Self-help, self-improvement or personal growth — call them what you will, but the literary genre is around an $800 million industry annually. And why not? Most of us want to be better than we currently are. So, we turn to the self-help industry for guidance. However, with more than 85,000 self-help books in the marketplace, it can be nearly impossible to begin the process, and the majority who do fail.

Too often, people try to create experiences to escape their daily lives. Implementing the science of self-improvement is one way to live, on a daily basis, the life you wanted in the first place. But no book can do that for you. The fact is that books don’t change people. People change people. And change begins with the person you see in the mirror. There are three main reasons why people who want to be their best selves never quite get there, even though they’ve purchased book after book after book on self-improvement.

First, many people suffer from fear of failure. I’m not talking about atychiphobia, the irrational phobic fear of failure. I’m talking about the pernicious, persistent self-doubt that prevents us from even trying to be a better version of ourselves. Fear of failure may be more prevalent than fear of spiders. Now that’s saying something! No one likes to fail. Failure serves as evidence of our greatest fear of all — that somehow we’re just not good enough to succeed. Failure can undermine self-esteem, which in many of us is shaky at best. So, we buffer our potential failures by convincing ourselves we were too busy to really try. Or worse yet, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy by saying things like, “I will try this new self-improvement program, but it probably won’t work.” So, with the first stumbling block, or at the first sign of failure, we quit. And add the latest self-help book to that growing pile of other discarded self-help books in the corner. In doing so, we reject the single best predictor of success — tenacity.

Second, most of us fear uncertainty. Virginia Satir once famously said, “People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” Changing our lifestyles and risking changing ourselves creates uncertainty. When confronted with situations of ambiguity or uncertainty, the brain’s fear and stress circuits are activated. Stress for most of us is uncomfortable. It fuels our fears and upsets our bodies. Are we going to like the changes? Will our friends and family like and accept the new you? Surprising as it sounds, many friends and family may push back against your efforts at self-improvement. Why? You are doing what they only wish they could do. Said simply, they are jealous.

But let’s assume you get past the first two hurdles. The third reason we don’t act on the recommendations on self-improvement is that as wise and scientifically grounded as the best recommendations may be, they are simply not practical, so we don’t believe we can actually implement them successfully. Practicality matters. Research suggests that three things are necessary for us to institute personal change: 1) recognition of a problem or desire for change, 2) acknowledgment of and belief in a mechanism for successful change and 3) belief that the mechanism for change is practical enough to be successfully implemented.

Most people you encounter are probably like yourself; practical and outcome-driven. You have no desire to waste precious time and energy on hollow promises or the impractical. No matter how good or clever a recommendation for self-improvement might be, if it’s not practical, you are not going to make it a part of your daily life. So, in order for self-help techniques to work, they must be practical.

“Know the enemy as you know yourself.” – Sun Tzu. Now that you know the challenges self-improvement presents, you can overcome them. And in case you are still unclear, let me quote the wise and prescient swamp-dwelling creature, Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” People who are successful at self-improvement get out of their own way. Now, it’s time for you to get out of your own way. Consistency, far more than intensity, predicts successful results in self-improvement. This is true in physical fitness, weight loss, nutritional practices, enhancing your vocabulary and even academics and the acquisition of knowledge. So start slowly, but do take action!

George S. Everly Jr., a public health scholar and clinical psychologist in Annapolis, is an authority on crisis and stress management. He has held appointments at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Harvard University. He is the co-author of the new book “LODESTAR: Tapping Into the 10 Timeless Pillars of Success.”