Not Your Average Self Help Podcast
Not so ordinary self-help podcasts from You’re Gonna Love This Podcast
I am a self-confessed self-help junkie. I buy every book someone says will change my life, make new new years resolutions every month and as of 3 years ago, I had this thing in my room called ‘The Wall of Positivity’ which was plastered with vague, yet comforting motivational quotes.
But the self-help industry is incredibly loud right now. There are so many books, articles and Instagram posts giving advice that the more I consume them, the less I feel like I’m actually learning anything. So this week I want to recommend you three podcasts that flip the self-help genre on its head through humour and a healthy dose of scepticism.
These are not your average self-help podcasts.
By The Book
By The Book is a half reality show, half self-help podcast in which hosts Jolenta and Kristen live by the rules of a different self-help book each week. They read the book, break it down into its main pieces of advice and live by it for a week… to varying degrees of success. From The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up to The Art of Dying Well, they go through each major self-help book so you don’t have to.
Kristen and Jolenta’s polar opposite personalities really compliment each other and make hearing them live by the rules of each book even more interesting. They dig deep into the impact each book had on their lives and don’t shy away from giving their honest opinions on what they really thought about each author’s advice.
Start with: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Personal Best
Personal Best takes self-help and dials it up to a hundred. In each episode, hosts Andrew and Rob help a listener to solve an issue, overcome a fear or learn how to do something that brings them closer to their best selves. But what makes this podcast different is that Andrew and Rob don’t just settle at helping their listener in a conventional way. They go to great, often hilarious, occasionally questionable lengths to help them achieve their personal best. While the methods they use are often quite tongue in cheek, the podcast explores how you can turn small goals into big adventures in a really joyful way.
Start with: One Time Snooze or Let’s go Schwimmin
In each episode of Heavyweight, Jonathan Goldstein goes on a journey to help a guest resolve a moment from their past that they wish they could change. Whether it’s words they wish they’d said, a promise they broke or a truth they’re not so sure is true anymore, Heavyweight dives headfirst into the past on a mission to help each guest relieve themselves of the heaviness weighing down on them.
Heavyweight is one of my all-time favourite podcasts and for the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to whittle down the main reasons why. The first is that I spend a lot of time replaying moments from my past and wondering how things would have turned out if I had done things slightly differently. So I find listening to people on Heavyweight doing that incredibly cathartic. The second is that I love how dry, awkward but incredibly funny the host Jonathan Goldstein is. And the third is that humour and catharsis aside, it’s just a really well made and thought-provoking podcast that challenges me to do and say what I believe and think is right in each moment of my life. To let my curiosity take me down the occasional rabbit hole. To try and act in a way that future me will be grateful to current me for. And to tell the people I care about how I really feel. I come away from each episode feeling lighter, and I think you will too.
This is article is adapted from the podcast You’re Gonna Love This Podcast which you can listen to here: You’re Gonna Love This Podcast
