The Current - Do self-help books really work?

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Self-Help is a multi-billion dollar industry — an entire ecosystem of books, podcasts, social media. Over ten-thousand self-help books are published in the US each year and they account for 17% of non-fiction book sales in Canada. What makes a good self help book? Does self help work? And how do you differentiate guru from grifter? Our panel of self help experts have answers.

One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna-Luk. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this? From CBC's personally, this is Agent Leila, the story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on, let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast.

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Mel Robbins, Jay Shetty, Brunay Brown. They're all household names. I just heard about this thing called the let them theory. I freaking love this. If your friends are not inviting you out to brunch this weekend, let them. If the person that you're really attracted to is not interested in a commitment, let them. You think saying no will let the other.

the person down. Well, guess what? When you say yes when you don't want to, you let yourself down and you let that person down. Don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you're not enough because you'll always find it. Our worth and our belonging are not negotiated with other people. Self-help is a multi-billion dollar industry, an entire ecosystem of books, podcasts, social media. Over 10,000 self-help books are published in the United States alone each year. They account for 17% of non-fiction book sales in Canada. How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the most checked-out books of all time

at the New York City Library. And so we went out under the streets of Toronto to talk to people about why they turn to self-help. Self-help books is almost like a guidance. It's not set in stone. It's almost a direction. If I'm going through some kind of minor crisis that doesn't necessarily warrant

calling up my therapist, then maybe a self-help book would help. I find self-help goods really helpful. to understand sometimes how I can improve myself. I really like the ones that help me at work, for example, to be a better leader or to be a better listener. I've read like one, but it's not like self-help, like the habit loop or whatever.

I wouldn't slant or like judge self-help generally because anything could be self-help. Like you read a magazine article that's impactful and you're like, oh, I like that. I'm going to like carry myself differently. What exactly makes a good self-help book? Does self-help actually work? How do you differentiate guru?

from Grifter. I'm joined by three people who have thought a lot about this. Beth Blom is a professor of contemporary literature at Harvard, an author of the self-help compulsion, searching for advice in modern literature. Tony Jones runs an international self-help book club called Shelf Help, and she is the author of the mini self-help book, You, the Beginner's Guide, and Jeremy Stevenson is a clinical psychologist and author of 12 Levers, the complete psychological toolkit for improving your life. Good morning, everyone. Hello. Good afternoon from the UK.

Hello. Tony, we'll start with you. You heard that person say in our introduction that in some ways they use self-help as a guidance. You have read, what, a thousand self-help books. Is that right? Yeah, I would say so. I would say at least, I've been reading it for 10 years and I read pretty quickly. So that's two books a week.

Why would you read 1,000 self-help books? Because I needed a lot of help. No, I didn't get to a point where I'd never discovered, I'd never read it. any self-help until I was in my kind of late 30s, 10 years ago. And then I burnt out. And then I found a book by a guy called Paul McKenna, who's a hypnotist, a hypnototherapist here in the UK, but also big on the self-help scene. And it just changed everything for me. So I've since been, as a previous journalist, I've just since been consuming so much self-help. And it really has changed a lot of my life. So having read at least a thousand of them, what do you think makes a good self-help book?

I think anything that challenges your view of yourself and the world. I mean, I think I don't know the guests, the other guests and I might disagree a bit on this. But for me, I feel like self-help is actually, it's just about understanding and improving and then prioritising your relationship with yourself. So not necessarily fixing or changing anything. But I think lots of us don't really,

either we don't even know we have a relationship with ourselves or if we do it, might not be that positive. So a question that I love to ask Matt when I'm interviewing self-help orders is how would you describe your relationship with yourself? And people either love or hate that question. I think if you do this kind of work and you're into this books and you spend any time thinking about it, then it's a great question to answer because the answer might be curious

or playful or work in progress is usually my answer. But for people who I think don't really ever think about their relationship with themselves, they find it quite confronting. Jeremy, how do you define what self-help is? It feels like it could be almost anything in some ways. How would you characterize it? I would broadly define it as just something aimed at improving your life. And I agree with Tony.

A lot of that could come down to improving your relationship with yourself, becoming more self-compassionate. But there might be other things as well, like becoming more productive, understanding your problems, becoming more active in life. So, yeah, just generally something to improve your life. 15,000 self-help books are published in the United States every single year. why do you think jeremy that self-help is so popular right now well i think a lot of it comes down to

uh the default of our brains we're not really wired to be happy uh and i guess in modern life there's a it's very easy to compare yourself to this idealized um image of how we think other how happy we think other people are from social media um and yeah i guess there's just general stresses going on, you know, financially and in world events. So, you know, being happy takes work. Do those books work? Do they actually help people? I think they absolutely can. Similar to Tony, I've personally had experiences where my life has changed from good self-help. So I remember reading this book called A New Guide to Rational Living back in the day taught me a technique that's now used a lot in cognitive behavioral therapy about challenging your thinking.

And I just lay on the couch reading that for a couple of weeks with my mind blown, like learning about the connection between thoughts and feelings and finally having a tool that could reliably relieve my misery. That's a lot of what led me to becoming a clinical psychologist in the first place as being inspired by that. I think that there's good evidence that it can help people. So, yeah. But the strategies, and I want to get to Beth in just a moment, but the strategies that you've looked at, Jeremy, as I said, you're the author of a self-help book yourself, 12 levers, the complete psychological toolkit for improving your life.

One of the things that you found is that for all of these self-help books that are published, in some ways you can boil what's in there down to just 12 strategies, right? Yeah, so the premise of our book was that techniques are the most important ingredient of self-help. There's other ingredients there, like the motivation, the stories, the case studies, and so on. But we think that techniques are the most important ingredient because you control them and they get you the outcomes you actually want. So we did this big project where we, over the course of a few years, we went through more than 100 self-help books studying them. We went through over 20 therapies.

And every time we came across a technique, we extracted it and put it into a database. And that database grew and grew until we had nearly 500 techniques in there. and then we went through and synthesized them. And that's where we made the core discovery of the book, is that all of those hundreds of techniques collapsed into just 12 broad psychological strategies. So that was our finding from the research. There's 12 broad levers you can use to improve your life,

and I think that can simplify the project a bit. Levers like what? So a good example would be, say, lever six is shift your body to shift your mind, which involves regulating your physiology. So a lever is the broad psychological strategy. And then there could be multiple techniques that fall within that. So optimizing your sleep could be one, slow breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, exercise itself. So there's a variety of levers you can pull to improve your life. Beth, how do you understand? We've been listening to a couple of guests talk about the role of self-help

in their lives, but also the scale of this industry. How do you understand how this genre became a multi-billion dollar industry? Well, I think, you know, the issue of synthesizing that Jeremy mentioned is really key. So I think that one of the most valuable functions that self-help has always had is to really curate and reorganize the wisdom of the past. And I think, you know, for the past 100 years or more, we've been living in an era of not just too much. information, but too much advice. So there's a real demand for people who will compile this wisdom for us. And self-help, even in its origins with Dale Carnegie or before, self-help authors were not really intent on advertising the novelty of their claims. They really, they branded themselves as

compilers, synthesizers. They would comb through the archive of human experience to kind of isolate these techniques in the way that it sounds like Jeremy is doing as well. You mentioned Dale Carnegie. Is how to win friends and influence people the first self-help book? Well, actually, I think, you know, there's a lot of scholarly debate about what is the first self-help book. And some people will say, like, you know, as is typical of scholars, they'll say, well, no, the first self-help book is stoical philosophy. The first self-help book is the Bible. In my study, I argue that the first self-help book proper is actually quite a few decades before Carnegie in 1859. You have the publication. of a book called Self-Help, the first to use Self-Help in its title, by a Scottish author named Samuel Smiles. And this book, it began actually as a series of lectures to working men's associations in Leeds. And Smiles couldn't find a publisher for the book. He wanted to turn the lectures into a book.

He had to self-finance the study. And finally, he published this book called Self-Help, which became a tremendous sensation, a runaway hit all over the world in Japan and Africa and elsewhere. Tony, as again, I'm going to go back to you as somebody who has read, you know, more than a thousand of these books. How do you determine which self-help books are actually credible? I said in the introduction, you know, differentiating between guru and grifter. How do you do that? Yeah. I do self-help in community now. So with the book club, we're doing books in kind of reading really along together. So I feel like if something is having an impact on people, I can usually, I would usually know it because I can hear that

their stories are changing or hear that they are having different behaviours maybe or letting go of habits or starting new habits. So I suppose ultimately it's having something that would have an impact on you, but then that will change how you behave. I think Jeremy's book, actually, the 12 levers, we're going to do it for our book club read for September and October. So I've been reading the book and it's brilliant. And he talks a lot about, having to take action. So it's great to read all the books. We've all got books that we've read or half read and then maybe not actually taken the action. So for me, it's anything that then inspires you to take an action and then ideally make that a habit and part of your daily life.

So I'm really about making self-help like an everyday practice. Does it matter to you if the books kind of pass the smell test? If they seem like maybe the thing that they're promising is too fantastical or out there or not possible? Not really. And I think different books will appeal to different people at different times. Like I think, as I said earlier, and as we all know, a lot of it is about repackaging similar stories. So think can grow rich. Now it's a manifestation book. But they will relate to, people will relate to them in their own way. So I feel like a lot of it is, are you relating to the author? Is it somebody who speaks to you or somebody who can inspire you? And I think in the intro, one of the box pops you did, somebody said, anything can be self-help.

And I really agree with that, that for me, memoir or fiction even, if it's something that's inspiring and makes you look at yourself and the world and how you treat yourself and the world, then that can be self-help. So we've covered books like The Monk Who Sold This Ferrari or the Celestine Prophecy or The Life of Pie even, just because they're big themes. And once they're talked about in a group and once you look at how you could apply them to yourself and how they might improve your life, then to me that could be self-help. even though it might not be strictly in the self-help found in the self-help aisle. One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna-Luc. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this?

From CBC's personally, this is Agent Leila, the story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on. Let's go. Let's get it. confession. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Jeremy, how do you talk to your patients about the books, the ideas that are in them, and the promises that they make, and whether those promises are realistic, whether they're possible, whether they're backed by evidence, for example. How do you talk to your patients about that?

I try to encourage them to read books that have some evidence behind them. So there are certain self-help books that are really aligned with different kinds of therapy, you know, like Feeling Good by David Burns is aligned with cognitive behavioral therapy. The happiness trap is aligned with acceptance and commitment therapy. And these types of therapies have good research behind them. So I'll often encourage clients to read those as a compliment to our therapy because they encourage the client to do similar things as we're doing in our sessions. And if a client is reading a book that maybe has some controversial claims or ideas,

I might just caution them a little about that. But I'm not going to be as heavy-handed as saying, don't read this if they're getting benefit from it. But I just want them to know that the client, of the book might not be actually backed by research. Claims like what? I don't want to name names of books, but there are certain books or authors

that will make claims about how thoughts can change physical reality independent of your behavior. That you can manifest things? Yeah, I guess there's a certain definition of manifest, which is quite supernatural. And that can sound good and be inspiring, but I think there can be some danger to that and it's not hard to think of examples where, you know, you reach a conclusion that you can think your way out of a physical health condition like cancer

and that can get in the way of actually doing good treatment. I mean, you may not want to name a title, but you think of a book like The Secret, which has sold, what, tens of millions of copies and is about energy in some ways and other things as well. But is there, what do you say to your patients about the attraction of a book like that? the reason that it's sold so many copies and continues to sell is because people are looking for something, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think it does meet a certain need and, you know, those kinds of books, not every single thing is going to be wrong about them. I think there is a certain meaning of manifesting that is true. Like if we dedicate our mind to certain goals and then, you know,

those thoughts translate into a change in our behavior, then that's a certain. a good thing. We're more likely to achieve our goals. But I think if they're distracting us from self-help strategies that are more likely to work, then I think it's a problem. You're being very cautious in how you say that in part, not just dismiss people, right? It's one of the principles of our book. There's definitely a part of me that can be quite critical of certain books, especially after reading a lot of them. But in the book, we try to, I guess criticize ideas a little bit, but not certain authors and books. But yeah, I guess I'm not the biggest fan of the secret, if I put it that way. Beth, how do you think about the popularity of

these books in this moment and what it tells us, again, about the moment that we're in? We've had conversations on this program about young people getting off of social media because they feel like it's empty calories, young people, and not just young people, but people perhaps returning to church because they're looking for something larger than the thing that they're in right now. What does the popularity of self-help tell you about the moment that we're living through right now? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a rising demand for what you could call a sort of a more realistic self-help. I think that the skepticism we've heard about some of the inflated promises and kind of magical thinking of self-help, that skepticism is fairly prevalent.

People are looking not for grandiose promises of unlimited agency or just unbridled success. They're really interested in kind of more modest advice about smaller, granular changes you can make to your everyday life, like I'm thinking of atomic habits, for instance, to better your circumstances. And you'll see that a lot of the self-help books coming out today, they incorporate an element of self-critique or of self-consciousness, about the sort of limitations of the genre and the industry. So moving from these grandiose promises to these smaller strategies, I think, is a real trend in contemporary self-help. What do you make, Beth, of the pushback to some self-help books? And again, we've kind of hinted at this, but you can change your own circumstances.

But the belief is that maybe they ignore the larger structural problems in society. And they put it all on you in some ways. Yeah, I mean, the conversation around self-help is always so polarized. So the common academic critique of the industry is really that it focuses ever since Samuel smiles in that book Self-Help, that it focuses on individual change at the expense of social reform and that it's really encouraging a kind of competitive individualism and not thinking about the bigger picture. On the other hand, you can't make any progress or social steps towards reform without individuals who can cope and manage in their daily lives. And so I do think that self-help or at least attention to the self, care of the self, as Michelle Foucault, the philosopher will call it, is essential in order for any political change to happen. So you need them both. And unfortunately, the conversation is often very divisive. Tony, of the tens of thousands of these books that are sold every single year, the majority of them are being bought by women. Why do you think that is?

I think women are more, I suppose we're happier to admit that we're trying to change ourselves maybe. And I think maybe we're looking for ways to connect with other people who have done similar things. Where I think if you look at looking after our physical selves versus our mental selves, I suppose guys are maybe stereotypically, I imagine, in my experience, that guys are more eager to and able to talk about looking after their physical bodies than their emotional cells and their mental cells, whereas women are maybe a bit more comfortable at talking about that, at learning about it, at sharing it. It's also interesting that if you go to the bookstore, many of the self-help books directed

at men are under the category of productivity, not of self-help, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. So I think self-help and Beth will be able to talk on this much more. But I think maybe it's getting broader as in productivity or looking after your physical self or the mind-body connection and all these areas. We, this group here might call that self-help. But I don't think if somebody's picking up like a Tony Robbins book, they might like the idea that that's going to help them make more money or be more successful or run a better business. If you labeled it as self-help, it might be less appealing, maybe to some of the guys. Beth, do you see that?

I think of authors like Adam Grant, you could call his book self-help. You could call that Rick Rubin book, the creative act of self-help book, right? Absolutely. And I think stoicism and neo-stoicism is one sphere where you see part of the kind of impulse behind the just incredible popularity of that genre is, I think, a kind of male desire for self-help that doesn't seem so feminine and so woo-woo, you know. Is there, just finally, Beth, a self-help idea or a book? Again, understanding some of your skepticism around this, but also understanding that you've studied this extensively.

Is there a book that you, that sticks with you, that resonates with you? I'm not saying it's changed your life, but something that you've read that you thought, oh, there's something here. Well, I'll tell you, I couldn't tell you what my favorite self-help book is, but the last self-help I bought was a 1934 manual called You Must Relax, which I love just because it contains, it encapsulates that contradictory spirit of self-help, that obligatory relaxation, the way that self-help has this fascinating capacity to turn something that should be easy into work. I just love the title of it as well, which kind of says everything, right?

You must relax. Exactly. Jeremy, what about for you? Is there a self-help book that you would recommend? Yeah, I think a good go-to is mind over mood. It's a CBT, a cognitive behavioral therapy book. Yeah, I think if you're struggling with some of the common problems like anxiety, depression, worry, and so on, that's a great starting point. And, yeah, I mean, for habit formation, more behavior change, I do think atomic habits is solid.

I really liked it when I read it. And Beth, I'd be more than happy to send you a copy of the 12 levers if you want one. Wonderful, please do. And Tony, you run the book club. So add one book to our list of things that we should add to the reading list. Sure. Well, I think, are you an early riser, Matt, I think? I am.

Yeah. So have you had a book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod? No. You might not need it because you're already an early riser, but the idea is that you fit in six separate self-help type activities within an hour of your morning, and that will set you up for the day. And if you're doing it every day, there's an acronym which is say there's the silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing or journaling. So a little bit of all of those

every morning is your miracle morning and that sets you up. And my book club, love it. We've read it twice, actually, over the last eight years. They love it so much. It seems right up my alley. Thank you very much. It's great to talk to you all about this. Thank you very much for being here. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Beth Blum is a professor of contemporary literature at Harvard and author of the Self-Help Compulsions searching for advice in modern literature. Tony Jones runs an international self-help book club called Shelf Help and is the author of a mini self-help book called You, The Beginners Guide, and Jeremy Stevenson is a clinical psychologist and author of 12 Levers, the complete psychological toolkit for improving your life.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.