This picture shows four of the most famous self-help books of all time: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz, and The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino.
I didn’t find these books particularly inspiring or helpful. I had read them because I wanted to inspire myself to become successful again, after my abusive parents had destroyed my academic career by threatening my life and blaming me for making them angry and unhappy every time I did anything that an academic is expected to do.
The basic message of these books is that you’ll become successful if you pay attention to what you’re doing and keep doing the right things. The problem is that they presuppose that the reader is free to do so. I suspect that many people are unable to do what they want to with their lives because of the expectations or prohibitions of others, and usually those others are their parents. But the fact that there aren’t famous self-help books with titles like “How to Get Away with Doing What You Want To in Spite of Your Parents” means that most people facing that problem aren’t willing to confront it directly, opting instead to look for inspiration in self-help books that don’t even apply to their situation.
– davinci
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