Why "Self-Help" Doesn't Work

And how to avoid spending 10 years and $100k on counseling without transformation.

Good morning, friend.

If this is your first time here, welcome. Thousands of thoughtful, growth-minded people read along each week. Join them here.

My name is Mike Foster. If you’re not familiar with me, I’m an executive coach and counselor to all sorts of world-changers, from Navy Seals to non-profit founders to executives of billion-dollar companies. In short, I help people for a living.

I write this weekly newsletter to help people who help people become more effective at helping people.

Which brings up a big problem I see in the world right now…

Some people only want to help themselves.

I have a bone to pick with “self-help”.

First of all, don’t get me wrong. I’m all about self-help and self-leadership. I believe we have a responsibility to lead ourselves first. To be healthy adults. To know what we need. To meet our own needs. To take care of ourselves before we take care of anyone else. To put our oxygen mask on first.

But that’s the key word: first.

It starts with us, but it’s not supposed to end with us.

Yet, some people never turn around to help anyone else with their oxygen mask. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Why do some people stay in a perpetual state of self-focused, self-help? Is it because they're selfish? They don’t care about anyone else? They’re just “bad people”? (If you read PSA: There Are No Bad Guys, you know that’s not true.)

To be honest? I don’t think it’s their fault.

I think it’s because they’ve been sold a lie.

The lie that change takes time.

Maybe more accurately: change takes a lifetime. My friend, I don’t know what your therapist or coach or pastor told you, but transformation does not take a lifetime. Transformation can happen in an hour, if not in minutes. Before you throw tomatoes at me in the comments, hear me out.

We are always growing. There is no “arrival” where you become a perfect, healthy person who does not need any growth anymore.

That’s not what I’m saying.

But I AM saying that when people (like my client Katie) invest $100k in therapy and still feel stuck after 10 years, something is wrong. When people go to church their entire lives and try to white-knuckle their growth to “do better” and “try harder”, but never experience any healing, something is wrong. When people have stacks of self-help books on the Enneagram, Strengths Finders, Love Languages, and Myers-Briggs with dog-eared and underlined pages, but they still don’t see any noticeable growth in their life besides “understanding themselves better”, something is very, very wrong.

I heard it just the other day from one of my new coaching clients…

“Why didn’t my therapist tell me about this?”

This guy has been in therapy for over a year. We have had ONE intake session. He told me he has more understanding from this one session on his Primal Question than in the past year of therapy.

That’s because the therapy and coaching world has bought into this lie as well.

The problem is, 99% of “self-help” frameworks focus on the wrong thing.

Think of it like a tree. Let’s say a gardener wants to cultivate a healthy tree to produce maximum fruit, but it’s barely producing any. What do they do? They start trimming the branches. Pruning is good, right? Yes, but it’s only one strategy, and it can only take you so far.

Most “self-help” is like a gardener who spends decades trimming branches of a tree, without ever getting a higher yield.

At some point, you have to stop trimming branches and look deeper.

At some point, you have to look at the roots of the tree.

What is the root of your life?

Most “self-help” frameworks focus on two things: processing feelings and changing behavior.

These are the branches of the tree. I’m not saying those are bad. It can be helpful to start a new behavior or stop an old behavior. It is certainly helpful to name and process your emotions.

All I’m saying is that neither of those two things is at the root of the tree. So what is? An unmet need in a person’s life.

Here’s how it works:

We all have needs. Not wants. Needs. There are 7 core emotional needs that we all have.

At some point in life (typically in early childhood), one of these needs becomes more important than the rest and emerges as your Apex Emotional Need.

This need follows us into adulthood.

It becomes the lens through which we see the world.

When this need goes unmet, it produces feelings and emotions in us. We then turn to behaviors to cope with those feelings. You can try to process the feelings. You can try to change the behavior. But why not go straight to the source?

By focusing on the root of the issue, you cut through all the fluff to solutions that actually work.

I call these seven needs The Seven Primal Questions.

Here they are:

• Q1: Am I safe?

• Q2: Am I secure?

• Q3: Am I loved?

• Q4: Am I wanted?

• Q5: Am I successful?

• Q6: Am I good enough?

• Q7: Do I have a purpose?

99% of your thoughts, behaviors, and emotions boil down to 1 of these questions.

How do you find out which one is yours? In my sessions, I ask people a series of questions to help them see which of these is their Primal Question. I created a free, online version of this to help you pinpoint yours. Take the quiz here.

You’re not broken.

You’re not stuck.

You just have needs (like every human), and chances are, no one has given you permission to have them and meet them. Once you do, you can stop the never-ending self-help cycle. You can live from a healthy, grounded place. You can stop scrambling and move forward with your life.

Here’s my advice:

1. Find out which of The Seven Primal Questions is driving your life.

2. Identify 2 ways to intentionally add that need back to your life.

But don’t stop there.

Once you have your oxygen mask on, help others put on theirs. Self-help isn’t supposed to end with you. Be a helper to others. Answer their Primal Questions with a YES.

Growth never ends, but transformation can happen in a moment.

It’s the moment you stop waiting for the world to answer your Primal Question with a YES, and you start practicing true self-help and true self-leadership by answering it yourself.

To your growth,

Mike Foster

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