The Rise Of “The Self-Help Generation”

A few days ago, I was browsing Amazon trying to find a new book to read. I was having a hard time finding anything that looked even remotely worth reading.

Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (Yeah, no thanks.)
The Hunger Games (I’m not fourteen.)
JK Rowling’s new book (I’ll think I’ll pass because I can’t imagine her writing anything other than Harry Potter books.)

Then, I stumbled across page after page of self-help books. You know the ones I’m talking about. How to be more productive, make more money, easy ways to lose weight, and the list goes on and on.

Maybe the rise of self-help books is what’s wrong with our society today? We want everything now. We want to find the best “shortcut,” do the least amount of work possible and still reap the big rewards. So, author after author capitalizes on this, and writes about “how they made it.”  They include a few summarized bullet points and usually a few vague examples.

Then, everyone flocks to buy these books, and devours the “wisdom.” Then, they follow the steps to a T, and ulitmately complain when it doesn’t turn into the get-rich quick scheme that they had been hoping for.

That’s the problem.  There are NO GET-RICH SCHEMES or magical solutions, where you do the least amount of work possible and/or follow someone else’s guidebook.

It takes commitment,  sacrifice, and long hours to get ahead and be successful. Reading one, two or a dozen self-help books won’t change that. The people, who “made it,” are the ones who put in countless hours and made a lot of sacrifices to get to that point.

Jessica Malnik works with B2B SaaS and professional service firms to build marketing moat that compound over time using her signature content framework. As both a strategist and executor, she helps clients develop strategic content marketing roadmaps, scale content production, and provide guidance on campaigns and individual pieces.
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