The Biggest Problem with Self-Help
August 12, 2007
The biggest problem with self-help stuff is that it’s really easy to forget the goal you’re supposed to be working towards.
The goal isn’t to become someone else.
It’s not to create a carbon copy of someone else’s success.
In fact, every time I’ve tried to chase success by following someone else’s path, I’ve ended up completely frustrated.
The real goal of self-help is to become a better version of who you already are. I like to think of it as becoming more of myself.
And it’s exactly the same in business and marketing.
Sometimes, it’s easy to feel like a pin-pong ball. You bounce back from this guy’s marketing technique… then you try out that diva’s marketing ideas (the ones that made her a million bucks last week)…
It gets old very quickly.
So after every copywriting course I take, article I read or book I add to my library, I always have to remind myself:
You are still Jason Leister.
You have something to offer that no one else (ever) can. The fun is to find out exactly what that is.
So while I may learn a lot from Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga or Eugene Schwartz… trying to follow their path is not my way to success.
It took me a while to realize that.
Like Eugene Schwartz always said about writing copy:
Your job is not to create… it is to take things that exist and recombine them in new ways, in better ways.
That includes yourself…
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