The Death of Self-Help
Dear Creator Diary,
As a self-proclaimed self-help junkie, I have to say, it took some rehab to get my mind right.
Not in the traditional sense. But I had to do some unlearning.
For years, all the content I consumed was about goals, habits, routines, management, leadership… because I was obsessed with becoming a “better version” of myself.
Spoiler: I’m pretty great the way I am. That obsession was just a bandage for a deeper wound.
Underneath it all, I had a deep-rooted subconscious fear that I wasn’t enough.
That if I wasn’t constantly improving, optimizing, performing—I wouldn’t be worthy. Not to others. Not even to myself.
Not to say I didn’t learn things from this season. The traction and momentum was visible. But I was chasing a version of myself that had an undeniably desperate need to be validated.
I didn’t feel like I mattered unless I was someone else’s “hero.” For a time, I helplessly held onto the “business fairy godmother” title a fan and follower had given me.
I wasn’t seeking attention because I particularly enjoyed it. I was seeking it because I thought attention equaled worth.
Your girl needed some therapy. And to switch to decaf.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what self-help has become. How often it’s just self-surveillance. A new standard to chase. A more aesthetic kind of shame.
I want to ring in a new era of self-help. The same way we witnessed the rise of body positivity, I want to see people begin to honor their minds, careers, habits, and lives, not as something broken to fix, but as something whole to come home to.
Not just a gratitude practice.
A radical return to self-acceptance.
Because maybe the answer was never in the next book, the next journal prompt, the next miracle morning.
Maybe what I needed all along wasn’t to become someone else, but to be fully present with who I already was.
The version of me who moves slower.
Who sometimes breaks her own rules.
Who no longer wants to chase joy, but simply experience it.
There’s a quiet rebellion in that.
In choosing rest.
In measuring growth not by output, but by peace.
In saying, “I’m enough,” not after the checklist is complete, but right now. As I am.
Self-help told me to strive.
But healing taught me to stay.
To stay in my body.
To stay with discomfort.
To stay curious.
What if we celebrated self-acceptance with the same intensity we once reserved for goal-setting?
What if we finally believed that our value doesn’t need to be earned, it already exists?
I’m not anti-growth. I’m just anti-shame.
Anti-performative perfection.
And maybe that’s what this new era looks like.
Not the death of self-help.
But the return of self-trust.
