If you are like me, you frequently refer to books and videos to learn how to fix a thousand and one things—like repairing the car or setting up a new phone. Not only do we save money this way, but we also enjoy the satisfaction of doing something new and having the job done just the way we want.

Yet Amazon and YouTube have books and videos that can show us more than just how to put a new battery in our car. They also have ones that tell us how we can be happier, wealthier, and more productive. On one hand we can learn how to repair a leaking faucet, while on the other we can discover how to repair our lives! This is the area known as “self-improvement” and here we find the “how to” books for life itself.

The shelves, real and virtual, are full of thousands of tomes promising to help you become, yes indeed, a better you. You have probably noticed that the titles of these books have phrases in them such as “unlocking your inner self,” “taking charge of the real you,” and “a year to financial freedom.” Frankly I never knew I had so many problems that needed fixing—maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.

Like everyone, I could certainly do with some improvement here and there, but peering at these books is rather depressing. Who knew there were so many problems to have in life—the list is endless! It makes me feel that if I don’t have enough difficulties then maybe I need to catch up by taking on a few more “issues.”

Obviously, there is some clever marketing going on with these titles. While we might have a lot of problems, we are told not to worry as the author is there to help. This approach reminds me of the advertisements we see on television for medicines. Watch a couple of these and you will be left wondering what new and exciting illness you might be walking around with.

The real trick of these self-improvement ads however, is what I call the “positive carry over effect.” If a home improvement book taught me how to install a garage door opener, then why can’t a well-known author can teach me how to unlock my hidden dazzling personality and be more productive at work? What a miracle! In a dozen easy to follow steps, I can be the guy I always wanted to be!

To be fair, many of these books suggest developing good habit patterns which, as we know, are pretty much the secret to anything we do in life. Well ok, it really isn’t a secret, for good habits have helped humans since the beginning of time. Yet we need reminding of this and here I think of how Toyota, the Japanese motor car company, captured the U.S. market with low-priced, but quality automobiles.

Toyota was famous for its practice of continuous improvement called Kaizen. The idea here is to beaver away little by little at a task and then notice the changes over time. By working gradually, we don’t bite off more than we can chew.

Sadly, a lot of the self-help books promise a short-cut around this process. This rarely works of course and there are four reasons we need to be careful.

First, many of these books give you steps to follow. Not a bad idea as to-do lists are great helps in life. But pretty soon, with six of this and a dozen of that, you can find yourself under a burden of things that you are always trying to check off. Lists can introduce complexity at a time when simplicity might be what is best.

Authors defend this approach by saying that if it all gets to be too much, then just use what is working for you. Fair point, but often the reader knows there is a list somewhere in the background and will, either consciously or subconsciously, think that he really needs to follow all the steps to succeed.

Second, recommendations can often overwhelm us. Very little is truly accomplished in “just ten minutes a day.” With the various plans to follow and steps to take, we can become slaves to these regimens and lose sight of why we are trying to get better at something in the first place. When self-betterment becomes a full-time occupation, what good has it done?

A more serious third point is that we need to ask ourselves what we would do if we could attain all the things the author promises. We think we might know, but I am not sure we always do.

What would we do, for example, if we had that winning personality that could “work” the room like a master or be supremely confident or super organized? What do we want to change? Why? What are we looking for? Goals need to be both realistic and perhaps, more importantly, fit who and what we are.

Don’t get me wrong, we all need to change to survive. But change requires giving up comfort and if you are like me, you move at the speed of an iceberg when it comes to giving up a comfortable spot in the sun. In job interviews, for example, we all tout how much we embrace change. Really? Come and visit me sometime and we can have a chat about this. I move about a millimeter during a good year and I don’t think I am far from everyone else on this. It’s just that change is harder than we imagine.

The fourth consideration is dangerously disheartening—the self-help trap. Unfortunately, we can work at something for months, even years, and still not move forward very much. We end up feeling that we are failing and so we redouble our efforts—often by trying yet another self-help program. This starts an inescapable, and soul-crushing, cycle of doom.

Again, it really boils down to asking what our true goals are. Obviously changes like spending more time with the family, eating better, and being better at our jobs are things we should constantly be working on. We need to remember though that what worked for someone else might not for us. I addressed this specific point in a post on Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins Before we set off on a path of change, where is it that we want it to lead?

Fortunately, we can change a lot of things in life, but transforming ourselves into the hit of the party or the next Google CEO might not be among them—nor should they be. Instead, let’s be realistic and not let the tyranny of change and the self-improvement books defeat us before we even start.

Reality forces limits on us but that is, in many ways, what makes life enjoyable. This way we can work toward what is possible and, more importantly, what is worthy.