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The Self-Help Space Is Classist, Racist, Sexist, and Ableist
You can’t do anything you put your mind to.
I write about personal growth. At least that’s how I like to refer to it. Growing as a person. Learning new things. Reading new books. Meeting new people. Seeing new places. Slowly developing into a happier, healthier, more evolved person. Learning the lessons that will give you more peace and clarity and options, and make your life better and easier and slightly less stressful than average.
Unfortunately, that also puts me in the ‘self-help’ space as a writer, at least as far as many of my readers are concerned, and I’m not thrilled about that. Because self-help, while often well-intentioned, has some very toxic undertones.
A lot of self-help is based on the myth of meritocracy, making it inherently classist, racist, sexist and ableist. It ignores systemic inequality. It assumes we all have similar resources, time, and opportunities. It encourages emulating the uber-elite, most of whom derive their success from a mixture of inheritance and exploitation. And it assumes that if you’re struggling right now, that’s your fault.
The self-help space is full of toxic messages:
· You are in total control of your life
· Hard work and dedication is all you need
· We make our own luck
· If I can do it, anyone can
And my least favourite:
· You can do anything you put your mind to
You can’t become a billionaire or an elite athlete by simply putting your mind to it. Especially not if you come from a deeply disadvantaged background or suffer from a physical disability. Even if you don’t, the odds are against you. And the message that absolutely everything comes down to ‘having the right mindset’ is deeply disingenuous.
A popular meme in the self-help space tells you you have the same 24 hours as Beyonce. But you don’t. 24 hours in the world of the rich and famous looks very different from your 24 hours, and that’s not because you’re lazier or stupider than they are. It’s because you’re working under different conditions, with a very different set of resources.
