What’s the best self-help tip, if you could only use one? And how do you put it into practice?
- Spencer Greenberg
- Jul 21
- 14 min read
Updated: Jul 21
Short of time? Read the key takeaways.
🧩 Understanding a problem more deeply often leads to better solutions. Instead of rushing to fix a challenge, spend time uncovering its underlying causes. Surface-level explanations are often incomplete, and deeper understanding can reveal more effective ways forward. Of course, there are many techniques for getting a better understanding of any given problem. That's where the rest of the article comes in.
🔍 Question your assumptions about what's causing your problems. We often anchor on the first explanation that comes to mind, but it may be wrong. Looking for alternative causes—such as whether a problem you think is psychological is actually medical (or vice versa)—can completely change how you approach it.
💡 Your emotions can be valuable sources of information. Rather than treating emotions as obstacles, treat them like signals. By noticing the moment an emotion changes and immediately asking "Why?", you can uncover thoughts or situations that would otherwise slip from memory and deepen your understanding of what's happening.
🧠 Examine the causal chain, from events to thoughts to reactions. The ABC Analysis encourages you to identify the activating event, the beliefs or interpretations you have about it, and the emotional or behavioral consequences that follow. This can reveal hidden assumptions that are driving your reactions and point toward healthier alternatives.
✨ Look for the times when things go better than usual. Even seemingly constant problems have exceptions. By studying these "bright spots" and asking what was different, you can discover clues about the underlying causes of your challenges and identify changes worth repeating.
It stopped me in my tracks when someone asked me the question, “If you could recommend only one self-help tip to everyone, what would it be?” The question seemed impossible. Since people have all sorts of different challenges, and differ tremendously from one another, what single piece of advice could possibly apply to just about anyone? And, if a self-improvement tip did apply to just about anyone, wouldn't it inevitably be obvious and banal?
On the other hand, I felt I should be able to give a useful answer to this question because my co-author and I have spent the last several years studying more than 100 self-improvement books and more than 20 therapies, to understand everything they contain.
In doing that research, we realized we could boil all of the insights from all of those sources down to just 12 high-level psychological strategies. That’s where the name of our new book comes from: it’s called The 12 Levers and it comes out July 28th. (If you pre-order it here, you’ll receive 5 exclusive bonuses to help you put the ideas into practice. And, if you like, you can also check out our free interactive diagram of the evidence behind 82 self-help techniques.)
In this article, I'm going to walk you through the answer I finally came up with and why I chose it: the one self-help tip that I would recommend if I could recommend only one. And I'll give you concrete steps for how to put that into action in your own life.
If you’d rather watch the video recording of this (since I also ran it as a workshop), you can do so here.
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So, What Is the One Self-Help Tip?
My one tip is this: whatever challenge you are facing in your life, dedicate some time to understanding that challenge better than you already do now. We often think we fully understand our challenges when, in fact, we only partially understand them.
It’s often possible to reach deeper levels of understanding than we have. And a better understanding leads to better solutions.
But how can you understand your challenges more deeply? In a moment, I'm going to give you concrete methods to get started. But first, let me give you an example that may help illustrate this concept better.
Suppose that you find that you're fighting with your partner a lot. Every week you're getting into an argument, and you think to yourself, “Well, I know why we fight. It's because I want X and she wants Y, so we fight about it.”
That sounds like an answer to the question, “Why do we fight?” - and it is -, but it's actually only a surface-level answer. How do we know? Well, there are lots of couples made up of people who want different things and who yet find ways to handle their disagreements calmly, without getting into fights about it. So, something deeper is happening that is turning these conflicting desires into a fight. And that means there's a deeper understanding to unlock around this challenge, and that deeper understanding is likely needed to resolve the fighting.
There's a principle that's sometimes used in business, called The Five Whys. It's the idea that there are often deeper causes underneath your first explanation, and by asking “Why?” repeatedly, you can more reliably get to the root causes that really require attention. So you can start with a problem (fighting with your partner) and the answer to your first “Why?” is just, “She wants one thing, I want another thing.” Then you can ask “Why?” again like this:
“Well, why is that leading to fighting, rather than compromise or a permanent solution?”
Perhaps the answer to that question is that, one time when you tried to come up with a plan, you couldn't agree. Okay, so now ask “Why?” again:
“Why could we not agree on a plan?”
Maybe the answer is because your partner thought you were being selfish by asking for X. And so on.
By asking “Why?” repeatedly, you're really trying to get deeper.
Simply asking “Why?” won’t always work, but it illustrates a really common hurdle people face when trying to solve problems: not having a deep enough understanding of the problem.
Imagine that your car won't start, and to solve the problem, you start buying car parts at random. It's a lot more effective to first do a diagnostic on the car to figure out the deeper cause behind why it won't start, and then try to fix it.
So, my pick for the one self-help tip I’d recommend, if I could recommend only one, is simply this: Get a deeper understanding of your problem before trying to solve it. A much deeper understanding, if you can.
This article is all about techniques you can use for applying that tip, so you can unlock more effective and efficient solutions.
Technique 1: Look for alternate causes
Sometimes, we latch onto an explanation for a problem, and it's actually not correct because it gets the cause wrong. For example, I was talking to someone I know, and they were telling me that they were really depressed and they'd been depressed for a while and they didn't really understand why. As we talked more, it started dawning on me that all the things they were referring to as aspects of their depression sounded more to me like anxiety. So, I said to them, “Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe you're actually dealing with anxiety, rather than depression?”
They said they didn’t think so. I suggested they take a standardized depression questionnaire and a standardized anxiety questionnaire, just to see what those say.
My friend agreed, and the results were shocking to them: They scored really low on depression and really high on anxiety. Suddenly, this reframed the challenge to them. It didn't mean the problem was immediately solved, but suddenly they got a new understanding of what they had been framing as a problem of depression. This new insight about the nature of their challenge set them up to address it more effectively.
Stories like that one illustrate the power of getting to the right causal explanation and the danger of anchoring on the wrong one. With the wrong explanation, you can find that you expend a lot of useless effort fighting something that either doesn’t exist or isn’t actually an issue.
With that, let's jump into the first exercise. I really recommend taking a minute to actually do this now (rather than just passively consuming this content). To change your life for the better, it's critical to take action.
Exercise 1: Look for alternative causes to a challenge you’re facingStep 1: Take a moment now to write down three challenges you're facing in life. They can be any kind of challenge, as long as they have some psychological element to them, even if they’re not primarily psychological. For example:
Step 2: For each of those challenges, take a moment to think about whether there could be another cause besides the one that you’ve anchored on. To give a couple of examples:
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Technique 2: Get information from emotions
People have different models of what emotions are and what they are really doing, but here’s a way of thinking about them that I find most useful. You can think of emotions as analogous to the signals from smoke detectors. Except instead of signaling when they detect smoke, each emotion is detecting something unique. For example:
Fear is a signal of perceived danger. Essentially, your brain has processed the situation and has concluded that there might be danger around and so you feel fear.
Disgust is a signal of perceived risk of contamination. Your brain is predicting that there could be something contaminating (e.g., illness, infection, or contaminated food) and telling you that you need to back away and definitely not eat it.
Because each emotion is trying to detect things, they can be really valuable sources of information about what's going on in your life.
For example, suppose that every time you go to work, you notice yourself suddenly becoming anxious. Well, that emotion contains a lot of information. Why are you getting anxious when you get to work? And does it occur right when you arrive? Is it when you get that first email? Is it when you see your boss? When you're trying to get a deeper understanding of your problems, one really useful strategy is to go back to your emotions and ask, “What are my emotions telling me here?”
Here’s a technique to help with that, which I call the “Inner Why” technique. The idea is that our emotions provide useful information, but often, if we don't catch that information fast enough, we lose it.
Consider how many thoughts you have every day. Hundreds, probably thousands. Well, if I asked you, could you remember all the thoughts you had today? Of course not. Most of the thoughts we have are very fleeting, and we don't capture them in memory. But this actually can create a big problem for us because if our emotions provide useful information but we don't remember the thoughts that triggered the emotions, we can struggle to figure out why we're feeling those emotions. We might end up thinking things like “When I went to work today, I felt stressed, but I don't really know why I felt stressed; it just happened.”
So, the idea of the Inner Why technique is to simply try to notice the very moment your emotion shifts. Here’s how it works:
The Inner Why When you're going about your day (and particularly in the context of the problem you're trying to address), really try to take note of any time your emotion undergoes a big change and then simply ask “Why?” Notice that your emotion shifted, and ask why it happened. The faster you can do this after the emotion shifts, the higher the probability that you'll really be able to get to the bottom of what's going on, and you'll be able to learn what the emotion is really telling you. |
To illustrate, let's go back to the example of feeling stressed when you get to work. Later in the day, you might realize you feel stressed but do not know what's going on. So, you commit to trying the Inner Why technique the next day. You say to yourself, "When I get to work tomorrow, I'm going to notice the first moment when that stress comes on, and I'm going to ask why." So, you go to work, and you don't feel stressed immediately. That's interesting information. Then you meet with your boss, and you don't feel stressed. That's more interesting information. Then you bump into your colleague Joe, and suddenly the stress comes on, and you're able to think, "Oh, okay. I just learned something that can help me understand the cause of why I feel stressed at work. For some reason, when I first saw Joe, that's when my stress went up. Why is that?” And now you can start exploring that. Are you afraid of Joe? Are you secretly in love with Joe? Do you owe Joe an important work assignment that was due 2 months ago?
Here's exercise 2 that I suggest you try:
Exercise 2: Reflect on your emotions
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Technique 3: The ABC Analysis
This technique is used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and sometimes goes by the name “the ABC analysis” or “the ABC technique.”
The Inner Why technique is really about just noticing when your emotion shifts and asking, “Why?” But the ABC analysis builds on this concept and has a little bit more to it. It has three parts (one for each of the letters in the acronym ‘ABC’):
A: activating event. This is the event that tends to cause negative emotion for you.
B: belief. This is a very broad concept of belief, which covers things you believe about the event, judgments you make about it, thoughts you have when it happens, and ways you interpret it.
C: consequences. These could be emotional consequences (how you felt) or behavioral consequences (how you behaved).
The idea of the ABC analysis is to think back to recurring situations in your life where you tend to get upset, or things tend to go badly. If you can't think of a recurring situation, it's okay to use a one-off just to practice the technique, but it's most valuable in recurring problematic situations.
Here’s a simple example to help you understand this a little bit better: Imagine you find yourself getting upset at your child regularly, and you want to do something about it. You can start by identifying a typical sort of situation when you get upset at your child. That’s your activating event. Maybe it's when you ask your child to do something, and they don't seem to be listening at all.
Then you identify your beliefs that occur at that time (thoughts, interpretations, judgments) about it. It could be that you're interpreting your child as purposely ignoring you. Or maybe you have thoughts like, “They never listen to me!”
Finally, you identify the consequences. Your emotions are rising. You're starting to feel angry, and then maybe there are behavioral consequences. Maybe once you're angry, you start yelling at your child. Your child gets upset, and now you're both upset, which is not the way you or your child wants this to go.
The idea of the ABC analysis is that it (a) helps you map out the relevant causal chains about your challenges, but it also (b) highlights the fact that, when things happen, we have a set of thoughts or interpretations about them (sometimes so fast that we don't even notice them), and they really change the way we handle the situation. They change the emotions we feel. They change the way we behave. And sometimes (surprisingly often!) those thoughts or interpretations are not even accurate. And even if they are accurate, they may not be the most helpful interpretations. For instance, what if your child is not ignoring you on purpose while you're making the assumption that they are? What if they literally don't realize you asked them to do something because they get hyper-focused on their play? That means that from their perspective, they were playing joyfully, and suddenly you were yelling at them, and they had no idea why.
The ABC analysis is the third exercise I'd suggest you try:
Exercise 3: Apply the ABC AnalysisStep 1: Take a few moments now to think about a recurring situation in your life where things go badly or where you feel strong negative emotions. Step 2: Now do the ABC analysis. Consider:
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Technique 4: The Bright Spot Analysis
Some problems seem intractable. You don’t even know where to start when it comes to understanding them better, because they seem to be constant. These might be problems like:
“I just feel depressed all the time”
“I just hate my job”
“I don't seem to be able to make friends successfully”
It can seem impossible to uncover the root causes of these kinds of problems, and you might end up thinking fatalistic thoughts like, “Well, what am I going to do, this is just my life?” The bright spot analysis has a really interesting approach to these sorts of problems by helping you understand them at a deeper level.
Even for problems that seem intractable, there will almost always be variation in your experience; some days will be better and some days will be worse. The bright spot analysis asks you to shine a spotlight on the moments when your intractable problem is less intense or a bit less bad than normal, to zoom in on them and reflect on what understanding they can give you.
Any kind of variation can be used to help you understand the cause of your challenges, even if your experience associated with those challenges is always bad. If you have trouble making friendships (even if you've never made a single friend before) and you feel like a failure for it, zoom in on a time when you got closest to making a friendship. If you feel like you're always depressed, zoom in on those days you were less depressed. What was going on on those days? Were you spending time with family? Were you going on a walk outside? Did you exercise that morning? Did you play a game that was fun? Those days when things go better than expected can be a powerful hint at the underlying causes that we may have missed.
This takes us to exercise four:
Exercise 4: Look for the bright spotStep 1: Take a moment to reflect on any challenges you have in your life for which the bright spot analysis might be relevant - e.g., challenges that feel intractable to understand. Step 2: For one of those challenges, attempt to identify when it goes better than normal. This might mean asking yourself questions like:
Step 3: Think about those times that things have gone better, then ask, “What about those times is different from usual?” If you can't think of anything, then just keep this technique in mind for the future. When you notice that a day is going better than usual, try to note what's different. |
Going beyond these four techniques
If there's one principle I want you to remember from this discussion, it is that better understanding leads to better solutions. On top of that, I want you to remember that there are a wide variety of useful tools you can use to get a better understanding of your problems. In this article, we've talked about a few of them:
Looking for alternate causes: Sometimes we anchor on a cause too quickly and we miss some critical cause that actually could turn out to explain a whole problem.
The Inner Why technique: As your emotion changes, try to take note of it and say what just happened. If you wait even 10 minutes, you might have forgotten or missed the thoughts that (if you noticed them) would give you a better understanding of your problem.
The ABC analysis: Look at the events that activate your problem, the beliefs (including thoughts, interpretations, judgments) you have during and about those events, and the consequences.
The bright spot analysis: Look for times when things go better than expected (even if it's only a little bit better) to get hints at underlying causes of things going badly.
These techniques are part of a broader framework. They all belong to what Jeremy Stevenson and I call the process of “unraveling the causes,” which is the first of the twelve psychological “Levers” for improving your life that we identified in our upcoming book The 12 Levers.
As mentioned, we studied over 100 self-help books and over 20 forms of therapy, and we extracted nearly 500 techniques from them. In organizing our research, we discovered that all of those techniques can be collapsed into just 12 approaches (or “levers”) for improving your life. And, in examining the evidence for all of those techniques, we saw that there’s no single best technique, and no one technique works for all people all the time. Different challenges and different circumstances require different approaches.
For that reason, we think of the 12 levers as a toolbox of powerful psychological tools that you can experiment with to find the best approach for your own life. In this article, we’ve explored some aspects of the first lever. If you enjoyed this content, we hope you’ll consider pre-ordering the book to learn even more about the first Lever and discover the other eleven!
