A lot of it can come from those self-help books that are, in reality, thinly veiled sales pitches intended to market the author as some sort of consultant. You

A lot of it can come from those self-help books that are, in reality, thinly veiled sales pitches intended to market the author as some sort of consultant. You'll only ever read about the happy path or the success story, with some lip-service paid to how difficult it is to actually do in practice. You'll rarely get the raw detail of it, or a fully authentic account. I'm not talking about quality literature here, but the short 250-pager you'd pick up in an airport bookshop that makes you feel good by the time you finish.