Why Self-help Books/Podcasts Sell

I was listening to several podcasts this morning when I realized something. What took my attention was the way motivational speakers magnify the achievements of a lot of "successful" people. They were speaking of the recurring traits that can be found in any goal-driven, productive and yet happy individuals. At the larger scheme of things, listening to it actually makes sense for these kinds of dialogues and "researches" aim to find the pattern to success. 

If you are the type who listens and believes in this kind of talks as well, the assumption that you hold is that the similarity in the character, experience and achievements of these people have taken the major part of their success. Maybe, you have hoped to be like them as well. And there is nothing wrong with that. 

The way these hot authors talk about the traits of these "successful" people are really indifferent to what Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn and Napoleon Hill wrote decades ago. Same meat, different breading. What is different, from my observation, is that new authors are now starting to realize the importance of highlighting emotions in their stories. How do successful people handle the day-to-day circumstances? What do they do when a crisis strikes? 

To me, this is a more excellent way to explain how achieving people are shaped by time and circumstances. More than the flowery anecdotes that one can read in self-help books, these practical ways can easily be executed by us, the "lowly" beings. 

It is also good to ask why the way these authors are now framing their stories that way? Is it because they are taking into account that most people cannot handle their emotions properly? Is it because of the soaring number of of clinical depression in their country?

Whatever the answer might be, the fact still remains that we have already known the formula for success long before. Its just that most people are taking too long to read and too slow to act. In reality, the time that we are using in reading the stories of success of other people is the time lost in building our own success.

If this continues, the names of these people who are creative enough to re-package the same old content of self-help books and success narratives would be the ones written in the self-help books people would read in the coming years.That would make it a meta-success story. People would be reading the success of the people writing about the success of others. And that will still probably sell