Hope for the Pessimist

Let's face it

Most self-help writing sucks. It is written by business mavericks who proclaim that the way to self-improvement is as simple as deciding to “turn fear into fuel” or using “the five-second rule” to overcome hesitation. Through honeyed optimism, they promote hack methods that never solve the underlying issues. They win fame through TED Talks, seminars, and YouTube videos. They sell out their coaching services but rarely do they change anyone’s life.

This blog aims to do something a little different. With a blend of personal experience and a hell of a lot of reading on psychology and neuroscience, I aim to give you the best damn advice I know to conquer fear, OCD, depression, and general life stagnation.

The Catch?

It’s going to be painful. It’s going to require effort. Tons of effort. And a willingness to question everything you read. Including what you read on this blog.

Breathe deep and get started. Take it slow and have fun if you can. It’s a long road but it’s worth every step.

Latest Posts:

The Terror

Fear follows me almost every day of my life. I’ve read book after book about it, and I have practiced several different methods to conquer it. So how do you get over fear? This is the big secret. Ready? You don’t. You never get over it. It’s always...

Making It on Your Own

A little while ago, I wrote an article about critical thinking where I advocated that people question everything they read. This spurred my thinking in a different direction. How can I describe the way I’ve achieved success in overcoming some of the debilitating...

A Reflection on Bad Jobs

Okay, a lot of interesting things happened this week. I have relearned a good lesson. I took a job I didn’t want and felt unmotivated, pissed off, and exhausted. I was entering into the same old cycle of bullshit that I had been suffered through...

Midnight Vomit

There are two writers inside of me. The fearless one who says exactly what he wants and the nice and amiable one who says half of what he wants. Now the fearless one says some real bullshit sometimes and needs to be edited down, but every now and I let...

Learning To Control Fear

As I embarked on the mission of controlling my mind, I came across hundreds of methods of controlling fear. Some work, some don’t. I think the basic thing, the one that connects them all, is the idea of exposure. If you are afraid of something you expose...

Some writers argue that the very plethora of self-help books is proof that they don’t work. Why, they say, would people keep writing them in the first place if they really solved problems? Over 45,000 self-help books were released in 2020 and it continues...