Self-help is big business because so many of us want to improve our lives. I see this as good, but there is a dark side to the self-improvement world that can hurt most those who need the most help.
I'm bothered by a tendency I see over and over in the self-help world to label and blame critics of any creed or system for their failure to be helped by that system. "Negative attitude" or "self-sabotage" or an unconscious something residing in the critic damns him or her to failure. The flaw resides with the critic, not the advice and its promised results. I find this pervasive, pernicious, evidence of the dark shadow inhabiting the kind of good people who strive to help others. To mix metaphors, they kill the messenger to save the holy grail. I don't say this to damn them back, but to caution those of us who work on ourselves with the hope of improving our lives.
My take on the frustration of people who challenge pathways to change while wishing their lives were different rests in the approach to those paths. Any recipe for change that says "follow these steps" guaranteeing transformation usually has a dark side. When people who try and fail to transform in the promised way and then have the temerity to complain, the easiest thing is to blame them for the failure. After all, they are the ones who are unhappy, they are the ones with the problem, and the many positive results from others "proves" the system works. It must be the fault of their negativity, their self-sabotage, their whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
The problem as I see it is not whether that the system works or not, but in the mind-set toward the suggested steps. If I surrender to the "guru" in the hope of transformation, I return to a child-like state of dependency, with all of a child's emotions, both the joyful highs and the whiny disappointments. I used to be one of those people. Even now, I have a hair-trigger response to any speech or writing that implies following a life prescription promises results because that is a promise the speaker or writer cannot keep. Because I did the work, many times, and did not reap the rewards, at least not the promised rewards.
The problem as I see it is not whether that the system works or not, but in the mind-set toward the suggested steps. If I surrender to the "guru" in the hope of transformation, I return to a child-like state of dependency, with all of a child's emotions, both the joyful highs and the whiny disappointments. I used to be one of those people. Even now, I have a hair-trigger response to any speech or writing that implies following a life prescription promises results because that is a promise the speaker or writer cannot keep. Because I did the work, many times, and did not reap the rewards, at least not the promised rewards.
I understand why people make such grand promises; they want to help people and they want to sell books. Paths to transformation sell through grand promises. So does snake oil. But formulas for changing your inner life are not the same as formulas for making water. Two hydrogen atoms combined with one oxygen atom will always make water. Purveyors of self-help books present their findings with the same certainty, and they are wrong to do so. That is not to say their books are useless, only that you should not follow their paths hoping for buried treasure that will make you rich all your days. Follow the path knowing that there will be a few coins of value dropped along the way and the coins will someday add up to quite a nest egg. A nest egg that is all rightfully yours.
It is not all about the money. Most of the people writing these books truly want to help others. Yet no one approach will work 100% for all people. When it doesn't work, the author who has invested so much time and emotional energy and yes, love, into their "baby" cannot help but defend it with the zeal of any parent.
The problem with self-help books and programs is the way people in pain are asked to approach them. People looking for a system to "fix" themselves and want guarantees to motivate themselves are doomed to failure. People taking a more empirical attitude, who say "let me try this and see what happens" experience incremental improvements that evolve into a transformed life. It's like losing weight. We want to drop 20 pounds fast, even though we know that to lose weight and keep it off, we must change our eating habits and drop the pounds slowly. Otherwise it comes back. Hence the problem of obesity in America. The same with losing the weight of our unhappy mind-set.
I say this as someone who used to suffer from severe depressive episodes lasting 2-3 days about twice a month. I read books and applied their techniques. For example, I did the 12- week Artists Way diligently. I took mood drugs briefly. I went to therapy for a while, until the therapist and I agreed I had done the work I needed to do. I changed my diet. None of them "worked." And yet, somewhere around age 40, the depressive moods stopped. Just stopped. That was 13 years ago. Oh, I still get sad over sad things like the death of my father. I even get depressed over my failures. But none of these feels like that hopeless, helpless bleak misery of self-loathing I used to go through, weeping on the couch for a solid day or two. Gone.
If I had been taking a mood drug at the time, or been going through some program, or fallen in love, I would have become a true believer. But the fact is, at that time, I was simply getting exercise, eating pretty well, and trying some new things in my work. And as I look back, what I see is all those "failed" transformative paths and books "that really didn't do anything" all fertilized the soil of my happiness.
I still don't have the mega-success of my young dreams. But boy, is my life aligned with my heart. I have work I enjoy. I give back to my community. I feel whole. Not perfect. Me.
If you want to improve your life, go ahead and read self-help books. Try the advice that sounds right to you. Don't blame the author or yourself if you can't see the change. Think more long term about your transformation, about your life improving, about wholeness coming not whole-cloth but quilt-like, one self-help book or transformative path per square. Try to see the quilt, so you have hope to keep going, adding squares, and heading to what could be a joyful life in the fullness of years.
