The simplest example of a circular order breeding itself is the ‘success story,’ which gets a kind of catharsis by building up a day-dream of gratification. In the course of its imaginary attainments, it brings to the imagination the very ideals that make precisely its ideas of success seem so pressingly desirable. Thus, the ‘cure’ but reinvigorates the ‘disease,’ and readies the audience for another variant of the same success story next time.

Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion. Burke had self-help and business books all figured out.