It's not about the application of self-help advice, but the fact that most self-help advice don't have any scientific basis and is mostly bullshit. Anybody can

It's not about the application of self-help advice, but the fact that most self-help advice don't have any scientific basis and is mostly bullshit. Anybody can sound authoritative and true. Anybody can invent ad-hoc reasons for why their advice will work. That doesn't mean that what they're saying is true. Just because the advice seems to work for you, doesn't mean it's actually causing the progress. You are a human being. You have cognitive bias. You have selective memory. You are fallible. This is why we need to conduct psychological research on self-help advice. There are books that draws on the research done by psychologists over several decades. Use them. Don't simply listen to self-help gurus that got rich simply by writing self-help books. Yes, application of self-help advice is going to be a problem, but it does you no good if you're applying BS self-help advice.