Self-help or self-improvement is "a focus on self-guided, in contrast to professionally guided, efforts to cope with life problems" —economically, physically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. When engaged in self-help, people often use publicly available information, or support groups—on the Internet as well as in person—in which people in similar situations work together. From early examples in pro se legal practice and home-spun advice, the connotations of the word have spread and often apply particularly to education, business, exercise, psychology, and psychotherapy, as commonly distributed through the popular genre of self-help books. According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, potential benefits of self-help groups that professionals may not be able to provide include friendship, emotional support, experiential knowledge, identity, meaningful roles, and a sense of belonging. Many different self-help group programs exist, each with its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents, and in some cases leaders. Concepts and terms originating in self-help culture and Twelve-Step culture, such as recovery, dysfunctional families, and codependency have become integrated into mainstream language. Self-help groups associated with health conditions may consist of patients and caregivers. As well as featuring long-time members sharing experiences, these health groups can become support groups and clearinghouses for educational material. Those who help themselves by learning and identifying health problems can be said to exemplify self-help, while self-help groups can be seen more as peer-to-peer or mutual-support groups.
Precursors From classical antiquity, Hesiod's Works and Days is often considered an early example of moral and instructional literature. Scholars such as Lilah Grace Canevaro describe it as a poem teaching self-sufficiency, offering concrete advice on labor, justice, and moral conduct. It "opens with moral remonstrances, hammered home in every way that Hesiod can think of." The Stoics offered ethical advice "on the notion of eudaimonia—of well-being, welfare, flourishing."
Origins of self help The hyphenated compound word "self-help" often appeared in the 1800s in a legal context, referring to the doctrine that a party in a dispute has the right to use lawful means on their initiative to remedy a wrong. Some consider the self-help movement to have been inaugurated by George Combe's Constitution (1828), which advocated personal responsibility and the possibility of naturally sanctioned self-improvement through education or proper self-control. In 1841, an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, entitled Compensation, was published suggesting "every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults" and "acquire habits of self-help" as "our strength grows out of our weakness." Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) published the first explicitly "self-help" book, titled Self-Help, in 1859. Its opening sentence: "Heaven helps those who help themselves", provides a variation of "God helps them that help themselves", the oft-quoted maxim that had also appeared previously in Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack (1733–1758). 50 Self-Help Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon is a survey of the self-help literature from Samuel Smiles and Benjamin Franklin to Anthony Robbins and Brene Brown.
Early 20th century In 1902, James Allen published As a Man Thinketh, which proceeds from the conviction that "a man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts." Noble thoughts, the book maintains, make for a noble person, while lowly thoughts make for a miserable person. Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937) described the use of repeated positive thoughts to attract happiness and wealth by tapping into an "Infinite Intelligence". In 1936, Dale Carnegie further developed the genre with How to Win Friends and Influence People. Having failed in several careers, Carnegie became fascinated with success and its link to self-confidence, and his books have since sold over 50 million copies.
The market
Group and corporate attempts to help people help themselves have created a self-help marketplace, with Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs) and psychotherapy systems represented. These offer more-or-less prepackaged solutions to instruct people seeking their betterment, just as "the literature of self-improvement directs the reader to familiar frameworks... what the French fin de siècle social theorist Gabriel Tarde called 'the grooves of borrowed thought'." A subgenre of self-help book series exists, such as the for Dummies guides and The Complete Idiot's Guide to..., that are varieties of how-to books. In contemporary capitalist societies, self-help has become an expansive industries that increases awareness of various capacities and qualities that people must supposedly improve in order to be more emotionally resilient, happy, or successful. In this dynamic, self-help authors and teachers do not only offer services for existing problems, but also participate in shaping public demand and niche markets for self-improvement. The term "well-being entrepreneur" has been suggested to capture this process, referring to "charismatic agents who not only navigate but also actively shape the historically evolving conceptions of 'well- being', establishing dynamic projects that synthesize elements of self-cultivation, political identification, and commercial interests." Well-being entrepreneurs use multiple ideas, fashions, and methods to define the meanings of "well-being" and produce tools that they offer for market exchange. Often, these individuals are people who themselves experience with various methods of self-improvement.
Statistics At the start of the 21st century, "the self-improvement industry, inclusive of books, seminars, audio and video products, and personal coaching, [was] said to constitute a 2.48-billion dollars-a-year industry" in the United States alone. By 2006, research firm Marketdata estimated the "self-improvement" market in the U.S. as worth more than US$9 billion—including infomercials, mail-order catalogs, holistic institutes, books, audio cassettes, motivation-speaker seminars, the personal coaching market, and weight-loss and stress-management programs. Market data projected that the total market size would grow to over US$11 billion by 2008. In 2013 Kathryn Schulz examined "an $11 billion industry".
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