self help is not a good genre
Self- help is not a good genre to read.
If you are someone living a normal life without any external metrics (otherwise provided by self help books), you are able to grow and transform with time , slowly and steadily. but the issue with the introduction of a self help book into your life is that you consume so much more than you can genuinely change about yourself. The concepts that you read remain there in your mind, they create benchmarks and new standards for you to which you cannot reach in a short period of time, but because you now know such high standards , you feel the urgency to reach them, while failing to do so creates guilt that keeps you trapped in reading these self help books, one after another. It could be that the last one did not do its work in motivating you enough, or you failed to follow the exact detailed plans of another book, or you just moved places or you simply grew older and encountered a different situation that exposed some new "problem" in you that now needs “correction” and you need "help" with that.
This genre thrives on loneliness we humans are facing in the modern world. Going from communal life to an extremely individualistic lifestyle, we need self-help to get through the day,and for all the different roles in life that we are playing. As we just do not have anyone around us, we try to find solace in these books as they give us hope that we can handle things single handedly if and only if we can somehow correct our-broken-selves. And because these are your sole source for guidance in today's time which in other cases would have been provided by real human beings, you cling to them more and more tightly.
Interactions with humans around us, who had actual relatable experience, their suggestion would not be so perfect or so clearly planned out. they would be raw but helpful and with enough empty spaces for you to fill your own experiences into them and therefore make it your own plan for the problem you are facing.