This Book Made Me Quit Self-Help for Good

Motivation isn’t enough. Real change requires more than catchy advice.

The book of the month is Hello, Fears by Michelle Poler. I chose it. I said that I’d break down this book over the next four weeks, but that plan has changed.

I re-read Hello, Fears in one sitting and groaned out loud from the sheer determination it took to make it past chapter three. I’m sorry, but I can’t bring myself to spend more than one post talking about this book.

That’s not to say that the book is bad. In fact, I once loved it. I first read Hello, Fears in 2020, when I was fresh out of college and deep in the uncertainty of a pandemic-stricken world. At the time, I craved motivation. I needed something to remind me that life would get better. And with its bright colors and uplifting tagline, “What’s the best that can happen?” printed on the front sleeve, this book was exactly what I needed then.

But that was then.

Now, I read it with more seasoned eyes and see things I hadn’t noticed before. Like the blatant plagiarism of Jason Comely and Jia Jiang (the creator and early adopters…