Hello Reader,
I know what I’m saying is meaningless and will irritate you all. “You don’t understand that too” you’re going to remark. Because most of us have read something about self-help book on the internet and said things like “this book transformed my life,” “this book altered my view on life,” and so on. Because I enjoy reading as well, and I am sure self-help books may benefit you more than most of the time, but I believe people misunderstand what they are doing.
Concerning the Self-Help Book:-
So, let us begin with a premise that is clear to self-help sceptics but not so evident to those of us who enjoy these sorts of books and declare that this book is like that, this, and about the world. But I can assure you that nothing new is being mentioned in any of them. Sorry, but there’s nothing new in self-help, and I’ll show it by asking a simple question.
What was self-help called before it was named self-help? “Self-improvement” or “Self-development” are terms that most of us will use. True, but it’s called a religion book or a philosophy book. The majority of the advice we all consume when we buy these books is on how to be more compassionate, less worried, more modest and grounded, more productive, more honest and vulnerable.
But nothing has changed for thousands of years, from Buddha and Jesus to Plato and Seneca to Adam Smith and Gandhi Ji. Nothing on a self-help shelf is new, which is good since what does change and what matters is the packaging. This may seem a little harsh, but packaging is really crucial because humans are strange relationship with advice.
People’s Thoughts:-
How many times in your life have your parents advised you to do something and you completely ignored them, and then three months later your friend tells you to do the exact same thing and you’re like oh my God that’s brilliant. See, our receptivity to ideas and advice is largely determined by the context in which we receive it, who is giving the advice, how we are feeling when we receive the advice, and yes, how the advice is framed and explained. Some people want to feel as if they are receiving advice from an authority, such as a doctor, professor, or teacher, while others want to feel as if they are receiving advice from a friend, someone who is just as upset as they are but has lived through it to tell about it.
Similar to this man, some individuals want to feel as though they are receiving counsel from some ancient wisdom, whether it is from an old dead Greek gentleman, shamanic tradition passed down through the years, or a guru who has spent his whole life meditating in the Himalayas. Some people want to feel as if they are receiving it from the future, while others want to feel as if they are receiving it from the past. Some people want to feel as if they are receiving it from someone famous, while others want to feel as if they are receiving it from God. Not because this information isn’t already available; rather, it hasn’t been dispersed equitably due to repackaging. These concepts, which are based on timeless wisdom and basic human understanding, can reach a larger number of individuals than before. Previously, here’s the most crucial point, and if you take anything away from this blog.
It’s simple to say, but harder to put into action:-
This is what I mean when I say that self-help ideas are simple yet challenging. They are simple to grasp but extremely difficult to carry out. This is the polar opposite of most other tough things in life. While preparing for a biology test is not simple, it is really fairly complex, the physical act of sitting down and reading a book is quite simple. It is not easy to learn how to make a delicious dinner. It’s very complicated, with many various techniques, yet the physical act of performing it is not difficult; it’s simple self-help.
Breaking up with your spouse is actually pretty simple in this sense; you simply only say “I don’t want to be with you anymore,” but omg is it difficult; who knew eight words could be so difficult? Similarly, dealing with a panic attack is theoretically fairly simple; it simply breathe, but for whatever reason at that time it is extremely difficult to do so; instead, let us take the mother of all self-improvement goals: Losing weight isn’t rocket science; eat some veggies, lift some weights, and go for a run. However, few of us do it on a regular basis. This is because self-help difficulties aren’t intellectual problems like preparing for a test or physical problems like finding out how to exercise.
About my favourite book:-
They are emotional problems and emotional problems tend to appear extremely simple on the outside like just eat a vegetable but on the inside it feels like we’re climbing Mount Everest this is where the packaging of self-help comes in the way ideas are packaged can do a lot to alleviate the emotional difficulty of these problems in the short run take Victor Frankel’s book man search for meaning maybe my favourite self-help book of all time.
If you’re being objective, it doesn’t really say anything new the entire book can basically be boiled down to the famous Nietzsche quote a man who has a why can bear almost any how nichi’s remark is similarly just a regurgitation of Aristotle’s beliefs around happiness that happiness can only be achieved when we’re serving some higher purpose that’s an idea that goes back 2500 years and is one of the Sure, he’s saying the same thing, but this guy suffered through the hell, his whole family killed, and he survived and succeeded.
That is some insanely strong packaging. You read that book and you start thinking, oh my God, what excuse do I have, and that’s great for a while because here’s the thing: the ability to lean into emotionally difficult things to push your comfort zone is a skill that we have to develop over time, and while a book can give you a burst of motivation to lean into that difficulty in the short term, it can’t do it for you in the long term because you can’t magically get that skill from this book.
Learn from life:-
You can’t magically learn that skill from a book, a seminar, or even a video or blog like this; you have to go and do it yourself. So the first great self-help book is amazing, wonderful, and life-changing, giving you the courage to go do X, Y, and Z and blah blah blah and great your Life’s Been Changed Forever, then life gets tough again and you need to learn something else that’s simple but difficult so you read another book and it helps a little for a bit. So maybe you need to go back and read your favourite book again and that helps a little but not as much as you’d like it to not as much as the first time so you go on YouTube and watch some videos about book recommendations and buy a dozen more books and this is where self-help books can actually start to suck and the reason is learning can feel like progress even when it’s not progress and I say that again for everyone sitting in the back learning can feel like progress even when it’s not progress.
And I’ll say it again for everyone in the back: learning can feel like progress even when it isn’t. I can read a dozen books about nutrition and feel like I’m focusing on improving my health while eating a pizza and drinking a beer. This is what I see time and time again with people in the self-help space: they begin to use learning as a replacement for doing; they keep thinking, well, maybe the next book will make this simple but difficult thing feel less dizzy. According to market research in this area, the average consumer who purchases one self-help book will end up purchasing another. Do you know the self-help book purchases by us?
It’s seven or more books and that’s on average if self-help books worked you wouldn’t need a dozen books you just need one so while self-help starts out as a solution it can quickly become another part of the problem another way to avoid our struggles instead of actually dealing with them by the way this is why I built a bunch of courses based on practical real world exercises instead of just me yammering and yammering for dozens of hours. And This is why most people would rather read a book than do those exercises because it doesn’t necessarily help you do anything or if it does, it can only help for so long so that is going to be my goal for 2023 to reinvent the personal development genre a bit to challenge you guys and challenge myself to do more to actually get out and do so stick around because things are going to get a little spicy around here but that’s where the best breakthroughs happen right now.
Summary:
Self-help books can help but I think people mistake what they’re actually doing. Most of the advice that we’re all consuming when we buy these books had been covered for thousands of years. What does matter is the packaging that might sound a little bit disparaging but it turns out is incredibly important. Self-help ideas are what I call simple but difficult. They are easy to understand but really difficult to actually go do now this is the complete opposite of most other hard things in life. Self-help problems are not intellectual problems like studying for an exam or physical problems like figuring out how to cook food.