Self-help advice is the bread and butter of the industry at large. It’s raised people from obscurity to lofty positions where their words can sway the hearts and minds of many. Some of that wisdom is through expensive courses and inspiring seminars and generous webinars. But for many, it stems from books that others talk about like crazy.

To me, the self-help books and the self-help advice contained within are the more potent part of the self-help world. Even people as far removed from books as myself were pulled into the power and allure of self-help books. I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I spent hours devouring the pages of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Hell, I even picked up a Tony Robbins book after learning he had incredible success with Unleash the Giant Within.

And when I was participating in the network marketing industry, I heard plenty of passages of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

This is all on top of me publishing one too.

Year after year, more of these books come out and share some iconic advice that’s fitting for the time. Most recently, we had Mel Robbins and her “Let Them” Theory alongside a legion of articles praising the technique as a means of handling life.

But what stands out to me is despite all of the valuable advice contained in these books and so many others, something feels off about them…

It’s like the advice just sucks, and it feels bad when you look into it further.

While I haven’t experienced this as much, only scratching the surface of most generic advice, I know plenty of others who have horror stories to share. And they all stem from following particular pieces of advice for much longer than I could muster.

I discussed some of this in a video I posted in June 2025, but here are some other theories I’ve come up with since then as to why so much self-help advice feels bad.

Think back to all of the advice that you’ve taken in over the years from self-help gurus, and let me ask you a question regarding that advice:

How much of it actually made a meaningful impact on your life?

For me, a lot of the advice that I’ve taken in over the years doesn’t tend to amount to much. Some of it I bring up in conversations; other times it sticks in my head as a nice icebreaker. But overall, I can’t really point to any specific kind of advice or self-help guru that created a lasting impact on me.

In a lot of cases for people, inspiring words or simple advice tend to help in those moments because we’re already primed to do so.

Mel Robbins achieved stardom with her 5-second rule Tedx Talk, but the advice that she was delivering was pretty benign. The only thing that Mel Robbins did was take this advice and monetize it. And her TEDx Talk, at best, is inspiring for those who watch it in that moment because this is a motivational video, and Robbins is very good at working the crowd and the viewers watching the video. People who loved the video and found it helpful were already in a state of procrastination or doubt, and Robbins’ 5-second rule and can-do attitude were what pushed people to try.

And this is true for any piece of advice out there. We seek validation or specific answers, and in those moments, they can be pretty compelling. But over time, those things begin to fade as we face reality and encounter new problems.

The same tricks that we learned before don’t apply in the new problems that we’re facing.

This also brings up another aspect as to why so much self-help advice feels so bad: specifically that the advice was never geared towards you in the first place.

One of the many gimmicks that many self-help gurus apply is broad generalizations for their advice. They like theories, universal rules, simple steps, or easy one-size-fits-all products. The problem is that those kinds of conveniences come at a cost that we don’t fully realize until much later. For example, a lot more people are taking in protein drinks and all meat diets without realizing that those diets or products lack several other core nutrients that we need. And even then, unless you’re planning to become a body builder, the protein shots or drinks that are being offered are completely unnecessary.

As long as you’re eating generally healthy food, you’ll be alright.

In the end, specific pieces of advice are manufactured to cause a much bigger panic about something and distract people from the true problems. In some cases it’s a false-flag panic, and your eating habits, the state of your relationship, or your current job situation is alright—presuming that those things are currently stable. And if they’re not, then it could very well be systemic problems that the advice that’s being delivered is completely omitting.

That or the guru’s advice is coming from a place of extreme privilege and can’t relate at all to your situation.

In the end, how is advice that’s not even geared towards you but is trying to make you feel false emotions meant to make you feel genuinely good?

Gurus, by their very nature, are authority figures. We put a great deal of trust into them as well as power as we welcome them into our lives. As a result, we expect a certain level of quality, professionalism, and expertise, but deep down, we don’t get that.

What we get is a mixed bag when we take a step back and process what we’re given.

Because there is no set standard for self-help, anyone and everyone can jump in and offer their thoughts. But what’s dangerous about that is it leads to a rise of unqualified individuals speaking with authority and as if they’re qualified to speak on the subject. Mel Robbins was a defence attorney, but that’s not stopping her from offering protein supplements, pushing AI, and waving around random studies to reinforce her claim. Jordan Peterson, while a psychologist, has ended up on various panels discussing environmental policy, among other things outside of the psychological field.

Every person has their own interests and passions for sure, but there’s a fine line between learning about this and speaking as an authority on the subject.

And when those interests become part of offering advice to people, things start to get really messy.

Time and time again, we have rich gurus position advice and their findings as the absolute truth when in reality they’re not. But they go as far as tricking people into thinking that what they share is the only proper method to solve your problems. And if you happen to fail or it gets too difficult or you experience a setback, well, that’s your fault.

Self-help advice can feel so bad, as even before you experience a failure or setback, gurus can deliver this kind of sentiment where they can never be wrong. That their carefully curated words lead us to a natural conclusion that they’re right and there’s no sense in arguing over it.

As I hinted in my video last year, a lot of the problems with why advice can feel so bad are there is a big disconnection between the rich and popular gurus’ lives and what people are facing on the regular. Late-stage capitalism extracts emotions for profits, and you have gurus hyper-fixated on individual achievement and values rather than trying to lift everyone up.

Between what I talked about in that video and these points, these are all designed to make us feel closed up and to focus purely on ourselves rather than consider those around us. It makes us feel bad slowly but surely because to our core, we are collaborative people. We want to be looking out for other people rather than just ourselves.

And so the best advice that I can offer for growing ourselves is to start looking out for other people. To start caring about others.

And for the gurus that we speak to on a regular basis, remind ourselves that their word isn’t absolute. Rather, it’s their words, along with a dash of our own interpretation and adjustments, that can make a real difference in our lives.