Self-Help is for Suckers

You Don't Need a Guru, You Need a Friend

A Better Hill to Die On

A while ago, I came across a rather funny psychology experiment in the work of Adam Grant, the prolific and sage-like social psychologist. The paper—Social Support and the Perception of Geographical Slant (Schnall et al. 2008)—examines how social support affects the way people perceive the steepness of a hill.

The experiment goes like this: You’re standing at the base of a hill wearing a heavy backpack. You’re asked to estimate how steep the climb ahead looks. But here’s the twist—some participants are standing alone, while others are beside a friend. The result? When people are with a friend, the hill appears less steep. Not metaphorically. Literally. Their brains perceive the incline as smaller.

Photo by Clarisse Meyer on Unsplash

This isn’t a fable about friendship. It’s a data point. It’s proof that the presence of another person—just standing there beside you—can change how you see the world.

When I first read this study, I found myself smiling and nodding my head in agreement. Of course, the hill looks less steep with someone at your side. Who hasn’t felt that in life? But the longer I sat with it, the more profound it became. The more I felt compelled to write this article.

These implications aren't soft or sentimental—they’re sharp, grounded, and measurable. There’s real data and a very important message here. We are better together.

So why do we keep pretending that the hardest things in life—change, transformation, and financial decisions—are best attempted alone?

The Self-Help Fantasy

The self-help industry sells a seductive story: that change is a solo act—something you can power through if you just follow the right system. Build enough habits, journal consistently, visualize hard enough, and spend enough on the coaching program. Transformation is yours—for five easy payments of $99.

If it doesn’t work? Well, that’s on you.

This is the cruel brilliance of the self-help machine: It packages individual failure as a marketing hook. If you didn’t stick with the diet, wake up at 5 a.m., or rewrite your money beliefs, the problem wasn’t the book—it was your lack of discipline, mindset, and scarcity loop.

So you buy another one.

And I’ve done this, too. I spend hours a day reading research-based, self-help content—books, articles, podcasts—always with another way to think about something. There’s always another plan or life-hack.

But change doesn’t work like that. Not really.

Real change, the kind of change that sticks? That requires relationships—not just for support (“I’ll help you climb this hill”), but for perception (“What are we climbing, and how do we begin?”).

That doesn’t happen just because others can hold us accountable. It’s because others help us see differently—possibilities, patterns, and next steps. And yes, that the hill ahead may be steep… but it’s climbable.

The Human Buffer

One of the best-documented findings in behavioral science is that social support doesn’t just make us feel better—it makes us stronger.

Studies show that having someone nearby—especially someone warm and nonjudgmental—reduces our body’s stress reactivity. We literally don’t mount as big a fight-or-flight response when someone else is beside us. Our hearts beat a little slower. Our cortisol levels don’t spike as much. We cope better.

Fun story: In grad school—specifically, PhD land—we went to campus in the summers for intensives. (My program was hybrid: part online, part in-person over the summers.) The second year was a beast; it was very stats heavy, fast-paced, and brutally demanding.

We were tasked to write a research paper on our own in ten days—and, on the last day, defend it in front of faculty and fellow students. I remember very little about those ten days… except for two very late nights, fueled by snacks, beer, and laughter, as a few of us wandered from computer to computer, checking and re-checking each other’s regression code.

We read (and re-read) our results sections out loud to each other, practicing our presentations and trying to make sense of odds ratios. None of us were naturals at talking about probabilities. My heart should have been beating out of my chest. My brains should have been scattered all over the floor.

But because of my supportive friends—my human buffers—I made it through my presentation. I stood in front of that room and articulated my results and ideas, heart and mind intact.

And it wasn’t just about feedback. Yes, my friends helped correct my regression code. They allowed me to practice saying things like “X has two times the odds of Y.” But it was also about their simply being there. Their presence. About the late-night code reviews and laughter.

Standing in that lecture hall with fifty faces staring back at me, the smiling faces of my friends stood out. They gave me encouragement. That regression hill and probability mountain looked smaller because they were there, standing with me.

Researchers call this the buffering hypothesis: the idea that social support protects us by blunting the impact of stress. Whether facing a health scare, making a financial decision, or doing mental arithmetic (yes, they’ve tested this), people perform better and stay calmer when they’re not alone. In some studies, even the presence of a pet helps. Why? Because pets are nonevaluative companions. They don’t critique. They just show up. (And they’re so cute and snuggly with their little smoosh faces).

Humans, at our best, can do that, too. Just show up.

And it can change everything.

Change Requires Clarity; Clarity Requires Relationships

There’s a reason so many people repeat the same self-help rituals without ever really changing. It’s not because they’re lazy or lack willpower. (If you didn’t know—yes, that metaphor of willpower as a muscle has been debunked.)

Transformation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in relationships—where we’re seen, heard, challenged, and supported.

Think about the biggest changes in your life. Were you really alone? Or did someone stand beside you quietly— or not so quietly — helping you imagine that change was possible?

Self-help books assume you already know what you want and that the problem is that you just need more discipline. But most people aren’t struggling with discipline. They’re struggling with clarity. And there’s plenty of research that speaks to this.

James Prochaska, a well-known change researcher, says the number one reason people don’t change is because they don’t know how. They know they should eat healthier and save more. But how do they do that—in their own home, with their own weekly meal rituals and money habits?

Hal Hershfield, known for his “future self” research, makes a similar point: It’s incredibly hard to visualize and connect with the person we want to become (the one who knows how to eat healthy and save wisely) on our own. His research is all about prompting people to interact with their future selves—because it’s not what we do naturally—and then measuring the benefits that follow. In many ways, Hal and the future self operate as a clarity-creating team for the present self. But even that team needs backup. The current self needs support from other people.

Clarity, courage, curiosity: These are things we borrow from other people when we are trying to make a change or navigate a transition. When we ask someone how they did it, talk about what our own lives look like, or brainstorm how we can get back on track after a setback, we’re hive-minding the problem. And that has power.

We learn from how others do it right and how they do it wrong. And we learn how they’ve adapted. But only if we ask.

An Old Lie with a New Cover

There’s something mordantly ironic here. One of the earliest self-help bestsellers—Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People—isn’t a self-help manual in the solitary do-it-by-yourself sense. It’s a relationship playbook. A guide to building connection, trust, and influence by caring about others. Its lessons are interpersonal to the core.

And yet, the genre it helped birth has become a shrine to individual effort. A parade of “You got this!” manifestos, written as if doing it alone is best—or even possible.

It isn’t.

And no matter how much we pretend we do… we don’t.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world.”

If that’s true for something as simple as breakfast (and it is—MLK was a genius), it’s even more true for change—financial change, behavioral change, life change.

The idea is this: Just as our simplest daily activities depend on complex systems and unseen hands, so does our ability to make and sustain change.

The Myth of Self-Sufficiency

The self-help industry didn’t invent rugged individualism—it just found a way to monetize it.

From bootstraps to BuzzFeed listicles, the American story has long been one of self-sufficiency. Independence, grit, self-made success: These are the archetypes etched into our national psyche. But somewhere along the way, that ethos got warped.

What began as a collective narrative about community resilience and mutual support—barn raisings, neighborhood babysitting co-ops, family reunions—was about how individuals could support each other and thrive together. Over time, that spirit morphed into an obsession with going alone, where success means being the only one at the top, with no one helping you get there.

Nowhere is that shift more visible than in the rise of modern self-help literature and mantras.

The Rise of SHAM: A Cultural Pivot

Steve Salerno’s SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless (2005) argues that what we now think of as self-help isn’t just misguided—it’s actively harmful. And I would agree. Salerno traces the industry’s shift from mutual aid and practical advice to a commodified culture of personal optimization. In his view, today’s self-help doesn’t just ignore the role of relationships in real change—it erases them. It replaces connection with slogans and solo journeys that sound empowering but often leave people more isolated than before.

Salerno identifies two major strains in the modern self-help ecosystem: Victimization and Empowerment. One says, “Nothing is your fault.” The other says, “Everything is.” Either way, the result is the same: You’re alone.

If you fail, it’s either because the system is broken and you’ll never get ahead, or because you’re broken—you’re too lazy and you didn’t want it badly enough or try hard enough for long enough. And in both cases, the answer—according to the self-help narrative—is always the same: “Buy the next book.”

This is a deceptive cycle. And it’s not designed to help. It’s designed to sell.

Self-Help as Consumption, Not Connection

Consider the structure of a typical self-help bestseller: It starts with a promise, offers a simple framework (usually in five or seven steps), and builds toward personal triumph. But what’s often missing from these stories? Other people.

Rarely do we see lasting transformation in the actual narrative arc of self-help books happening through mutual care, real accountability, or emotional attunement. The change tends to happen in isolation: in the mirror, on the morning run, or at the desk in the early hours before the kids wake up.

It’s a compelling story. But it’s fiction. The kids always wake up. (I know; I have two.)

A review of hundreds of behavioral change interventions by Michie et al. (2009) found that social support was one of the most effective ingredients in lasting transformation, especially for complex goals like smoking cessation, weight loss, and exercise adherence.

Similarly, Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1985) emphasizes the critical role of social modeling in acquiring new behaviors. We don’t just learn by doing; we learn by watching others try, fail, and try again.

Yet the self-help genre continues to glorify self-discipline over shared experience and individual knowledge over social connection.

The High Cost of Going It Alone

It’s a fantasy that you can fix yourself by yourself, if only you try hard enough. It’s a myth that flatters our hunger for control. And worse than self-delusion, these beliefs are killing us.

We were built to depend on each other. Evolution shaped us for cooperation, not isolation. Yet we treat loneliness as weakness and community as optional. We call debt and overspending “behavioral problems,” as if they were moral failings when they’re often just cries for belonging.

According to data published by the CDC in 2022, social disconnection rivals common killers like smoking and obesity as a predictor of death. And still, we double down on the myth—living alone, working alone, hurting alone—mistaking it for strength.

Self-help promised transformation. Too often, it delivered silence… and shame.

Self-Help and the Shame Loop

This solo-first culture breeds a toxic kind of shame. When self-help fails—and it often does—the blame falls squarely on the individual. Not enough discipline. Not enough vision. Not enough hustle.

But as Steve Salerno points out, that’s the sleight of hand: The product wasn’t designed to work. It was designed to keep you buying.

In this way, self-help becomes a self-harm loop. It’s not just ineffective—it’s demoralizing. Because it offers you a mirror, not a hand. A checklist, not a relationship. A plan, but no partner.

And that’s not a moral failing of the reader. It’s a structural flaw in the genre.

The Real Science of Change Is Social

Self-help sells the idea that change is a purely internal process—personal, private, and self-directed. But the science tells a different story.

Across psychology, behavioral economics, physiology, and decision science, the evidence is clear: we don’t change well—if at all—in isolation. We only change meaningfully and for the long-haul when someone walks alongside us, cheers for us, mirrors us, nudges us, and believes in us. We change when we are socially scaffolded—when the people around us offer support, perspective, accountability, and vision.

Change isn’t a solo performance. It’s a social phenomenon.

The Science of Support: How Relationships Drive Real Change

The evidence is overwhelming: lasting change isn’t something we do alone, it’s something we do with others. Supportive relationships aren’t just helpful, they’re essential. Across systems—physiological, perceptual, behavioral, and cognitive—connection is the engine to change. Here’s how:

• Support Calms the Body.
  Social support buffers the physical toll of stress, reducing risks for heart disease, cancer progression, and even the common cold (Thoits 1986; Cohen et al. 2003; Seeman and Syme 1987; Fawzy et al. 1995). In both human and animal studies, the presence of a trusted companion lowers cardiovascular reactivity and soothes the nervous system (Kamarck et al. 1990; Hennessy et al. 2002).

• Support Changes How We See Challenges.
  Facing a difficult task with a trusted friend at our side literally makes the obstacle seem smaller and more manageable (Schnall et al. 2008). Without support, the road looks steeper, heavier, and harder than it really is. Support doesn’t just lighten the load—it reshapes how we perceive it.

• Support Builds Confidence Through Modeling.
  According to Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1985), we build belief in our own abilities by observing others succeed and receiving encouragement from people we trust. It’s not willpower that fuels change—it’s connection.

• Support Supercharges Behavior Change.
  Group-based interventions consistently outperform solo efforts in everything from weight loss (Greaves et al. 2011; Borek et al. 2018) to financial habits (Milkman 2021). Change is contagious. Motivation spreads through networks. Peer accountability, shared imagination, and collective momentum matter more than grit alone.

• Support Strengthens Decision-Making.
  Decision science shows we reason better together. Annie Duke’s work on group decision-making (2018) and Mercier and Sperber’s research on the social function of reasoning (2017) reveal that our best thinking happens collaboratively, not alone. We don’t just change in the presence of others—we think better, too.

The takeaway is clear: No serious model of behavior change—biological, psychological, or social—leaves relationships out. Support isn’t an added bonus. It’s the foundation of the human operating system.

Change Requires Witnesses

All of this—physiological buffering, perceptual shifts, social modeling, group accountability, shared reasoning—leads to one clear conclusion: Change is not something that happens when we’re alone. It happens when we’re together with others.

As philosopher Martin Buber (1970) wrote, “All real living is meeting.” We are not fully ourselves until we are in relationship. Change doesn’t simply happen to us or within us—it happens between us.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel (2018, 2021) echoes this in her critique of the familiar self-help mantra: “Before you can love anyone, you must love yourself.” She calls it a myth. Perel reminds us that self-love is not a prerequisite for connection—it’s often the result of it. “One of the very first ways you learn to love yourself is by being loved by others and loving them back,” she says.

Being seen, accepted, and supported by another person doesn’t dilute our independence. It creates the conditions for self-trust, self-worth, and the courage to change.

The most effective change efforts—from addiction recovery to financial planning—don’t succeed because of willpower. They succeed because of witness. Someone else sees your struggle, someone else celebrates your wins, and someone else believes in your future.

The Financial Planning Lens

If change is inherently social—and the evidence makes that clear—then few domains need this insight more urgently than financial decision-making.

For decades, personal finance has been framed as a knowledge problem. If people just understood interest rates, compound growth, or asset allocation, they’d make better choices. If they just had the facts, they’d act accordingly.

But if that were true, the internet would’ve solved everything by now. Advice is everywhere. Access isn’t the problem.

Support is.

Financial Behavior Is Emotional, Not Just Rational

As behavioral economists have repeatedly shown, we are not purely rational financial actors. We’re loss-averse, status-seeking, short-sighted, and emotionally attached to our money stories. Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory (1979) revealed that people fear losses more than they value gains—so much so that they often avoid sound investments or necessary risks simply to sidestep potential regret.

But knowledge doesn’t fix this. Relationships do.

Katy Milkman’s work on temptation bundling (2021) demonstrates that people are far more likely to follow through on difficult but important behaviors (like going to the gym) when those behaviors are paired with something enjoyable (like listening to an audiobook). The same principle applies to money: Positive emotional cues, encouragement, and shared rituals can make challenging financial behaviors—like saving more or staying invested—feel more sustainable.

Following through on good financial habits can be just as hard as sticking to a workout routine. It’s tough to do alone, and the rewards often aren’t immediate. That’s where financial planners come in. They can be the audiobook. A welcoming office visit, a friendly Zoom call, a cup of coffee while chatting about what’s going on—these small touches offer the emotional lift that makes difficult choices more sustainable.

Milkman also highlights the power of peer effects on shaping behavior. In one study, a group of employees who attended a savings workshop saw an increase in overall savings—not just among themselves but also among their coworkers who didn’t attend (Duflo and Saez 2003). This kind of “social contagion” is real. Even private habits like saving and spending are influenced by the behaviors of those around us.

Think about that: People who didn’t attend the seminar were still influenced—because they were surrounded by people who did. We are deeply shaped by those who are around us. And when we’re intentional about who those people are, that influence can be transformative. That’s why client appreciation nights and small group meetups can effect real change. So get your clients together to meet and talk with each other. This can help normalize positive behaviors through the power of shared experiences.

Another example comes from financial advisor and researcher Derek Tharp, a good friend whose thinking has shaped many of my own life decisions. Derek has written about the behavioral power of accountability partners (2017), especially in the context of group-based systems like those used by Dave Ramsey. Even if Ramsey’s financial philosophy doesn’t resonate with every client, his process—based on connection and mutual support—highlights something crucial: human connection drives behavior change. Financial advisors matter. Clients matter. And the networks and support systems that advisors cultivate can provide the emotional scaffolding that makes meaningful financial transformation possible.

Advice Is Not a Transaction—It’s a Relationship

The most effective financial planners don’t just deliver advice; they create conditions for change. They don’t just share facts, they build trust, help clients imagine a different future, and hold space for the messy process of becoming someone new. And they don’t just serve clients. They spark something larger: a movement within their firms and the lives they touch.

Yet financial planners often underestimate this part of their role. They see themselves as educators and strategists. But in reality, they are something more: guides, coaches, and decision partners who help clients navigate not just numbers, but emotions, identities, and conflicting values.

This becomes especially clear in moments of major transition: retirement, divorce, grief, launching a business, or receiving an inheritance. These aren’t just financial events. They’re emotional and relational turning points. A new hill, and how steep it feels to climb.

In these moments, people don’t need a spreadsheet. They need a steady presence—someone who can listen, clarify, and gently widen the lens.

That’s not just feel-good fluff. It’s function.

As Intentional Change Theory (Boyatzis 2006) explains, sustainable personal change doesn’t begin with solving immediate problems, it begins with envisioning the ideal self. And that vision rarely emerges in isolation. It comes alive in conversation, when someone helps us ask better questions, name deeper values, and reconnect with what matters most.

In therapy, this process is often framed through the lens of social constructionism—the idea that our realities are not fixed truths, but shared narratives that are shaped by dialogue with others. The same holds true in financial planning. A meaningful plan isn’t built from spreadsheet numbers alone. It’s built from the story a client wants to live into.

The best planners understand this. They don’t begin with “real” numbers; they begin with the imagined life.

Financial Culture Is Social Culture

Money is never just about money. It’s entangled with family expectations, cultural scripts, and social comparison. We spend to signal belonging. We save—or don’t—to avoid guilt or shame. We take financial risks because others in our community do… or don’t.

The Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen 1991) helps explain this. Our actions aren’t just driven by personal intention; they’re shaped by perceived behavioral norms and social expectations. In other words, we act based on what we believe others expect of us.

That’s why financial behavior changes most effectively in community. Group financial education often outperforms individual coaching, not because the information is better, but because participants feel less alone. They find strength in shared momentum. They learn from each other’s struggles, not just the instructor’s expertise.

Imagine what financial practices could look like if more advisors leaned into this:

• Hosting quarterly “money mindset” gatherings tailored to a specific niche

• Creating peer circles for women in transition

• Building financial communities, not just portfolios

Money doesn’t have to be lonely. It just usually is.

And in financial planning, the relationship is the intervention. Not an add-on and not just a delivery system for advice. The relationship itself is what makes the advice usable.

That’s the power of connection. Like the hill study showed, it lightens the load before the first step is taken.

When planners ask clients to budget, invest, or save, they’re not just asking them to move money. They’re inviting them to face fear, uncertainty, and hope. To imagine a future self and walk uphill.

Alone, that feels daunting. With someone else? It becomes doable.

From Self-Help to Shared Help

So what do we do with all of this?

If change is social, relational, and emotionally scaffolded—not just personal or informational—then our approach to change has to shift, too. Whether we’re trying to improve our own (financial) life or help someone else improve theirs, we need to stop treating relationships as soft extras and start treating them as the core intervention.

The real difference between those who sustain change and those who don’t isn’t knowledge. It’s support—not just cheerleading, but deep, relational presence. And while “presence” can be difficult to define, Charles Duhigg offers a helpful framework for making this often structureless, often-intangible step more tangible.

In his book Supercommunicators, Duhigg (2024) introduces the 3H model, suggesting that people in transition, conversation, and uncertainty need three things: help, hugs, and to be heard. Before jumping in with solutions and advice, Duhigg encourages us to pause and ask:

• Do you want help? (Information and expertise?)

• Do you need a hug? (Emotional support?)

• Do you just want to be heard? (A space to vent or think aloud?)

The relationship is still intact and central to the process, regardless of the answer. The 3H model simply reminds us that our response can take different forms, and that we become better partners when we ask what’s needed rather than assuming what we should provide.

Help That Sticks: What We All Need

Change rarely happens because of one good piece of advice. As I’ve stated throughout this article, (and forgive the repetition; research suggests we need to see something seven times to retain it, so I’m just doing my part), change sticks when someone stays after the advice is given—someone who checks in, reminds you why you started, and doesn’t flinch when you stall, pivot, or fail.

Good help stays with you. And that’s where its power lies.

It often looks like:

• Someone to brainstorm possibilities with you.

• Someone to anticipate what might go wrong—and stay when it does.

• Someone to celebrate when things go right.

• Someone to help connect your now-self with your future self.

• Someone who believes in your capacity to change—even when you forget how.

That’s what we mean when we say the relationship is the intervention.

For Individuals: Let Help In

If you’re reading this because you’re in the midst of change—financial or otherwise—take a moment to ask yourself:

• Who helps you feel capable when things get hard?

• When you’ve made big decisions before, who helped you see clearly?

• Are you isolating yourself in this process? Why?

• What kind of support do you actually need—accountability, compassion, clarity, encouragement?

• Who in your life already offers that, even if they don’t realize it?

And maybe most importantly:

• Are you trying to earn the right to ask for help… when asking for help is how people move forward?

We change for the better when someone sees us. We hold on to goals longer when we don’t carry them alone. You deserve the support of another person, even if you are unsure of the next step. Certainty is not a prerequisite for support.

For Financial Professionals: The Relationship Is the Value

As a planner, coach, or advisor, you may already know this intuitively. But it’s worth saying outright: your presence is powerful. Your ability to hold someone’s financial fears and dreams without rushing to fix them—that’s not a soft skill. That’s the foundation of sustainable behavior change.

If self-help fails because it isolates people, your work succeeds because it connects them. This is why care is not a luxury. As Carol Gilligan (1982) writes, “Care is a form of courage.” To sit with someone in uncertainty, to help them imagine a future they’re not yet sure they deserve, to walk with them as they move toward it—that’s brave work.

Advisors who embrace this role aren’t just delivering financial plans. They’re offering relationships that allow for transformation. And that’s no small thing.

To do that well, consider these reflection questions:

• Am I focusing too much on the solution and not enough on the person?

• What kind of help does this client need right now—direction, imagination, permission, presence? And have I asked?

• Do I offer a space where people feel safe being uncertain?

• How might I build a community around my practice so clients don't just feel supported by me—but by each other?

• Do I treat each client relationship as a transaction or as an opportunity to co-create a new future?

Helping someone isn’t just about delivering the right recommendation. It’s about staying, holding space, bearing witness, and being their “someone” on the hill.

You’re not just helping clients make better choices. You’re helping them believe they’re the kind of person who can.

Start With the Relationship

What if we treated support like a strategy? Not a fallback, not a weakness, but the most powerful tool we have?

We’d build differently. We’d plan differently. We’d talk about money differently.

We’d stop obsessing over perfect systems and start investing in durable relationships.

Because the truth is, no one climbs alone.

The Only Kind of Help That Works

There’s a line I’ve said before—maybe some thought I was half-joking. But I’m not.

I never want to be accused of having done anything on my own.

And I mean it.

Sure, I mean it as a rejection of the self-help lie. But more than that, it’s a quiet celebration of something better. A different way of being. A different way of becoming.

I want my relationships to shine—because they are the best thing about me.

My family. My friends. My work buddies. The planners and students I get to teach and learn from. The collaborators whose ideas shape mine, whose questions sharpen mine, whose encouragement keeps me showing up.

These aren’t footnotes to the story—they are the story. They make who I am—and what I do—more interesting, more meaningful, and, maybe most importantly, more possible.

Even this article isn’t mine alone. It was built on decades of research, passed from scholar to scholar, tested and debated, torn down and rebuilt. It’s threaded with ideas from thinkers I admire—Gilligan, Milkman, Bandura, Grant, Duke, Mercier and Sperber, to name a few. It reflects conversations with planners trying to do the work better. It’s colored by the lives of clients who show up—who imagine futures that scare them, who let someone walk beside them as they try.

This is how knowledge is built. This is how change happens.

Not alone. Not in secret. But in the light of relationship.

We live in a culture that prizes independence. We’re taught to be proud of doing things by ourselves. But I think pride is misplaced when it ignores the people who made it all possible—the ones who met us on the hill, who asked the good questions, who stuck around when we stalled, and who made space for us to be both unsure and brave.

Self-help sells the fantasy of the self-made person. But I’ve never met a truly self-made anything.

What I have seen—again and again—is that the people who make it through hard things, who build beautiful lives, who change in real and lasting ways, almost always have someone standing beside them. Someone they trust. Someone who makes the hill look just a little less steep.

So if I could offer just one belief to carry with you, it’s this:

Help isn’t weakness. Help is how.

It’s how we grow. How we decide. How we begin again.

Whether you’re someone trying to make a new financial decision or a planner trying to help others through that process, the same truth applies:

Relationships aren’t optional. They’re the only kind of help that works.

And here’s one more kind of help. I don’t write alone. I have an editor. Her name is Erica. If you’ve ever thought about working with an editor—someone who sees the heart of your ideas and helps you say them clearly—send Erica an email. She’s not just an editor. She’s the best help.

References for the Nerds:

Ajzen, Icek. 1991. The Theory of Planned Behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 50 (2): 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T.

Bandura, Albert. 1985. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice-Hall.

Borek, Aleksandra J., Charles Abraham, Colin J. Greaves, and Mark Tarrant. 2018. Group-Based Diet and Physical Activity Weight-Loss Interventions: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being. 10 (1): 62–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12121.

Boyatzis, Richard E. 2006. An Overview of Intentional Change from a Complexity Perspective. Journal of Management Development. 25 (7): 607–623. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710610678445.

Buber, Martin. (1970). I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Originally published in 1923.

Carnegie, Dale. 1936. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Simon & Schuster.

Cohen, Sheldon, William J. Doyle, Ronald B. Turner, Cuneyt M. Alper, and David P. Skoner. 2003. Emotional Style and Susceptibility to the Common Cold. Psychosomatic Medicine. 65 (4): 652–657. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.PSY.0000077508.57784.DA.

Duflo, Esther and Emmanuel Saez. 2003. The Role of Information and Social Interactions in Retirement Plan Decisions: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 118 (3): 815–842. https://doi.org/10.1162/00335530360698432.

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