The culture of dad having a mid life crisis being frowned upon and only seen as a means to provide for the family by placing their desires above his own could be why soccer son often ends up beng raised by single mom. Dad needs help and soccer is the most irrelevant thing in the world right now.

I think you will be a better role model if you show some courage to better your own situation.

I suspect a self help guru like Tony Robbins would have actually given similar advice to the root commenter - to consider your options and then to get off the couch and do something.

Lumping all self-help resources into not being useful or even harmful doesn't help. There will always be some quacks, but there will always be some people with genuine insights and the ability to help others understand themselves better and move towards their goals.

I've never paid for Tony Robbins material but would say its been helpful.

In the OP's case they could use the material to understand what is behind wanting the change. Understanding their why.

Is it a feeling of significance / love / variety / contribution that they're lacking? How could they go about getting what's missing? What are their options?

These are the types of things that I get from Tony Robbins - almost like a problem solving framework for personal problems.

All that being said, do people use self help as a form of procrastination? Yes I'd say many do. However I believe the people with all the resources that refuse to take action are no worse off than they would have been anyway.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

>more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped

It is certainly a business but I assume that most of these self-help gurus truly want to help. They are promoting different methods(more or less rational) but the core message is often very similar and amounts to "take action". If all roads lead to Rome you may very well get there.

I think by listening to these books you are in fact priming your brain to find a way to improve your situation.

> just wasting time, money, and mental effort.

I don't believe it takes effort. On the contrary, reading self-help is basically a guilty pleasure. Otherwise it wouldn't sell in such massive quantities.