Self-Help Advice Can Ruin Your Life

Self-help advice can ruin your life.

That is, if you aren’t careful about which advice you follow and how you follow it.

This is why I often take a rather critical view of self-help gurus, in articles like my cornerstone piece Don’t Challenge Yourself! and my recent post You Can’t Solve Problems Through Willpower.

I’ve seen it happen.

I’ve lived through it.

My father completely destroyed everything he held dear by doing things commonly recommended in the bad kinds of self-help books. He went from being wealthy and successful, to broke, unemployed, mooching off friends, and still not having enough money to buy food.

This all happened before self-help books were as popular as they were today. He was making his own terrible decisions and not following anyone else’s advice.

But today I see many gurus recommending others make the same awful choices my father did. While motivational posters seem to find the worst advice imaginable to be inspirational.

This self-help advice will ruin your life if you follow it.

Many Self-Help Books are Lottery Tickets

Many self-help gurus peddle a dream, a fantasy. They tell you that you can be fabulously successful and all your dreams will come true. After-all, it worked out that way for the author of the book.

What they don’t tell you is that they’re selling a lottery ticket. There’s only the tiniest chance things will pan out for you the way they did for the author.

There’s an old joke that a lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. In reality, when you buy a lottery ticket, you’re paying for a fantasy. You get to enjoy the dream of being suddenly rich.

Which is fine, when you’re only spending a couple bucks, and aren’t making any life decisions based on this fantasy. When you inevitably lose, no big deal.

But the lottery ticket the self-help gurus are selling you can easily cost you your career, your family, your relationships, and everything you own.

Here’s the story of how that happened with my father. How he blew up his life chasing a dream.

My Father’s Comfortable Life

My father was a personal injury and criminal defense attorney. The stereotypical ambulance-chaser. And he was successful at it.

When I was a young child, we were pretty well off. We weren’t mega-rich – we didn’t have servants or anything. But we did have a nice house in the Hollywood Hills and the ability to buy any reasonable thing we wanted.

But he wanted more. He wanted to be mega-rich. And famous. The Johnnie Cochran of his day.

The Opportunity That Ruined My Father’s Life

Then he got his opportunity.

A major TV newsmagazine did an expose on a doctor who was committing insurance fraud. The doctor sued them for slander for $30 million ($77 million in today’s dollars), with my father as his attorney.

This was a contingency case, meaning if my father won he would get paid 40% ($12 million, or $31 million in today’s money), and if he lost, he’d get nothing.

And here’s where everything went terribly wrong, because he started doing things that a lot of self-help gurus tell you to do.

He went all-in on chasing that dream opportunity.

He stopped trying to find new clients, and servicing his existing clients. Essentially he was quitting his “day job” to go after his dream.

This meant he didn’t have any money coming in. But there was lots of money going out. He was constantly flying between Los Angeles and New York for depositions and trial prep.

Not only that, but he was living high on the hog. He stayed in fancy hotels, went to expensive restaurants, and saw Broadway shows every night. But it was fine that he was spending money like a drunken politician, because soon he’d be filthy rich.

Then he ran out of money, so he mortgaged our house. But that was fine, because soon he’d be filthy rich.

Then he burned through all of that money. And that’s when things turned really bad.

When money is paid out in a lawsuit, the funds go to the attorney. The attorney is supposed to then distribute the funds to the client, minus his own fees.

My father had money sitting in an account from his last few cases before he turned to chasing this dream. So he started spending that.

Money that belonged to his clients, not to him.

But it was fine. Soon he’d be filthy rich. He just needed to stall his clients for a bit, and then he’d easily be able to replace the funds he stole, excuse me, borrowed.

And then he lost the case.

He had no money, no clients, no way to pay the mortgage, and most importantly, no way to replace the money he had embezzled.

And it all came crashing down.

Eventually he couldn’t string his former clients on any longer, and they discovered his theft.

He managed to avoid jail time, but he was permanently barred from practicing law. He couldn’t ever get another job that would do a basic background check, because nobody is going to hire an embezzler.

He tried to work with temp agencies, but made it clear he thought he was too good for the low-level work they were assigning him, so they stopped sending him on jobs. The house was long gone at this point, and my parents had divorced.

He spent the rest of his life crashing with a string of friends and girlfriends, “borrowing” money from them and never paying it back. (And not even considering paying child support.)

(At some point I may talk about my childhood experience of suddenly going from wealthy to being a latchkey kid of a single mother working nights who was too poor to afford a stove, but this post is about my father, not me.)

Self-Help Advice That Ruins Your Life

Very few self help gurus will tell you to straight up steal from people to get ahead.

But it is quite common to see them advising the same attitudes and strategies that my father followed which led him to the point where he thought theft was the best way for him to succeed.

He had already blown up his life by the time he decided to steal his way out of the hole he had dug.

Here are some of the common pieces of advice that match up to what my father did, which led to this disaster:

Self-Help Advice That Can Ruin Your Life #1: “Be willing to abandon your mundane life to follow your dreams/Be Willing to Risk Everything”

My father abandoned the less sexy ordinary cases that were paying the bills, so that he could devote all of his energy to this dream case that would make him rich.

This meant he was risking everything, and on a ticking clock to disaster.

Self-Help Advice That Can Ruin Your Life #2: “Act like the person you want to be“

My father wanted to be rich, so he acted like a rich person. Constantly going to Broadway shows, expensive dinners and hotels.

If he had acted like the person he was – someone with no income – instead of the rich person he wanted to be, perhaps he wouldn’t have blown through his savings and needed to turn to acts of desperation.

Self-Help Advice That Can Ruin Your Life #3: “Pay yourself first“

There’s a theory that you should pay yourself before paying any obligations, because you’ll always find a way to pay any necessary obligations, while if you pay the obligations first, you may not find a way to pay yourself.

But this only works if you actually will pay the obligations.

If you can only choose one or the other, and not paying the obligations will ruin your life, you should probably pay the obligations first.

Self-Help Advice That Can Ruin Your Life #4: “Don’t listen to doubters“

My mother kept telling my father not to ignore the smaller cases that were paying the bills, but my father wouldn’t listen to her.

He wasn’t going to let anyone talk him out of his dream.

And there’s something else I haven’t mentioned yet:

It was a lousy case.

It was always far-fetched that he would win.

I was five years old at the time, so I believed my father that it was a slam-dunk. But as an adult looking back at contemporary news reports, it was clearly a nonsense nuisance lawsuit.

Basically, the news program had lightly edited for clarity some interviews with experts. These weren’t the people making the accusations or offering evidence about the specific insurance fraud. They were just explaining how that type of fraud works. And the edits didn’t change the substance of what they were saying one bit.

But the theory behind the case was that because these minor edits existed, the jury would conclude the entire story was a lie and give $30 million to someone who clearly did commit insurance fraud.

I can see how a sleazy unethical lawyer might hope to collect some small settlement from a business that wanted to avoid the hassle and expense of a trial. But it was outright delusional to expect that he would actually go to trial and win.

There had to have been people who pointed this out to my father, but he wouldn’t let anyone talk him out of his dream.

I recall there was quite a bit of turnover at his firm around this time. I can only assume he was getting rid of all the people who were questioning the strategy of betting the firm’s existence on some far-fetched nonsense, and replacing them with yes-men who told him what he wanted to hear.

Self-Help Advice That Can Ruin Your Life #5: “Follow Your Passion“

Success comes from finding where skill meets opportunity.

If I were to suddenly get the dream of playing in the NBA, I could not succeed at this, no matter how hard I tried. I don’t have the talent. I’m 42 years old, 5’10”, uncoordinated, and haven’t played a game of basketball since my middle school gym class, when I sucked at it.

I absolutely should not follow any hypothetical dream to play in the NBA, because I have zero chance to succeed. And any advice telling me to try would be outright stupid.

On the other hand, I am extremely skilled at coming up with quotes from 1990s cartoons that relate to things friends of mine said on Facebook. But any dream to do this professionally is also something I shouldn’t follow, because no matter how much talent I have, there’s no opportunity. Nobody is going to pay me for this entirely useless skill, no matter how much work I put into it.

I can give a reasonable self-assessment at my lack of basketball skill and the lack of opportunity in 90s-cartoon-referencing, so I know these are unrealistic dreams.

But the problem is that there are quite a few people who *aren’t* able to make an honest self-assessment.

In his brilliant speech “Don’t Follow Your Passion,” Mike Rowe gives the example of people who audition for talent reality shows like American Idol and refuse to believe it when the judges tell them they just aren’t very good.

This is clearly what happened with my father. Maybe he deluded himself into thinking the case was better than it was. Maybe he deluded himself into thinking he could spin gold out of garbage.

Either way, his passion led him somewhere there was no opportunity.

Self-Help Advice That Can Ruin Your Life #6: “Success comes from persistence/Never ever give up“

People claim success is just a matter of persistence.

This is absolutely false! Do not listen to this! Anyone who claims this is either clueless or lying to you!

Persistence only works when there’s talent and opportunity. And it may not be enough even then, when it’s a field that only a tiny percentage succeed in.

If you don’t have the talent and opportunity, you absolutely should give up. Or at least, focus on improving your skills, or seeking out better opportunities.

(You don’t need to see a lack of skill as a blow to your ego. You may be an artist who’s lousy at marketing. Marketing is an essential skill for a professional artist. If you’re an artist who lacks this skill, that doesn’t make you bad at art. But it does mean you need to either learn it, or give up on your dream of being a professional and be content as an amateur artist.)

There were many times when my father should have given up on his dream. Giving up on his dream meant recognizing that this was a garbage case that was unlikely to pay off, and going back to focusing on the day-to-day cases that paid the bills. (Or at least, splitting his time between the two.)

He should have given up on his dream when it was clear that he was running out of money.

He should have given up on his dream when following it meant mortgaging the house.

He should have given up on his dream when it was the only way to pay the mortgage.

He should have given up on his dream when the money he got from mortgaging the house was running out.

And he absolutely, definitely, should have given up on his dream when the alternative was committing theft.

What If You Fail?

Remember, when you get advice from self-help gurus, that they are the super-achievers whose lottery tickets paid off.

The people retweeting them and posting motivational quotes are still holding lottery tickets, that they’re convinced will pay off in the future.

You don’t hear from all the people who sacrificed everything to chase the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and never found it.

But these are far more common than the success stories.

Any time you’re considering a major risk in your life, ask yourself if you’ll be able to live with the consequences of failure.

Any guru who tells you “Failure is not an option,” or “If you persist long enough, you won’t fail,” is not someone who is giving you advice in your best interests.

And if you’re telling yourself either of these things, I’d strongly urge you to reconsider.

If you aren’t willing to take the consequences of your risk seriously, you probably shouldn’t be taking it.

Otherwise, you’re likely to end up like my father – Following the self-help advice that ruins your life.