When I began being inspired by quotes from authors widely known only for their quotes, I should have started to worry
I HATE self-help books. Over burgers and Christmas spirit I complained to my friend about why Pulp’s “Monday Morning” was forever going to be my swan song. Symptoms: negativity, apathy, aimlessness and consequential guilt.
Sometimes my anxiety could keep a small power station running. She later threw me a book to read from the boot of her car. “It’ll be cheesy.”
In the dim parking lot occurred one of many embarrassing transactions that keep the $11 billion self-help industry “inspired.” I hoped that the black market for achievement and inspiration would at least give me some change.
Step 1: Acknowledge your weakness
I came home that night still listening to that same Pulp song on repeat. I even stuck the lyrics to my bathroom wall: “So you’ve finally left school, so now what are you going to do?” I don’t know, but I told myself: it’s the New Year and New Year resolutions often need to be propped up with how.
This is why, occasionally, after barely making it through some insignificant bout of neuroses, I find myself secretly spending half an hour in the self-help aisle. Sometimes these moments of desperation force me into a kind of sanity I can sustain until the next year-end.
I don’t usually bring home a book. It goes back on the shelf whenever the author looks too much like a nosey neighbor than a reputable psychiatrist, whenever the quantified easy steps are barely in step, or whenever the condescension of not having known a “universal law” is overbearing.
Yet there, my friend’s book was in front of me, just another self-help book trying to sound positive and unique that it was dreadfully typical. I had a few on my bookshelf with its spine turned over. What does it tell us that we don’t already know?
Step 2: Realize your dreams
Nothing much, I found as I read on. I skimmed through the introduction and felt I’d read something similar: How an author’s epiphany turns into a publication worth millions—from working a dull job with a six-figure salary to starting up a transformational company. Well, I guess that’s how success happens to positive thinkers whose idea of life improvement is being the next David Gray.
I don’t know her ETA to Venus, but the idea isn’t too out of this world when you consider the people who must want to be less cluttered, happier, more fulfilled or the life of the party. Probably people like you and me.
Her book spilled out such positivity that despite my cynicism I found myself slightly captivated. The books telling us “nothing much” could well be the point. Why did I feel this way?
Steve Salerno, author of “SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless” (www.shamblog.com), defines the self-help movement as “an enterprise wherein people holding the thinnest of credentials diagnose, in basically normal people, symptoms of inflated or invented maladies, so that they may then implement remedies that have never been shown to work”. Actually, SHAM also stands for the Self-Help Actualization Movement.
Salerno’s book reveals the way the SHAM is out to make a quick buck out of self-identifying losers.
As the editor of Men’s Health, part of gigantic self-help publisher Rodale, he found that people tended to buy another book on the same topic after 18 months, when such self-help books promised to rid us of our inadequacies once and for all. People who still wanted to change were compelled to try again to improve themselves. “Failure and stagnation, thus, were central to our business model.”
When I began being inspired by quotes from authors widely known only for their quotes, I should have started to worry. If any dreams were realized, it was that these self-help books weren’t going to save me.
Step 3: Be inspired
The “step-per-chapter” that these books have are often written in a comforting language that’s meant to remind us that the beast of anxiety within is still in the boundaries of normal, and that it’s possible to overcome anything. The only thing I noticed was that I was sourcing better quality advice for the price of nothing.
Pondering over life with cigarettes and mosquitoes who made my legs their Noche Buena, a cousin 10 years my senior with a sardonic attitude left over from former rebelliousness said, “You shouldn’t care too much about what other people think.”
A self-help book could and would have said that, and I would have forced the quote to suit my own situation like “Carol Bolt’s Book of Answers.” It wouldn’t mean the same to another person either. But my cousin knew about the things I was afraid to do or say because of their meaningless repercussions made into blasphemies only by my own paranoia. And he was right.
Even my younger sister showed more wisdom than I had to sate my anxiety. Having just graduated and a bit anxious about job-hunting and moving out of the place I’d been living in for five years, I contemplated less daunting alternatives—options the equivalent to an alarm snooze. “Nothing’s worse than being stagnant,” my sister told me, “always feel as though you’re moving on.”
Self-help books will tell me I can reach Greenland from Manila by foot if I so desired, and so even though I’m moving only 15 minutes away from where I currently live, at least I’m not wasting time counting positive sheep. I say, next time your smart-alec friend offers you advice, put down Dr. B. Proactive and have a good listen. This tactic seems to work for me. No promises, though.
Step 4: Exercise your capabilities
With a temporary loss of pride, I obediently followed some of the book’s exercises and realized that all the anchorless thoughts swimming in my head were squashed into charts and lists that I admit actually had some sense in their silliness. The problem was that I couldn’t really remember what the point of all these exercises was.
I no longer wanted to continue on with the book. Just as Kenny Powers from the show Eastbound and Down listens to his own self-help tape, perhaps we ought to listen to ourselves. If we think we’re lazy to do the exercises that make us feel like 5-year-olds in religion class, maybe we’re not so wrong to think so.
Dramatically looking out into the distance, I made my own mind-map and put down my thoughts on paper as I felt it was necessary-no exercises or guidelines. I felt I understood myself better. My friend who lent me the book eventually did the same (and never asked for the book back).
Step 5: Be happy
Think Positive. Set realistic goals. Be happy. The past is past. Let go. These books exist to think for us, to converse with us, to tell our neuroses that they’re being watched. Of course, the constant reassurance that I could be a better person felt good in the beginning.
Yet I couldn’t deny that hours after reading the book, having neither climbed nor moved no mountain, knowing that I could be a better person meant I can’t possibly be good enough right now—and only by following these often demeaning, kindergarten steps would help would I be like a positive e-mail forward with moving gifs.
A study by psychologists Wood, Purnovic and Lee revealed that people with low self-esteem who are made to keep repeating positive statements (the study used “I am a loveable person”) felt worse than people with low self-esteem who didn’t, as the baseless positive statements bring to mind their inadequacies.
To beat ourselves up over our lack of self-improvement despite these books because it means that we cannot change—this is where we forget that self-help books haven’t revealed anything new.
It’s the New Year, but it doesn’t mean we need these books to renew us. At the end of the day—or the year for that matter, they’re mostly just one-size-fits-all books, quick fixes from strangers who talk too much.
Besides, I don’t think anyone just switch on happiness on cue. The five-day, $9,000 “Spiritual Warrior” retreat by guru James Arthur Ray involved trapping people into a 415-sq-ft “sweat lodge” for 36 hours where they were urged to remain inside in spite of hunger and vomiting. Three people died and 18 people were sent to the hospital.
Self-help makes me think I should be out there living my life and makes me feel greater discontent when I sought contentment.
Step 6: Acknowledge your weaknesses again
I don’t doubt it works for some—and it works well, but I’m no longer gutted knowing that it hasn’t worked for me and probably never will.
“Many times you laugh at these self-help books, but the message comes in handy when you find yourself in a similar situation,” my mother told me when I explained what I was writing.
I know another lapse of judgment will occur where I’ll find myself hiding my head between self-help books at a bookshop. I don’t think I will ever find the secret, but perhaps these books will work for me through that false hope disguises itself as real when I’m most desperate. After all, that’s why the industry survives. Skepticism will come and it can come later. I’m tossing between inadequacy and contentment, but as I write this, I think I choose contentment.
“Until tomorrow,” my mother responded smugly. And like the people who know me, she might just be right.
When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com for your real estate and retirement needs.
I HATE self-help books. Over burgers and Christmas spirit I complained to my friend about why Pulp’s “Monday Morning” was forever going to be my swan song. Symptoms: negativity, apathy, aimlessness and consequential guilt.
Sometimes my anxiety could keep a small power station running. She later threw me a book to read from the boot of her car. “It’ll be cheesy.”
In the dim parking lot occurred one of many embarrassing transactions that keep the $11 billion self-help industry “inspired.” I hoped that the black market for achievement and inspiration would at least give me some change.
Step 1: Acknowledge your weakness
I came home that night still listening to that same Pulp song on repeat. I even stuck the lyrics to my bathroom wall: “So you’ve finally left school, so now what are you going to do?” I don’t know, but I told myself: it’s the New Year and New Year resolutions often need to be propped up with how.
This is why, occasionally, after barely making it through some insignificant bout of neuroses, I find myself secretly spending half an hour in the self-help aisle. Sometimes these moments of desperation force me into a kind of sanity I can sustain until the next year-end.
I don’t usually bring home a book. It goes back on the shelf whenever the author looks too much like a nosey neighbor than a reputable psychiatrist, whenever the quantified easy steps are barely in step, or whenever the condescension of not having known a “universal law” is overbearing.
Yet there, my friend’s book was in front of me, just another self-help book trying to sound positive and unique that it was dreadfully typical. I had a few on my bookshelf with its spine turned over. What does it tell us that we don’t already know?
Step 2: Realize your dreams
Nothing much, I found as I read on. I skimmed through the introduction and felt I’d read something similar: How an author’s epiphany turns into a publication worth millions—from working a dull job with a six-figure salary to starting up a transformational company. Well, I guess that’s how success happens to positive thinkers whose idea of life improvement is being the next David Gray.
I don’t know her ETA to Venus, but the idea isn’t too out of this world when you consider the people who must want to be less cluttered, happier, more fulfilled or the life of the party. Probably people like you and me.
Her book spilled out such positivity that despite my cynicism I found myself slightly captivated. The books telling us “nothing much” could well be the point. Why did I feel this way?
Steve Salerno, author of “SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless” (www.shamblog.com), defines the self-help movement as “an enterprise wherein people holding the thinnest of credentials diagnose, in basically normal people, symptoms of inflated or invented maladies, so that they may then implement remedies that have never been shown to work”. Actually, SHAM also stands for the Self-Help Actualization Movement.
Salerno’s book reveals the way the SHAM is out to make a quick buck out of self-identifying losers.
As the editor of Men’s Health, part of gigantic self-help publisher Rodale, he found that people tended to buy another book on the same topic after 18 months, when such self-help books promised to rid us of our inadequacies once and for all. People who still wanted to change were compelled to try again to improve themselves. “Failure and stagnation, thus, were central to our business model.”
When I began being inspired by quotes from authors widely known only for their quotes, I should have started to worry. If any dreams were realized, it was that these self-help books weren’t going to save me.
Step 3: Be inspired
The “step-per-chapter” that these books have are often written in a comforting language that’s meant to remind us that the beast of anxiety within is still in the boundaries of normal, and that it’s possible to overcome anything. The only thing I noticed was that I was sourcing better quality advice for the price of nothing.
Pondering over life with cigarettes and mosquitoes who made my legs their Noche Buena, a cousin 10 years my senior with a sardonic attitude left over from former rebelliousness said, “You shouldn’t care too much about what other people think.”
A self-help book could and would have said that, and I would have forced the quote to suit my own situation like “Carol Bolt’s Book of Answers.” It wouldn’t mean the same to another person either. But my cousin knew about the things I was afraid to do or say because of their meaningless repercussions made into blasphemies only by my own paranoia. And he was right.
Even my younger sister showed more wisdom than I had to sate my anxiety. Having just graduated and a bit anxious about job-hunting and moving out of the place I’d been living in for five years, I contemplated less daunting alternatives—options the equivalent to an alarm snooze. “Nothing’s worse than being stagnant,” my sister told me, “always feel as though you’re moving on.”
Self-help books will tell me I can reach Greenland from Manila by foot if I so desired, and so even though I’m moving only 15 minutes away from where I currently live, at least I’m not wasting time counting positive sheep. I say, next time your smart-alec friend offers you advice, put down Dr. B. Proactive and have a good listen. This tactic seems to work for me. No promises, though.
Step 4: Exercise your capabilities
With a temporary loss of pride, I obediently followed some of the book’s exercises and realized that all the anchorless thoughts swimming in my head were squashed into charts and lists that I admit actually had some sense in their silliness. The problem was that I couldn’t really remember what the point of all these exercises was.
I no longer wanted to continue on with the book. Just as Kenny Powers from the show Eastbound and Down listens to his own self-help tape, perhaps we ought to listen to ourselves. If we think we’re lazy to do the exercises that make us feel like 5-year-olds in religion class, maybe we’re not so wrong to think so.
Dramatically looking out into the distance, I made my own mind-map and put down my thoughts on paper as I felt it was necessary-no exercises or guidelines. I felt I understood myself better. My friend who lent me the book eventually did the same (and never asked for the book back).
Step 5: Be happy
Think Positive. Set realistic goals. Be happy. The past is past. Let go. These books exist to think for us, to converse with us, to tell our neuroses that they’re being watched. Of course, the constant reassurance that I could be a better person felt good in the beginning.
Yet I couldn’t deny that hours after reading the book, having neither climbed nor moved no mountain, knowing that I could be a better person meant I can’t possibly be good enough right now—and only by following these often demeaning, kindergarten steps would help would I be like a positive e-mail forward with moving gifs.
A study by psychologists Wood, Purnovic and Lee revealed that people with low self-esteem who are made to keep repeating positive statements (the study used “I am a loveable person”) felt worse than people with low self-esteem who didn’t, as the baseless positive statements bring to mind their inadequacies.
To beat ourselves up over our lack of self-improvement despite these books because it means that we cannot change—this is where we forget that self-help books haven’t revealed anything new.
It’s the New Year, but it doesn’t mean we need these books to renew us. At the end of the day—or the year for that matter, they’re mostly just one-size-fits-all books, quick fixes from strangers who talk too much.
Besides, I don’t think anyone just switch on happiness on cue. The five-day, $9,000 “Spiritual Warrior” retreat by guru James Arthur Ray involved trapping people into a 415-sq-ft “sweat lodge” for 36 hours where they were urged to remain inside in spite of hunger and vomiting. Three people died and 18 people were sent to the hospital.
Self-help makes me think I should be out there living my life and makes me feel greater discontent when I sought contentment.
Step 6: Acknowledge your weaknesses again
I don’t doubt it works for some—and it works well, but I’m no longer gutted knowing that it hasn’t worked for me and probably never will.
“Many times you laugh at these self-help books, but the message comes in handy when you find yourself in a similar situation,” my mother told me when I explained what I was writing.
I know another lapse of judgment will occur where I’ll find myself hiding my head between self-help books at a bookshop. I don’t think I will ever find the secret, but perhaps these books will work for me through that false hope disguises itself as real when I’m most desperate. After all, that’s why the industry survives. Skepticism will come and it can come later. I’m tossing between inadequacy and contentment, but as I write this, I think I choose contentment.
“Until tomorrow,” my mother responded smugly. And like the people who know me, she might just be right.
When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com for your real estate and retirement needs.
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