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The Five Bullshittiest Self-Help Philosophies

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | September 15, 2010 |

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | September 15, 2010 |


5. Creative Visualization: Using one’s imagination to visualize specific behaviors or events occurring in one’s life; you can condition your behavior by visualizing it over and over again.

4. New Thought (a.k.a., The Secret philosophy): That an individual’s focused positive thinking can result in life-changing results such as increased wealth, health, happiness and more.

3. Objectivism: That the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness or rational self-interest, that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform man’s widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and to which he can respond emotionally.

2. Dianetics: The Scientologist philosophy believes that “engrams” — traumas that occurred in early childhood, in utero, or during previous incarnations — are the cause of all psychosomatic and mental illnesses, and that engrams can be erased through a process called auditing.

1. Oprah-ism: 1) What we dwell on is who we become; 2) Everything in your world is created by what you think; 3) Become the change you want to see; and 4) Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.


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Conversely, this is the only self-help philosophy with any legitimacy: Paul Crik’s “The ‘Killin’ It,’” philosophy, based on these three tenets: 1) This is it; 2) Fuck it; and 3) It is what it is.