Self-Help: Is it as good as we hope?
self-help [self-help, self-] Show IPA
the acquiring of information or the solving of one's problems, especially those of a psychological nature, without the direct supervision of professionals or experts, as by independent reading or by joining or forming lay groups that are devoted to one's interests or goals.
I'm an admitted self-help connoisseur. I've read hundreds of books. Some good. Some bad. Some great.
The good ones are good because they usually reinforce, for me, something I already believe. The great ones are great because they precipitate personal breakthroughs.
A few years ago, I cleaned house and either sold or donated all but the great books. I still have too many. But I reduced the library considerably at the time. Now I make it a habit to stack the books I plan to give-a-way by the end of the year in a box by the front door. I'll donate sometime before December 31st so I can get a little tax write-off.
I'm sure that there are more good or great self-help books waiting to be written and, perhaps, well…almost certainly, I hope to write one myself some day. But when you've read as many as I have, the stakes for writing, at a minimum, a good self-help book are extraordinarily high.
I start asking myself questions:
What has not been said in a self-help book?
If I was writing the last self-help book that someone would ever need, what would it say?
What can I offer someone whose read self-help books and still thinks her life sucks?
Is it possible to write a self-help book that will help those who can help themselves, but also prompt those who need professional help to realize that it's not that my book sucks, it's that they need more help than self-help?
These are great questions with which an aspiring self-help author should gladly grapple.
On the receiving end of self-help books are millions of people who, irrespective of what life changing one-of-a-kind universal truth is shared, are simply not going to act on it.
That's the issue I'm writing about today.
Why don't we do what we know is good for us? And how can we change that?
Each person's why will be different so let's not bother with that.
Let's get straight to the how we can change that and start doing what we know is good for us.
If you always arrive 15 minutes late for work and every other appointment, what needs to happen?
You need to 1) wake up 15 minutes earlier; and 2) leave for the appointment 15 minutes earlier than you now do.
Recently I've been struggling to be awake for my morning meditation, which is scheduled to begin at 4 am. What has happened over the last few weeks and months is that I find myself watching one more episode of whatever crime drama I'm currently watching on Netflix. I say to myself, "Just one more episode then I'm done." So 6:30 pm becomes 7:30 pm becomes 8:30 pm becomes…you know you aren't going to want to wake up at 3:55 am when the alarm sounds.
No matter what. I prepare for bed at 7:30 pm. Brush my teeth. Put on my PJs. And, most importantly, I stop watching whatever I am watching. Even if there are 10 minutes or 2 minutes left in the episode. At 7:30 pm, I turn it off.
It's the only way because otherwise I will keep deluding myself into thinking "I got this," when, in fact, I don't got this and will find myself, after a mere 6 hours of sleep, nodding through two and a half hours of meditation. I need as close to 8 hours of sleep as I can get. It's a fact. And if I allow anything to get in the way of me getting it, I have to own that. I have to consciously say to myself then that watching Agatha Christie's Poirot is more important to me than sleep and meditation.
By admitting that to myself, the change I needed to make became easy. Not easy in that I'm like most people and want to have my cake and eat it too. But easy in the sense that I would find it very hard to look at myself in the mirror each day knowing that Hercule Poirot, as adorable a detective as he is, cannot be more important to me than my spiritual path!!!!
What's missing in self-help, I believe, is accountability.
If you know what you must do to improve your life, according to what it is you say you want, then you have to hold yourself accountable.
Self-help authors can't do that for you. That's up to each of us. And I'm looking at the clock right now and it says 8:12 pm and I still need to brush my teeth. But I turned off Netflix at 7:30 pm as planned and at 8:30 pm, I will be in La La Land. And 7.5 hours later, I will awaken and be happy that the money I've spent on self-help books hasn't been wasted.
How many times have you found yourself saying any of these things:
"Oh I've got time. With no traffic, it's only 10 minutes away."
"I'll start working out on the 1st."
"I've already cut down to half a pack of cigarettes."
"I'll never be able to save enough to go to Greece so I may as well buy myself something nice today."
"I'll give her just one more chance."
"At least I know what my issues are."
I believe in self-help. But with it comes great responsibility. Self-help can't be blamed for our unwillingness to be accountable to ourselves.
If you want to transform your life. Then ask yourself these questions:
What am I not doing today that would get me closer to what I want?
#3 is all about accountability because, whether you like it or not, whatever it is you are doing instead of what you should be doing to get what it is you say you want, you want that thing more.
And if you really want to change it, don't try to figure out why it is you keep doing the thing you don't want to do. Just change it by establishing the parameters that you will agree to follow. And then follow them. This isn't a group activity. This is all about accountability to self.
Self-help works but only if we make ourselves accountable to it.
