaps the question of questions: “How do I become my best version?”

Now, judging by the number of bullshit, pseudo-motivational ‘how to be your best version’ videos there are on YouTube, two things are clear to me.

A lot of people aspire to be their best version
A lot of people have no idea what the fuck ‘best version’ even means, let alone how to get there

So in this article – we’re going to go DEEP. I’m going to break down the complex psychological implications of all of this as I share the exact 3 steps through which I was able to become my best version.

Step 1: Understanding “Me” and “Ideal Me”

“How do I become my best version?” … if we look closely, this actually implies two different people.

We have ‘me’ – who exists in the present moment – and ‘my best version’ – an ideal version of me who exists at some future moment.

PRESENT ME is lazy, unproductive, weak, and sometimes masturbates in excess of 5 times per day.

IDEAL ME wakes up at 5am, effortlessly works entire days, and climbs mountains in his spare time.

So when we ask the question “how do I become my best version” what we’re really saying is that “I am me, right now, but that’s not who I want to be. Who I want to be, is the ME that I want to be, somewhere in a future moment”

These are two different people… which implies something else really important: The reason that our ‘Present Me’ is not yet our ‘Ideal Me’ can be summarized in a single word: CONTROL.

Because if we had control – then we would ALL go to the gym and have 6 packs, and instantly develop good habits… But that’s NOT what happens… instead we fail and procrastinate and delay things – because we LACK control.

For most people, it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge this. I used to HATE the idea that I was not in control of myself because it made me feel weak… but here’s the thing.

Most people who begin this journey immediately start posting motivational bullshit to social networks and want to see themselves as a model for everyone else.

But wow are we supposed to BEGIN an AUTHENTIC journey of PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT if we can’t even acknowledge the obvious stuff, like how weak (and probably also pathetic) we are RIGHT NOW IN THE PRESENT MOMENT BEFORE we make changes?

The acknowledgement that we LACK control – that we are not NEARLY what we COULD be, is what allows an AUTHENTIC journey to even begin in the first place.

Anything else is just delusion, and not the good kind.

I am me, in the present moment – a weak pathetic creature who has very little control over the sort of decisions and habits that will help me transform into who I want to be – my ‘ideal me ‘- who exists in the future and is primarily characterized by one thing – CONTROL.

Got it? Ok let’s move to the next step.

Step 2: Authentically Understand “Me”

Ok so we’ve got ‘Me’ and ‘Ideal Me’ – if we’re going to move any further we should probably work to have an authentic understanding of both of them.

So let’s start with the first one, ‘Me’. What exactly is ‘Me’ ?

Well, we might think we know, but let’s be honest here. For most of us, who we ‘THINK’ we are is not even close to who we ‘REALLY’ are.

We all know someone who thinks they’re things that they’re clearly not – these are ‘inauthentic’ people – and while this is easy to observe in others, it’s extremely difficult to observe in ourselves.

I’ll give you an example that most of you, if you’re being honest, will relate to.

In the past – when my friends shared accomplishments on social media – on a surface level I would feel and act as if I was happy for the person – but deep-down on a ‘root’ level I was jealous.

When my friends ‘failed’ – on a surface level I was supportive and compassionate -but on a root level… I actually wanted them to fail.

Now most of us don’t want to think of ourselves as being jealous and bitter – probably just as much as we don’t want to think of ourselves as weak –

And so even if we authentically experience these emotions, instead of acknowledging them, we instead choose to bury them beneath the mask of who we PRETEND to be.

There are lots of problems with this, but at least insofar as it has to do with becoming our ‘best version’, it is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT for us to honestly identify as much weakness within us as possible because this all comes together to form the STARTING POINT of the journey.

The AUTHENTIC starting point.

To acknowledge our lack of control and how the people around us truly make us feel IS how we come to understand our ‘Me’ more authentically, which is ½ of the ‘become my best version’ equation.

Being honest about how things REALLY made me feel allowed me to understand ‘Me’ on an authentic level, and in doing so I was able to realize that I felt ‘jealousy’ because I wanted the success of other people for myself.

I felt happy when others failed because their failures made me feel better about my own position in life.

THESE discoveries then led me to realize that my entire self-worth and everything about how I measured myself had to do with others – the external, fake world where, to make matters worse, most of the successes people share are highly exaggerated, and most of the failures people share are to garner likes and attention.

Realizing this allowed me to stop comparing myself to others, and to start comparing ‘me’ to my ‘ideal me’ – which is the CORRECT comparison to be making if we want to become our best versions.

Now, instead of comparing myself to others, I simply see myself in them.

When people succeed, I see myself succeeding, and I feel genuine happiness.

When people fail, I see myself failing, and I am genuinely supportive and compassionate.

We are probably not who we think we are – and if we want to understand ourselves authentically, we should start by turning off the TV, disconnecting from social media, and at least temporarily REMOVING ourselves from the external world, because that world is governed by profit and virtually nothing is as it seems.

The external world doesn’t want us to authentically understand ourselves because there’s no profit in here.

The less we understand ourselves – the less capable we are of solving our own problems and dealing with our own issues -and the MORE likely we are to seek out all sort of bullshit products and services to fix SYMPTOMS and NEVER root causes.

The external world programs us to believe that we are something that we are NOT- and who we REALLY are is waiting to be discovered in the INTERNAL where not even a 12 minute YouTube video can take us.