(May 10, 1940 – August 29, 2015) was an American self-help author and motivational speaker. His debut book, Your Erroneous Zones (1976), is one of the best-selling books ever, with around 100 million copies sold to date.
Early life
Born in Detroit, Michigan, to Melvin Lyle Dyer and Hazel Irene Vollick. He spent much of his first ten years at an orphanage on Detroit's east side,
when his father walked out on the family, leaving his mother to raise three boys. After graduating from Denby High School, Dyer served in the U.S. Navy from 1958-62.
He obtained his counselling degree from Wayne State University. His thesis was entitled Leadership Training in Counselor Education.
Career
Dyer, a native of Detroit,served as a high school counsellor and as a psychology counselling professor at St. John's University, New York City.
He followed an academic career, published in newspapers, and developed a private practise. His St. John's University lectures, focusing on positive thinking and motivational speaking approaches, drew many students. Agent Arthur Pine encouraged Dyer in his first book, Your Erroneous Zones, to document his views (1976).
Dyer abandoned his teaching job and started a US advertising tour, pursuing bookstore appearances and media interviews ("out of the back of his station wagon", according to Michael Korda, making the best-seller lists "before book publishers even noticed what was happening").
Following Your Erroneous Zones, dozens more books followed, many of them best-sellers. They included Wishes Fulfilled, Excuses Begone, and Sky's Limit.
These books' success eventually led to national TV talk show appearances including The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show, and The Phil Donahue Show.
Dyer pursued his achievement with lecture tours, a series of audiotapes, PBS shows, and regular new book publishing. Dyer's message resonated with the New Thought Movement and beyond.
He often told experiences from family life and used his own life experience as an example repeatedly. His self-made success storey was in his appeal.
Dyer advised readers to pursue self-actualization, calling self-reliance a path to "holy" experience, and suggested that readers emulate Jesus Christ, whom he called both a self-actualized person and a self-reliance preacher.
Dyer opposed social stress on guilt, which he saw as today's unhealthy immobilisation owing to past misdeeds. He pushed readers to examine how parents, institutions, and even self-imposed guilt trips.
Although Dyer initially opposed the spiritual tag, he changed his message to include more components of spirituality by the 1990s when he wrote the book Real Magic and emphasised higher awareness in Your Sacred Self.
