It doesn’t significantly change my advice and was actually already factored in my answer. Your obligations are your own. If you can’t afford to change, that answers the question.

It’s not about empathy. My point is that inherently there are no advices to be had on life choices. Just do what you want to do, decide to try or decide you don’t want to. There are no right and wrong general answer here. A bunch of strangers on the internet can’t give someone permission or an excuse.

>If you can’t afford to change, that answers the question.

In my personal experience the greatest challenge is always oneself and not external factors. So your advice to drop all self-help is wrong in my opinion. There are people who made it against all odds and their mindset may crave the necesseary pathways in your brain as well.

I would even say that the more the odds are stacked against you the more you should try because there are few things as impressive.

I personally suspect more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped. Which circles back to the kind of advice I would give someone.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming reading advice is inherently beneficial but it needs to result in some net positive behaviors or it’s just wasting time, money, and mental effort.

>more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped

It is certainly a business but I assume that most of these self-help gurus truly want to help. They are promoting different methods(more or less rational) but the core message is often very similar and amounts to "take action". If all roads lead to Rome you may very well get there.

I think by listening to these books you are in fact priming your brain to find a way to improve your situation.

My personal observation is people are generally soothing their brain into into inactivity rather than priming it for something. There is a reason get rich quick scams are so effective and so much home exercise equipment sits unused, the first step is usually the easiest.

I suspect a self help guru like Tony Robbins would have actually given similar advice to the root commenter - to consider your options and then to get off the couch and do something.

Lumping all self-help resources into not being useful or even harmful doesn't help. There will always be some quacks, but there will always be some people with genuine insights and the ability to help others understand themselves better and move towards their goals.

I've never paid for Tony Robbins material but would say its been helpful.

In the OP's case they could use the material to understand what is behind wanting the change. Understanding their why.

Is it a feeling of significance / love / variety / contribution that they're lacking? How could they go about getting what's missing? What are their options?

These are the types of things that I get from Tony Robbins - almost like a problem solving framework for personal problems.

All that being said, do people use self help as a form of procrastination? Yes I'd say many do. However I believe the people with all the resources that refuse to take action are no worse off than they would have been anyway.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

I can’t tell if that was supposed to be a parody or not.

Which is kind of my point. Some material may be better than placebo, but when we are talking about self help as an industry you need to consider the impact of everything from Scientology to actually lethal practices like Breatharianism. The trends within the industry seem to focus on what’s useful as a business rather than what’s helpful to it’s customers. So yes some people are helped, but some people are also financially ruined or even killed.

It’s not that everyone is trying to scam others, just that the same kind of forces that cause clickbait still apply and impact what’s popular.

> just wasting time, money, and mental effort.

I don't believe it takes effort. On the contrary, reading self-help is basically a guilty pleasure. Otherwise it wouldn't sell in such massive quantities.

What else would you call all that chemical energy used up when neurons are firing etc to allow you to read and remember something if not mental effort?

All things we do requires mental effort. Laying in bed and daydreaming also results in neurons firing. So, I think we're just discussing the amount of effort. My point was that self-help is usually written is such a way to make its reading very pleasant and to actually be a dopamine hit - it makes the reader imagine all the potential changes they can implement in their lives, it pumps them up with positive message etc. It feels good to read it. However, in vast majority of cases, people remember and try to apply the advice for a couple weeks at most, and after that life happens, habits take over and they're back to their default.

"Sorry son, you're going to have to quit hockey because dad is having a midlife crisis and is going to switch careers"

Is the problem here the external factor of my son's desires? Or is it a problem with myself, putting his desires above my own?

The culture of dad having a mid life crisis being frowned upon and only seen as a means to provide for the family by placing their desires above his own could be why soccer son often ends up beng raised by single mom. Dad needs help and soccer is the most irrelevant thing in the world right now.

I find the notion incredibly selfish. My family is accustomed to their lifestyle. There are certain realities that can occur that would require a reduction in that lifestyle, but I should not deliberately cause them to happen.

Sometimes the right thing to do is to sacrifice your dreams for others.

I absolutely agree. All I am pointing out is that mentality should be shared by the family and although it is honorable to be selfless, it is difficult to help others when one's mental state is in shambles. Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

> Sometimes the right thing to do is to sacrifice your dreams for others.

Good on you for putting your family first, and total respect for parents and parenthood, but man, reading lines like that reinforce my decision to stay free of those sorts of obligations.

I don't ever want to leave camp "do what you feel like doing".

I think you will be a better role model if you show some courage to better your own situation.

Obligations become roadblocks due to a failure of imagination or ignorance. That sounds pejorative but it describes the common case, not the exception. If this applies to you you are normal.

To overcome the belief that "my responsibilities are preventing me from doing X" you need examples of people who have those same responsibilities but are doing X, or some X-adjacent thing.

Luckily there are lots of examples through interest forums, youtube, etc where people with say a mortgage and two kids are still traveling and adventuring. There are people who have built support networks so that they can still have time to learn languages while caring for an elderly parent, autistic child, sick dog, etc.

The viable path to unblocking yourself starts by asking for help. Ask how others are doing it, get advice, take time off specifically to do this initial research. The thing you will likely find is that you can't go straight from A to B. You need to build a support network, tie into relevant services, improve your financial circumstances, etc. But once you know something is possible it can be sufficiently motivating to do the upfront work.

In my experience, being blunt without the sugar coat can have a massive change on people as well. Having a mortgage and kids can be seen as a reason or excuse not to embark on change/risk but it could also be seen as a great reason to do so. We decide how we want to look at it. The old saying "actions speak louder than words" will outlive any self-help new age fad. No one cares what was said or what was thought, but what was done.

"I judge myself by my intentions but I judge you by your actions".

And, I'd add that past experiences greatly impacts tolerance to risk. A person who had no money for food and/or was homeless as a child, and a person with a financially secure family to fall back on so there are no consequences for failure are going to have very different risk tolerance.

Even when we are aware of it, fear can control us. And, previously poor people know, from experience, what the consequences of failure can be.

This was demonstrated on a macro level by the generation that grew up in the Great Depression having a high savings rate (emergency fund), repairing rather than replacing things as long as they could, and being otherwise thrifty almost regardless of income.