(FORTUNE Magazine) – It's been a bad day for your self-esteem: Your Prozac bottle's empty, the Rogaine isn't taking, and you've just found Viagra in your wife's Volvo. As you ponder this last development (Is it for you? Someone else?), you turn to the only friend you've got left--the car radio. But each choice is more grating than the last: Nina Totenberg... a Sri Lankan cricket match... a hand-bell choir. Suddenly, though, a mellow voice fills your airspace:

"He who chases two rabbits loses both."

"Our fear response rarely helps us."

"When a proximic [sic] violation such as touching occurs, the other person may get the feeling that something just isn't right."

Are you finally hearing voices? No, you've just been given a dose of Personal Achievement Radio (PAR), a coast-to-coast AM network with the motto, "Give us 21 minutes, and we'll change your life." The folks at PAR have made it their mission to sift through the global supply of self-help tapes and boil them into sound bites of choice psychobabble. These are then spliced into a Top 40-style loop and played throughout the day. It's Easy Listening for your Inner Child: John Gray explaining why men are from Mars, Zig Ziglar on motivation, or Deepak Chopra waxing his karma.

Don't think too hard about this stuff, now--one minute you're told to reduce stress at all costs; the next you're reminded that stress forces you to focus. But at least PAR is free and convenient; lying on a shrink's couch is neither.

With more than a million listeners and a recent ABC Radio syndication deal, PAR owner John Douglas plans to be in 100-plus markets by 2000. "The self-improvement market started back in 1734 with good old Ben Franklin, and it's been going strong ever since," he says. Of course, as far as Douglas is concerned, the bull market is kind of a bummer. But through the power of positive thinking, he may just push the Dow in the direction he'd like: down. Then business will really start looking up.

--Ed Brown