Author questions modern self‑help techniques and their impact on personal mystery

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Waiting in a restaurant for girlfriends to arrive the other night, I just couldn’t resist: I had to watch the chilling teaser for the documentary on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes one more time.

Her claims of a diagnostic tool that could detect a spectrum of health issues with a single pinprick of blood led Forbes in 2014 to name her the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, heading a company then valued at $US9 billion. Only problem, the machine never worked and she knew it. Shoddy blood testing ensued, putting thousands in danger. Holmes is currently serving 10 years for fraud.

Watch the clip and it’s evident Holmes still will not acknowledge failure. Her single-minded self-belief is so all-encompassing, she is immune to the reality that the idea is a dud. She appears clearly delusional – I’ll go as far as deranged – and it’s kinda scary.

I decided to scroll on to some light entertainment diversion and stumbled across a piece on Jennifer Aniston’s new boyfriend Jim Curtis. I wouldn’t normally give a flying who Aniston dates – I wish her only happiness – but a description of Curtis’ profession as a hypnotherapist and life coach piqued my interest.

“Here we go”, I thought, and into the rabbit hole I dived, reading excerpts from Curtis’ latest tome, The Book of Possibility, and watching his affirmation videos urging me to “call in” yellow butterflies through thought and they will appear for me in abundance. Grrr.

Soon I was murmuring “fraud”. My reaction was visceral and I understood why. I’d seen this bull before in the early 2000s, and it didn’t end well then. Fast-forward to Elizabeth Holmes and it appears it still doesn’t.

Before my friends could even take a sip when they finally arrived, I was off, lamenting that, like bad fashion, claptrap comes back. Curtis’ schtick is little more than a limp reboot of Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 phenomenon The Secret, repackaged by a man with good hair, superstar partner and zero credentials.

The Secret, I explained, espouses the “law of attraction”: what you think, you get. If you stay positive, focus on goals, ignore self-doubt and criticism, and visualise and concentrate, anything you desire will be yours. The obvious counter is that anything that doesn’t go to plan in life is also your fault: you didn’t want it enough. Ironic, considering its premise is self-belief.

Mid-rant, I realised I hadn’t read the room. My friends were staring as if I’d just plucked Tinkerbell’s wings. Clearly offended, they politely made it clear that they believed the law of attraction message was positive, quite beautiful and ultimately harmless, and they applied it in their own lives to great effect. I was outnumbered. I needed Mark Manson.

Proving I am not self-help averse, I happily admit to reading most of Manson’s bestselling books, starting with 2016’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I respect his grounded life-view, relatable humour and solid sensible advice. And I clearly remember reading a piece he penned at peak “law of attraction” fervour – hard not to with the headline The Staggering Bullshit of The Secret.

Something had always irked me about The Secret and my friends’ cult-like devotion that divided believers and sceptics (guess my camp). I felt there was something dark lurking within its sunny premise of positivity. Manson, who has described manifestation as the worst self-help strategy, nailed what that was bluntly.

The Secret, he wrote, “brings a harrowing narcissism and an ‘I’m the centre of the universe’ angle to the same old ideas … It’s a playbook for entitlement and self-absorption and I think that anybody who reads it and implements its advice in any serious way will likely make themselves worse off in the long run.”

Told you he was direct. And while I am not quite as dismissive as Manson, he illuminated my law of attraction gripe: it’s all want and no give. It frames entitlement as virtue and desires as destiny, that good fortune is a given and not a gift. And it discounts what I find truly magical in life: serendipity, coincidence, chance, altruism and hope.

Psychologists, philosophers and social critics such as Barbara Ehrenreich – who wrote Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America – also back the view that The Secret frames the universe as a giant cosmic vending machine where external realities and others’ needs are minimised.

But I won’t share these views with my cherished girlfriends from the other night. Life is hard and they are navigating it admirably. I trust they won’t go full Elizabeth Holmes and appreciate manifestation as a tool, not an assurance. But what I also won’t do is spend another second on Curtis. As far as I’m concerned, he can stick his yellow butterflies.

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