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The Spinoff
20 hours ago
- General
- The Spinoff
Do self-help books actually help?
Josh Drummond explores the enduring appeal of self-help books and asks what they're really doing for us. This self-help book isn't like the others you may have read. Those didn't help, did they? Well, you're in luck. This self-help book will actually help. That's how a lot of self-help books begin. I would know; I've read a truly upsetting number of them. 'But why?' is an excellent question. A few years ago I started an experiment: I would read self-help books, analyse them with a sceptical eye, but still try to put their lessons into practice. I'd blog about it, or rather, Substack about it, which was the style at the time. Readers could thrill to my adventures as I became… I'm not sure what. The terms of reference were always a little hazy. I know what I wanted to get out of it, though; the experience of being consistent with something. Which, apart from things like eating food and going to the toilet, is something I have never had. The experiment has, by nearly all possible measures of success, been a colossal failure. The only thing I've managed to be consistent with is inconsistency, and relatively few lessons from self-improvement have been put into place. This is a shame, because self-help remains incorrigibly popular. And despite my failure there is one thing that I do feel wildly overqualified to discuss: the form and content of self-help books; and the itches that readers seek to scratch with them. At the time of writing, Mel Robbins' awkwardly-titled self-help tome, The Let Them Theory, is dominating sales charts. To be clear: I haven't read this book and I'm not planning to. I don't need to, and neither do you. If there's one thing that I've learned about self-help books it's that nearly all of them are one or several core aphorisms stretched across hundreds of needless pages, like butter scraped over a factory's worth of bread. (Others are remixes of stuff like Stoicism that, while genuinely useful, was old when Romans were discussing it.) In the case of The Let Them Theory, everything you need to know and possibly more is contained in the first four sentences of the back cover blurb. What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words? If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words – Let Them – will set you free. That's it. That's the book. I hope you find something fun to do with the dozen or so hours that I have just saved you. I'm being serious; I have nothing but disdain for the sort of people who try to render down most books into bite-sized but nutrition-free chunks (ChatGPT, give me a hundred-word summary of The Brothers Karamazov including bullet points of the three main themes) but self-help is an exception. Even the good self-help books should be substantially shorter. The mediocre ones would benefit from being bullet points. The bad ones would be better off as actual bullets; I've certainly felt the urge to shoot them out of an old-timey circus cannon when reading. Of course, this raises the question: if self-help is just obvious and often very old aphorisms repeated and remixed into a slurry, then why is it so popular? It turns up some strange answers. The idea of the 'first ever book' is a contested notion, but one of the serious candidates is a Sumerian tome called The Instructions of Shuruppak. This book was already centuries old when the internet's favourite copper merchant Ea-nāṣir wrote his famous complaint letter, and in its opening passage it claims to be even older. In those days, in those far remote days, in those nights, in those faraway nights, in those years, in those far remote years, at that time the wise one who knew how to speak in elaborate words lived in the Land… The instructions of an old man are precious; you should comply with them! You should not buy a donkey which brays; it will split your midriff. Shuruppak is an example of what's called 'wisdom literature,' which can be found in many places, including religious texts like the Bible. My contention is that this stuff is basically self-help, and that humans have been gravitating to that particular form of words since we've been able to write. Look at that introduction again; even the repetition is present! And if you skip to verse 65, there's this: The eyes of the slanderer always move around as shiftily as a spindle. You should never remain in his presence; his intentions should not be allowed to have an effect on you. There you go. That's The Let Them Theory, in the oldest book known to humanity. Saved you a click. If you accept that wisdom literature shares DNA with self-help, we can agree that the genre has essentially always been with us. But that doesn't explain its eternal appeal. To attempt that – and in the navel-gazing spirit of self-help – I'm going to start with me. My first self-help book was something my parents got me when I was about 12. I've forgotten the title, and I'd rather not remember it. It was some kind of Christian approach to improving your self-esteem, and to a kid who was incredibly self-critical, it seemed like a godsend. To me it promised something I'd long dreamed of: the cheat code to how people worked. If I could crack that – and the book hinted tantalisingly that I might – then I might understand how to make it so people were less mean to me, and perhaps even how to be less mean to myself. That, and I read every book I touched. I used to read the phone book. It was better than some of the self-help I've read since. I've since learned something that will probably not surprise anyone who read the previous sentence or so but still came as a shock to me: that I am autistic, and I have ADHD. As a kid, my parents were keen to avoid labels like 'Asperger's Syndrome' (as my flavour of autism was then called) worrying that it would attract bullies. They found me anyway; it turns out children who wear the same flight jacket to school every day in 1994 kind of print their own labels. Without a more accurate understanding of why I was the way I was, books offered an escape and an explanation. I don't know how I'd verify this, but one of my pet theories of self-help's perennial popularity is that the world is stuffed with non-neurotypical people who are desperate for an instruction manual, a way to carve off the square-peg points of their personalities with a prose adze, in order to fit into society's round holes. Even for so-called neurotypical folks, self-help's appeal might be easily understood given the right framework. We all inhabit bodies that evolved to gather food, to hunt, to socialise in close proximity, often outside. Today, many of us spend our waking hours almost entirely indoors, alternating between a big screen where you are entertained, a medium screen where you work, and a small screen where you incur psychic damage. Across all three screens, a lot of time is spent reading. Small wonder that so much self-help concerns itself with fundamental human needs: eat! exercise! socialise! avoid things that harm you! Here is my book-cover-blurb-worthy hot-take: Self-help functions as a virtue simulator, a way to feel good about yourself for a few hundred pages as you embody the hero of a better life. In that respect, self-help is essentially the same as fiction; only (often) less well-written. While reading, you are the person who keeps a tidy house or keeps time or keeps track of personal finances. But upon finishing, the prose fragments into figments of your imagination, and you return to being the person you already are. I am painting a pretty dire picture of self-help, but that's not really my intention. A lot of the actual advice given in self-help isn't bad so much as it is belaboured. Some of it is excellent! The more deliberate, meditative forms of self-help — such as Stoicism — have a lot of value. There is of course some terrible self-help advice out there, such as Jordan Peterson's commandment: 'Put your life in perfect order before you criticise the world.' If followed, this would ensure no-one (including Jordan Peterson) did anything, ever. Objectively bad advice aside, the difficulty lies not just with the fact that the world is complicated, too much so for any one or even several books. It's also because of something true a psychiatrist told me – in the moment before he recommended a self-help book – 'You can't out-think the thinker'. Perhaps, if we're being honest, we might admit self-help comes from that specific hope. That through the mere act of reading, of thinking someone else's thoughts, we might become someone else. Obviously that's an unfair expectation for any book, but I still think that's the subconscious substrate of the genre. The fundamental problem, since the Instructions of Shuruppak, seems the same: prose, on its own, is a poor teacher, and it's a mistake to put the prose cart before the actually-doing-shit horse. Imagine trying to learn to play the violin, or to do woodworking, from a book of inspirational stories about virtuoso violinists or woodworkers. The idea is absurd, and yet that's what a lot of self-help consists of. I'm sure that some folks do triumphantly snap shut their copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and immediately set about building an extortionate rent-seeking empire, but most probably don't. For the rest of us, the idea of improving by yourself is inherently flawed; it requires a community. Whether you're learning an instrument or forming atomic habits, you'll do better if you're doing it with others, while taking deliberate, somatic action that's much more than turning pages or imbibing inspirational TikToks. Perhaps this isn't like the other self-help articles you've read. Perhaps it's exactly the same. But when you shut the book, close your browser, or end the scroll, it will still be true that the best help comes from other selves.
South Wales Argus
a day ago
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
Strictly's Ore Oduba fell victim to Mel Robbins online scam
The BBC presenter took to Instagram last night (July 20) to share his story of how he believed he was contacted by American life coach and podcaster Mel Robbins. Ore has previously said during a Loose Women appearance that the self-help author's 2024 release The Let Them Theory 'changed his life'. Having previously fronted BBC documentary series Claimed And Shamed, Ore revealed that someone claiming to be Mel contacted him through his email. He said: "I could have cried - they knew who I was! I got an email from the Mel Robbins podcast team…I told Mel everything. 'How she had changed my life. And I literally said at the end of the email, even for you to know who I am, is everything. Thank you so much for getting in touch.' Clearly emotional, Ore revealed that the person emailing him invited him to appear on Mel's podcast, which has more than 20 million subscribers. Ore, 39, recalled: 'I'm reading this back and I know exactly how it made me feel at the time. I wrote back and I said, 'Mel, I'm holding back tears. Is this for real? You must have AI helping you correspond with all of these fans'. 'Mel wrote back, 'of course it's me - it's Mel Robbins!' So then I lost my s**t, I absolutely lost my s**t, in tears on an Avanti West Coast train from Birmingham to London, thinking that my whole life was about to change.' He continued: 'By the way, I used to host a show about scammers. I have watched enough Watchdog to last a lifetime - that doesn't stop me being in the middle of it. I never thought I'd be the person that would be scammed.'' Ore realised that Mel contacting him was too good to be true when he realised her name was spelt wrong in the Gmail account and quickly contacted her PR team. Ore's caption for the post read: 'I'm ashamed, I'm embarrassed and I'm human. Did not think I would be the kind of person who could be scammed, but this proves it really can happen to anyone. 'Especially with the help and manipulation of AI. I'm terrified how easily I was 'hooked'. It was SO convincing, it's scary… I've made no secret of how much Mel Robbins, her book and podcast have helped me through a really difficult period. 'Truth is I turned an emotional blind eye to something I so deeply wanted to believe was for me and nearly got myself into a whole heap of trouble (sidenote.. I've realised in making this video how often we do the same thing in relationships too!).' Urging his fans to 'listen to their gut', Ore admitted that being scammed is 'no fun', but he is 'still inspired and loves Mel Robbins'. He concluded the post: 'So grateful to them for their swift response. I got lucky - it could so easily have been too late.' Recommended Reading: When did Ore win Strictly? Ore competed on the 14th season of the dancing competition with professional dancer Joanne Clifton in 2016. An audience of more than 13 million watched him and partner Joanne Clifton crowned champions in 2016, the most watched final in Strictly history at the time. From 2008 until 2013, Ore presented the CBBC news programme Newsround.
Glasgow Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Strictly's Ore Oduba fell victim to Mel Robbins online scam
The BBC presenter took to Instagram last night (July 20) to share his story of how he believed he was contacted by American life coach and podcaster Mel Robbins. Ore has previously said during a Loose Women appearance that the self-help author's 2024 release The Let Them Theory 'changed his life'. Having previously fronted BBC documentary series Claimed And Shamed, Ore revealed that someone claiming to be Mel contacted him through his email. He said: "I could have cried - they knew who I was! I got an email from the Mel Robbins podcast team…I told Mel everything. 'How she had changed my life. And I literally said at the end of the email, even for you to know who I am, is everything. Thank you so much for getting in touch.' Clearly emotional, Ore revealed that the person emailing him invited him to appear on Mel's podcast, which has more than 20 million subscribers. Ore, 39, recalled: 'I'm reading this back and I know exactly how it made me feel at the time. I wrote back and I said, 'Mel, I'm holding back tears. Is this for real? You must have AI helping you correspond with all of these fans'. 'Mel wrote back, 'of course it's me - it's Mel Robbins!' So then I lost my s**t, I absolutely lost my s**t, in tears on an Avanti West Coast train from Birmingham to London, thinking that my whole life was about to change.' He continued: 'By the way, I used to host a show about scammers. I have watched enough Watchdog to last a lifetime - that doesn't stop me being in the middle of it. I never thought I'd be the person that would be scammed.'' Ore realised that Mel contacting him was too good to be true when he realised her name was spelt wrong in the Gmail account and quickly contacted her PR team. Ore's caption for the post read: 'I'm ashamed, I'm embarrassed and I'm human. Did not think I would be the kind of person who could be scammed, but this proves it really can happen to anyone. 'Especially with the help and manipulation of AI. I'm terrified how easily I was 'hooked'. It was SO convincing, it's scary… I've made no secret of how much Mel Robbins, her book and podcast have helped me through a really difficult period. 'Truth is I turned an emotional blind eye to something I so deeply wanted to believe was for me and nearly got myself into a whole heap of trouble (sidenote.. I've realised in making this video how often we do the same thing in relationships too!).' Urging his fans to 'listen to their gut', Ore admitted that being scammed is 'no fun', but he is 'still inspired and loves Mel Robbins'. He concluded the post: 'So grateful to them for their swift response. I got lucky - it could so easily have been too late.' Recommended Reading: When did Ore win Strictly? Ore competed on the 14th season of the dancing competition with professional dancer Joanne Clifton in 2016. An audience of more than 13 million watched him and partner Joanne Clifton crowned champions in 2016, the most watched final in Strictly history at the time. From 2008 until 2013, Ore presented the CBBC news programme Newsround.
The Irish Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Strictly star breaks down in tears and says he's ‘ashamed' after falling victim to cruel scam
A STRICTLY star broke down in tears while revealing he fell victim to a cruel scam. TV and radio presenter Ore Oduba, 39, Advertisement 4 Strictly star Ore Oduba revealed he fell victim to a cruel scam Credit: oreodubaofficial / Instagram 4 The presenter was visibly emotional while telling his Instagram followers Credit: oreodubaofficial / Instagram 4 Ore was crowned Strictly Come Dancing winner back in 2016 Credit: BBC Taking to Instagram, the star opened up about having fallen for a scam. During an appearance on Loose Women, Ore praised US podcaster Mel Robbins and her self-help books . In particular, he told how Mel's bestselling 2024 release The Let Them Theory had "changed his life". Speaking in an emotional six-minute video, Ore shared: "I reposted that interview, I tagged the Mel Robbins podcast, tagged the Let Me theory, tagged Mel, tagged everybody who cared, and then I got an email from my agent who forwarded on an email from the team at the Mel Robbins podcast. Advertisement Read more on Strictly "I could have cried - they knew who I was! I got an email from the Mel Robbins podcast team." Continuing, Ore explained how he "told Mel everything" and added: "How she had changed my life. "And I literally said at the end of the email, even for you to know who I am, is everything. Thank you so much for getting in touch." After revealing he was "ashamed and embarrassed" about falling for the con, Ore recounted how the email extended an invite to Mel's hugely popular podcast. Advertisement Most read in News TV He said: "I wrote back and I said, "Mel, I'm holding back tears. Is this for real? You must have AI helping you correspond with all of these fans." "Mel wrote back, "of course it's me - it's Mel Robbins!" So then I lost my s**t, I absolutely lost my s**t, in tears on an Avanti West Coast train from Birmingham to London, thinking that my whole life was about to change." Ore Oduba and Portia Announce Separation After Nine Years Ore recalled he "used to host a show about scammers" and had "watched enough Watchdog to last a lifetime". However, as the star said: "That doesn't stop me being in the middle of it. Advertisement 'I never thought I'd be the person that would be scammed.' He realised the email came from a Gmail account - which sparked an immediate red flag. Even worse, Mel's name had been incorrectly spelled with a double 'L.' Upon contacting Mel's PR team via her official website, Ore had his fears confirmed - any correspondence sent from a Gmail account would likely be malicious. Advertisement His post caption included: " Still inspired by and love @melrobbins @letthemtheory and so grateful to them for their swift response. I got lucky - it could so easily have been too late. " Fellow presenter Sean Fletcher commented: "So sorry to hear this Ore. All your Strictly Come Dancing winners Strictly first kicked off back in 2004, and over the years has crowned 21 winners. Here is a full list of who has been lucky enough to 2004 - 2004 - Jill Halfpenny 2005 - Darren Gough 2006 - Mark Ramprakash 2007 - Alesha Dixon 2008 - Tom Chambers 2009 - Chris Hollins 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - Louis Smith 2013 - Abbey Clancy 2014 - Caroline Flack 2015 - 2016 - Ore Oduba 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - Kelvin Fletcher 2020 - 2021 - 2022 - 2023 - 2024 - "I was excited and then so gutted for you listening to this. Important to share your story. Hope you're ok." Another follower wrote: "Oh Ore, I'm just sad that it wasn't the real Mel team for you." Advertisement A third added: "Easy mistake to make because they went via your agent first!" While Ore himself remarked: "Thank you so much everybody… there's a lot of kindness out there, I see it and I'm grateful for it (dw I've deleted and blocked the drivel." 4 The scammer pretended to be US author Mel Robbins - of whom Ore is a fan Credit: Jenny Moloney
Scottish Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Strictly star breaks down in tears and says he's ‘ashamed' after falling victim to cruel scam
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) A STRICTLY star broke down in tears while revealing he fell victim to a cruel scam. TV and radio presenter Ore Oduba, 39, won the BBC dancing series back in 2016. Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 4 Strictly star Ore Oduba revealed he fell victim to a cruel scam Credit: oreodubaofficial / Instagram 4 The presenter was visibly emotional while telling his Instagram followers Credit: oreodubaofficial / Instagram 4 Ore was crowned Strictly Come Dancing winner back in 2016 Credit: BBC Taking to Instagram, the star opened up about having fallen for a scam. During an appearance on Loose Women, Ore praised US podcaster Mel Robbins and her self-help books. In particular, he told how Mel's bestselling 2024 release The Let Them Theory had "changed his life". Speaking in an emotional six-minute video, Ore shared: "I reposted that interview, I tagged the Mel Robbins podcast, tagged the Let Me theory, tagged Mel, tagged everybody who cared, and then I got an email from my agent who forwarded on an email from the team at the Mel Robbins podcast. "I could have cried - they knew who I was! I got an email from the Mel Robbins podcast team." Continuing, Ore explained how he "told Mel everything" and added: "How she had changed my life. "And I literally said at the end of the email, even for you to know who I am, is everything. Thank you so much for getting in touch." After revealing he was "ashamed and embarrassed" about falling for the con, Ore recounted how the email extended an invite to Mel's hugely popular podcast. He said: "I wrote back and I said, "Mel, I'm holding back tears. Is this for real? You must have AI helping you correspond with all of these fans." "Mel wrote back, "of course it's me - it's Mel Robbins!" So then I lost my s**t, I absolutely lost my s**t, in tears on an Avanti West Coast train from Birmingham to London, thinking that my whole life was about to change." Ore Oduba and Portia Announce Separation After Nine Years Ore recalled he "used to host a show about scammers" and had "watched enough Watchdog to last a lifetime". However, as the star said: "That doesn't stop me being in the middle of it. 'I never thought I'd be the person that would be scammed.' He realised the email came from a Gmail account - which sparked an immediate red flag. Even worse, Mel's name had been incorrectly spelled with a double 'L.' Upon contacting Mel's PR team via her official website, Ore had his fears confirmed - any correspondence sent from a Gmail account would likely be malicious. His post caption included: "Still inspired by and love @melrobbins @letthemtheory and so grateful to them for their swift response. I got lucky - it could so easily have been too late." Fellow presenter Sean Fletcher commented: "So sorry to hear this Ore. "I was excited and then so gutted for you listening to this. Important to share your story. Hope you're ok." Another follower wrote: "Oh Ore, I'm just sad that it wasn't the real Mel team for you." A third added: "Easy mistake to make because they went via your agent first!" While Ore himself remarked: "Thank you so much everybody… there's a lot of kindness out there, I see it and I'm grateful for it (dw I've deleted and blocked the drivel."
