But since I can’t be comprehensive about it, I’ll just grab a recent example: “If you know without a doubt you’ll succeed, you will.”
This tweet should be so obviously risible that it would never see the light of day. How about:
“If you know without a doubt that you’ll succeed, and you have the capacity & preparation to do so, you’re much more likely to succeed than if you immerse yourself in doubts.”

A lot of self-help is a form of self-delusion to create confidence… like a lucky charm, a litany.
Think of the Boxer rebellion, in which kung fu masters were convinced they could make themselves bulletproof. Had they been armed with the truth and some parity in weaponry, their martial arts skills would’ve given them an advantage in hand-to-hand combat. But delusion lost the day.  The Disney cartoon character Dumbo always had the ability to fly thanks to his ears, but he needed the delusion of the magic feather to even attempt it.

Objective reality is all we have. You can face it or not. The best way to achieve success using these self-delusional platitudes,  is re-package them to sell to others via squeeze letters, seminars, CD sets. They also provide handy fodder for the myriad MLM and spambots infesting Twitter, repeating the same quotes over an over in an attempt to get retweets. Don’t take the bait.

Since his emphasis is on consistent action and wise choices, by the way, I do NOT lump Tony Robbins in with this group at all. Anyone that’s listened to him, or read him, would have to admit he does take a rational approach to his ideas (test them to see if they work): he acknowledges that a lot of self-help affirmations are BS. Disparagers have only seen infomercials or a news report. At essence, Tony Robbins is about discipline, volition, will, conscious effort… WORK… which is not pie-in-the-sky.

The next time you see a self-help quote, really mull it over before you retweet it. And if you can, send it my way!

I disagree with this analysis. Luck is “probability taken personally.”  As commonly perceived: good luck is when things go your way, bad luck is when they don’t. From that perspective, the idea that we have all made our own luck is untenable.

The only thing between us and bad luck, in the final reckoning, is preparation: the actions our minds enable us to make to contend against random circumstance. Good luck seems to accrue to the prepared. Ingenuity, creativity, knowledge, wisdom… and taking action. Many times, however, this is far from being enough. It’s hardly fair to look at the victims of chaos and sudden disaster and declare: ”you make your own luck, good or bad.”

A child with a glioblastoma tumor did not make her own luck. A widow whose police-officer husband was killed by a crazy man in an ambush did not make her own luck. The workers killed in the Twin Towers over 8 years ago did not make their own luck, nor did their kids.Update 1/14/10: The victims of the earthquake in Haiti… did not make their own luck.

Most of us do the best we can, but the majority of objective reality is out of our control. My philosophy is that our best strategy in life is to learn as much as we can, experiment, focus on what we can do and what we want to do, and take consistent actions that produce the results we want. Reading most of Chris’ work, I think he feels the same, so I’m only addressing that one sentence about luck….

Most of us face adversities and overcome them, others overcome most of them but at some point become overwhelmed (some people, a statistical anomaly, will go through life never facing any significant adversity). Things will not always go according to plan. But if they do, and we find ourselves part of that sliver of population with things always going our way, I hope we don’t ascribe that to an innate, preternatural control of destiny, making our own good luck. That’s just as irrational as saying the world is out to get us (and in psychological terms it’s a parallel manifestation of the same malady). It’s a random world and our only defenses are our minds. So then, it would be rational to say, “we can influence our luck, good or bad, with our actions and minds.”

I’ve heard “Life is 10% what happens to you, 90% how you react to it.” I know those specific quantities are poetic license, but the central idea, that life is random and our only hope is wise action, is far more rational than the idea that: ”100% of what happens to you in Life is due to your thoughts.”

Recently a friend on Facebook, Jeff Collins (myHaberdasher.com), posted a status update about his intention to donate bone marrow. Several people gave praise for his action (which he definitely deserved). One wrote: “That is one of the most selfless, courageous things I have ever heard.”
He responded:

Donating bone marrow isn’t what people think it is, i.e. painful. They do not have to tap into the pelvic bone anymore. Over a few days they give you an injection of Filgrastim which causes increased stem cell production & they then flow through your blood stream. They do apheresis (like in platelet donation) to cycle your blood through a machine where they collect what they need and send the rest back to me. It’s a few hours off work and some flu-like achiness but that is about it.

It’s easy to get on the registry because all they need is a cheek swab to get your DNA. And it is one in a bunch to even get called. Here’s how you can look into registering: http://www.psbc.org/programs/marrow.htm

What he did was compassionate and caring: someone is going to live because he was willing to sacrifice time, take medication, endure some pain and discomfort, and give his life’s blood to someone not close to him.

An organization called the Institute for Justice recently began making the case that many more patients are in need of bone marrow donations than are available; there are too few people making the sacrifices Jeff did.

If they could only be legally compensated, the IJ contends, more people would do it:

From  IJ’s Bone Marrow Case: An Intro:

Bone marrow transplantation is a lifesaving treatment for 70 deadly blood diseases, including cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.  Most people who need a transplant need one from a stranger, and tens of thousands have died because they lacked donors.  Our clients want to increase the number of unrelated donors by having a charity offer them a $3,000 scholarship, a housing allowance, or gift to the donor’s favorite charity.  Unfortunately, using scholarships to save lives is considered organ-selling under NOTA, a major federal crime….

Congress didn’t intend to criminalize compensation for renewable cells such as blood or sperm.  In fact, the Conference Report the House and Senate jointly sent to President Reagan with the bill he signed said so.Congress included bone marrow in the statute by mistake.  A “bone marrow” transplant involves the collection of immature blood cells, not the removal of an organ or tissues.  Most marrow cells are now collected using the same equipment and methods for blood donation.  Donating marrow cells is safe and they quickly replenish themselves just like donated blood.  Bone marrow wasn’t discussed in the legislative hearings and was inserted in the statute at the end of the drafting process, probably by a staffer….

Hard to imagine anyone on the floor of the House or Senate arguing against this… however the IJ is taking a judicial rather than legislative route. I hope someone in Congress decides to take this on: if another member attempted to employ a “slippery-slope” fallacy, the fact that it’s not much different from giving blood should stifle any animus. Who could be bombastic about preventing an outpatient procedure that causes no negative health effects?

The compensation is pretty tame, too: scholarships, credits, or charitable donations. I would support legal compensation for bone marrow donation even if it were plain old cash!  It’s purely rational. Objective reality should factor in at least the time-cost to the donors. Many sick and hurting people would be helped by lifting the ban.

In the meantime, I hope more people follow Jeff’s lead.

Here are some other articles about the case:

• IJ’s Bone Marrow Case: History of NOTA
• IJ’s Bone Marrow Case: Judical Engagement, Not Activism
• IJ’s Bone Marrow Case: Rational Basis Test