13 Self-Help BS & Myths: Updated List (Plus, Fixes) | The Power Moves

"The brain can rewire and change itself, and that means that you can learn anything."

The Self-Help Lie:

• There is no talent, only effort. 
• Since the brain is plastic, you can learn anything and you can get good at anything. 

The Truth:

The brain is plastic… Quite a bit. But that doesn’t mean it can rewire itself limitlessly.

What To Do:

• You can improve on pretty much anything.
• You are also better off choosing fields where you have a natural affinity for.

"Most meaning of human communication is nonverbal, so you can forget about the actual words."

The Truth:

This is what, in a nutshell, the Mehrabian study tells us:

"When it comes to feelings and atittudes, we get most of our cues of the speaker’s intent from non-verbal sources. When the two are in conflict, we give precedene to non-verbals."

That’s the truth of the study and it cannot be generalized outside of feelings and attitudes.

"IQ doesn’t matter, it’s all about how you understand and get along with people."

The Truth:

• Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, found out that EI rises until mid-level management but then decreases at CEO level.
• Hence, if we measure “success” as the “ability to climb hierarchical structures in business organizations”, then the claim that EI is 80% of success is blatantly not true.

"If you focus on positives you will be happier and more successful. If you focus on the negative you will be unhappier."

The Truth:

• Frederickson and Losada found out that too many positives become harmful above a certain threshold (11:1).
• Research shows that thinking about the worst-case scenario can help people to manage their anxiety and lower the pressure.

"To feel better and live fully, you must let out all negative emotions."

The Truth:

There is plenty of evidence that venting your anger actually only makes you more angry and aggressive and increases the negative consequences of anger.

"You become what you think of. Force yourself to think positive and you’re good."

The Truth:

• Research shows that switching to a good mood when we’re normal is easy.
• When we’re anxious or stressed and we “force” ourselves to feel good is that we fail.
• When we’re already down and we fail to switch to happy, we feel even worse and powerless.

The Solution:

1. Accept the idea that it’s OK not to be always happy.
2. If you want to switch mood, getting other people to help and/or changing the environment can be more effective.

"To be happy, you just need to smile."

The Lie:

This was actually backed by a famous study originally called in psychology the “facial feedback hypothesis” (Strack Et Al., 1988).

The Truth:

A much larger successive study failed to replicate its results (Wagenmakers Et Al., 2016). 

"The more you visualize yourself winning, the closer you get to actually winning."

The Truth:

• Thinking about goals increases the number of times people thought of those goals and decreased the amount of actual work.
• Research shows that people who used visualization to envision themselves studying instead of getting an A not only performed better, but also experienced less stress and anxiety.

What To Do

• Remind yourself that work trumps visualization.
• Don’t visualize yourself too much with the gold medal but also focus on the process.

"If you think often enough and with enough conviction about what you want you can attract it in your life."

The Truth:

From a psychological perspective, this notion has some merit but there is no empirical scientific evidence supporting the law of attraction, and it is widely considered to be pseudoscience.

"A survey of Yale’s class of 1953 found out that people who wrote down their goals out-earned all the rest by several orders of magnitude."

The Truth:

Some people looked for the source of this study. 

And there was none.

Finally, Yale University itself came out saying a survey on goal setting was never conducted.

"The more confident and the higher your self esteem, the better off you are."

The Truth:

That’s not wholly wrong. High self-esteem is good.

But only if accompanied by a growth mindset and an antifragile ego.

Paradoxically, the higher your self-esteem, the more dangers you see in your external environment.