Most self-help/spiritual contents are fear-driven

Two kinds of self-help/spiritual content

There are fundamentally two types of self-help content that you will find out there. One has a mostly male audience and another has a mostly female audience. This funny video shows, although it is a parody it shows the actual difference between both. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YduQ10-miTU

I call the male audience dominated industry as “hustle industry.” The key message it gives is, 

“Life is a suffering. It is highly competitive to be successful out there. Life is a war to be fought and won.”

When someone hears, “You are a loser, you need to do this, do that, then only you are worthy of something.” The only reason someone would accept these words unto their ears is if, he thinks he is a loser. The inner dialogue inside is “Yes I am a loser, I am unworthy and the person I am listening to is gonna save me if I follow this advice.” What is truly happening is that you already think and believe “Life is suffering and I have to do 100s of things to be worthy of something.” Someone out there is just confirming your inner biases about life. It is easy and comfortable to listen to something that you already believe, and it becomes a comfort zone. It is a very cunning and clever comfort zone because you can keep fighting hard, to prove to yourself that life is a suffering. 

I call the female audience-dominated industry as “self-acceptance industry.” The key message is  “Life is perfect as it is. You are perfect. Just accept yourself. Nothing is wrong with you.” When you hear, something like this, it gives comfort, a momentary relief. It is not a real solution.  

If someone has to say to you that nothing is wrong with you, that means you still believe something is wrong with you.

Addiction/Attachment to Self-Help Contents

An industry survives when there is enough audience attached to it.  Attachment comes only when another person really makes you believe in something. 

Sometimes you get really attached to another person when they demean you. Because when you hate yourself unconsciously you think you deserve to be treated poorly. So this creates an attachment to the person treating you poorly. When someone calls you a loser, the only way you would accept and stay is, if you believe you are a loser. This creates unhealthy attachment.  How can someone who is giving you advice, can keep you hooked to their content? The only way to do it is by making you feel insecure about yourself.   By condemning you, over and over you feel less of a person. The more you hate yourself, the more you feel attached to them. The more you feel attached to them, the more you watch their content or read their books.

Another way to make you attached is simply to lie to you beautifully and tell you what you want to hear. Like telling you, you are perfect, you are great, there is nothing wrong with you, you don’t need to do anything, and you don’t need to be anything other than what you are right now. What this gives is a momentary relief from the pain, and suffering we are going through, it feels good for some time. And every time you feel down, you go and read these books/watch these videos/contents to get momentary relief. This way the industry grows, keeping you hooked on their content and ideas. 

Most self-help/spiritual content is a slave to the financial structure

Most of the self-help/spirituality/mental health industry  out there is about, 

“How do we create new ideas, advice and thought processes so that, people become good citizens of society and they can contribute to economic/financial structure by being more competent?  ”  

A real-life example:

Once, I was chatting with a girl at a morning coffee meetup I attended. She told me she has ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). I was taken aback a bit because it felt like something very serious from her voice tone. Frankly, I never heard about ADHD before that day. So after I went home, I did a little research about ADHD. The symptoms I found on the internet are 

Disorganization, relationship concerns, lack of focus, restlessness and anxiety, emotional concerns, hyperfocus, time-management concerns, forgetfulness, impulsivity, lack of motivation, and many more.  

Well, I thought I was probably at the last stages of ADHD 😀. 

The first thing I noticed that the personality type ADHD really describes is a type of person, who can’t sit still for 8 hours and works like a slave in office.  And this is the main reason the mental health industry is so hell-bent on pushing and designating ADHD as a disease or disorder, in childhood.  20 years ago it was not such a widespread concern, but today suddenly it has become a big problematic thing among children. And the reason is these children won’t be easy slaves to societal and economic structure. 

Upon further research, I realized most ADHD children have the capacity for creativity. Famous people like Walt Disney, Michael Phelps, Albert Einstein, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had ADHD. I am really angry at the whole industry because they are telling small children and their parents that something is wrong with the way they are born, and they need to be cured of their personality. And these sensitive children will grow up thinking something is wrong with their personality and they need to somehow change/manage themselves.

This is just one case, but you will find numerous such things in the self-help/spirituality/mental health industry, that tell people to change because it does not benefit the society and economic structure. This is why the majority of self-help/spiritual content condemns, demeans and puts down certain personality types. And people with certain personality types are made to believe that, “Something must be wrong with them. They need to change themselves immediately.”

Now the question still remains, unanswered “What works then ?!!!!”

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