- I remember 2016 as being
one of the happiest years of my life. I had just got my scientific baccalaureate the French high school
diploma with high honors. I had got my driving license, my tennis instructor certification. I was winning tournaments. I was gaining a lot of
followers on Instagram, and was about to start a law degree. Everything was set for success, and yet I remember having
that conversation with myself, sitting on the bench
around where my dad lives, wondering what I really
wanted to do with my life. Be successful according
to societal standards of what success is. So have a good job, earn a good living, potentially build a family, and just continue to be a control freak for the rest of my life, or go the other way, try to do what I really wanted to do. Make time for hobbies, explore the world, build connections with people. And that resulted in me
quitting law after one semester to catch up with another degree that better aligned with
my vision of the life I want to live. A life that isn't defined by
money, but by experiences. I'm very much aware, I sound exactly like the alternative self-help gurus I'm going to talk about today, but that's precisely
the point of this video. I think they hold a lot of truth but then it's still necessary
to unpack that genre to better understand where
those people come from and what they truly support. My story is maybe your story as well. I think we've all thought
at some point in our lives about ways we could escape determinism, the nine-to-five jobs, and by extension, all the societal expectations
that weighed on our shoulders and I as a woman have a few. And that's precisely what
alternative self-help capitalizes on. It's meant for people who aren't obsessed with hustle culture, with success. But on the other hand, who still believe in
personal responsibility and in individual power over one's life or one's pursuit of happiness. Our influencers of the day are Matt D'Avella with
3.15 million subscribers. He focuses a lot on routines, minimalism, mental clarity and good
habits, and he's really funny. Second on our list. We have Lana Blakely, a
former corporate worker who studied finance and business with more than 600,000 subscribers, who's known for her slow
living, loneliness content, storytelling, and interesting
set of thumbnails. Finally, Nathaniel Drew with
1.36 million subscribers who focuses on mental clarity. Again, traveling,
routines and overthinking. Having watched their
videos for a few years now, I can tell you that there
are recurring patterns that one do not find in
traditional self-help. First, clarity, minimalism. They all dress in a very simple way. Their home look very minimalistic. You won't find a fancy car,
dinosaur head in the background. So it means that all our
attention is directed to them, to their message, the
story they want to share. Each one of them is also
known for his or her ability to live in the moment. Lana has made several vlogs that feel like you're out of time, meaning
that you're not saturated with sound effects and crazy edits. It's peaceful and slow. And what I love about those vlog is that she forces you to
adopt that slow living, slow pace as you're watching
her going through her day. And honestly, it's a
real focusing exercise. On the other hand, Nathaniel
is known for his cultural and travel experiences. He really makes an
effort to immerse himself into a culture and forces
us to look at things with new eyes to contemplate,
reflect, and connect. Finally, Matt D'Avella is the coffee man. He knows the art of making
coffee, dedicates time to it. He's involved in the process
from start to finish. In that sense, their
approach of life is very much in opposition to
traditional hustle culture. First, because they decided
to allocate a certain amount of time to relaxation activities. And second is because they
have redefined what success is. Or really? The first nuance I would like to bring to our discussion is the fact that those people have
reached a certain point in their career where
they don't need to go for that very clickbait type of content or hustle culture content,
toxic productivity. Actually, when you look
to their first videos you might find a bit more
personal responsibility content, self-discipline, making money online. On the contrary, the success allowed them to operate a major shift
in terms of lifestyle from long hours to fewer
hours and more free time. They recognized that that toxic
productivity lifestyle leads to anxiety, to depression, to burn out. On the other hand, they
better embrace vulnerability. They develop compassion towards themselves but also towards others. And they learn to build networks that aren't only professional networks but also community networks. And I find it very cool. These people are both the product and the detractors of self-help. - You go to any large bookshop and you look at the self-help section. It seems that there are almost
two kinds of books on offer. The first kind, the sort of
Anthony Robbins kind, you know? how to become a billionaire
by Friday and all that. And then the other kind
of books telling you how to cope with low self-esteem. And I think the two genres are
actually intimately related you know, it's by the time it's Saturday and you haven't become a billionaire, but you'll be reaching out for something helping you to feel better about yourself. - What I find interesting
here is the recognition that our economic system
pushes us to believe that our worth is determined
by our ability to work, to produce, to be efficient and quick. Okay. So you agree with me that that's not a
controversial stance anymore but now that you've recognized
it, what do you do about it? I guess there are two ways
to come to terms with that. First, you decide to direct
your energy outwards. Meaning that you learn more
about our economic system. You engage politically,
you build communities, you forge your political consciousness. In the case of all YouTubers, for example, it could be that they recognize
that what they do now, that they have reached a certain level of financial stability. So working shorter hours,
having a lot of hobbies, being able to talk about
mental health more openly, should actually be the norm. That being poor shouldn't equal to your life is going to be
synonymous with survival. So that's one way to see it. Another way to come to
terms with that reality, AKA our economic system
is self-destructive is to direct your energy
inwards, to yourself, your own improvement and ability
to cope with that system. But if you want to do so then you have to develop
a certain set of skills. - Emotional education. We're very used to the idea
that we need to get educated in certain sorts of skills but the notion that we need to be educated in our emotional functioning
is very peculiar. - The core feature of
alternative self-help is emotional intelligence and the pioneer of emotional intelligence and YouTube is the School of Life. At its core, emotional intelligence is about mastering your emotions in the workplace to
become a better leader. But Alain de Botton and other
alternative self-help gurus have extended it to all areas of life. They argued that emotional intelligence leads to kindness, empathy,
an absence of judgment and general compassion. And you can find that type of content on our YouTubers' channels. Little parenthesis here or
may I say little flex. Actually, I've had the opportunity to talk with Alain de Botton, the
leader of the School of Life more than a year ago,
because he had started an Instagram account, separate
from the School of Life where he shared practical
wisdom and daily quotes. And yeah, he was asking
me, a random follower about the future of the School of Life. And if I thought they should go back to their philosophical,
historical type of content or they should continue
with the psychoanalysis, psychology type of content. And I said both. It's a bit unfair because the account does not exist anymore. So I can't have like a real
proof except those little bits of conversations but I promise it existed. There're still websites mentioning it. So trust me on this. I truly believe that the work
the School of Life is doing is very beneficial for
those people who are looking for that type of alternative self-help. They open discussions around
mental health, depression rejection, failure, that did not exist on YouTube at that time. But I have to nuance that because there a few problematic things about the School of Life
that needs to be addressed. One of them being that
they never, almost never indicate where they get their
scientific information from. Some of their videos are
a bit weird or far-fetched and there's a mega, mega
emphasis on childhood traumas as being the cause of every single aspect of our unhappiness. And this is solely based on
assumptions that sound true, but unscientifically proven. It's very similar to your zodiac sign and what it tells about yourself. You might hold this characteristic
as true because you feel like they resonate with your personality. Yet there is no science to
back that up and it's fine. It's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with
believing in zodiac signs. I mean, sometimes they're quite funny but I think it's still
important to restate it. But if the School of Life is
looking for someone to hire to bring a bit of social
justice, historical or scientific perspective
to their content. Hi. I'm almost done with my master's. I need to find a job. Now, this critique leads
us to another thing that I'd like to discuss with you. The purpose of self-help and by extension, alternative self-help is
to make things convenient from the content production
to the content itself. And a big part of that
convenient aesthetic comes from the general absence of anything remotely political or factual. The concerns are about
the self and its ability to filter negative stimulation
coming from the outside world so that you feel more
at peace with yourself. But the thing is that we don't all face the same negative
stimulations on a daily basis. For me, it could be
that I failed an essay, that I lost a game at tennis or that I got a few men's
rights activists comments but for others, it's way
more complicated than that. I'm talking about daily social injustices that one cannot welcome
with a smile and compassion. You know, some things cannot
be processed in silence. Yet what bothers me is
that it implies that people who display negative emotions
are emotionally intelligent or unintelligent altogether. I got this comment a few weeks ago and it made me reflect a bit. One thing I thought about
was what would the world look like if everybody
adopted a positivity mindset or as I prefer to call
it a coping mindset. Some people would argue
that it would make the world a better place filled with
kindness and compassion. That's pretty much what
the alternative self-help and the School of Life stand for. If only people knew how
to peacefully communicate with one another, if only they
had done the internal work, develop those emotional
skills and mental clarity, we could finally move forward. So what happened is that they
refuse to engage politically and instead promote universal moral values but the message they convey
is in fact, political, namely that if your experience
of the world has led you to develop negative feelings,
hate, violence, revenge then you need to fix something within you. You are the problem, not the system. You need to develop
compassion, understanding for the people who repress you because they too, are suffering. Alternative self-help gurus
will distance themselves from the struggles they don't experience instead of engaging with them. Cut themselves from the real world, live social media, simply
because what's going on in the world doesn't affect them. I know YouTube is set in a way
that any form of divergence from your niche can be detrimental
to your channel's growth. And so I completely understand
that Matt, Nathaniel and Lana don't want to get too political. That's not what their audience
is expecting from them but I hope that they are aware
that the message they send through their content,
echoes that, "work on yourself to cope with the system without
questioning the injustices of that very system," type of mindset. And I'm hopeful because they've
shown signs that they are. Hear me on this, what if
getting angry was self-help? What if talking about social
injustices was true self-help. In the past year, I've
realized that I've become a better, happier human being
by actually de-centering my attention from my internal
struggles and focus instead on bigger causes, on other
people social injustices, something you find here
on commentary channels like this one. And that for me, that's
what self-help truly is.
