May 12th, 2008 → 1:08 pm @ Jay // 10 Comments
I am not a fan of self-help. This must sound strange coming from a person who writes articles pertaining to issues of self. Though I intend for the site to be a dialogue of advice rather than a source for unnecessary personal development. This site is like the friend you hang out with at the bar after 2 am, not a self-help guru at a seminar.
I will never “change your life in 4 easy steps”, nor will you “become a better person” just by reading my articles. I believe life is more complicated than that. “4 easy steps” is great for cooking a recipe, but falls short in analysing the complexity of our life.
That said, I have read many books that have made a lasting impact on my life. With these words, I do not wish to discount the power of good advice. I simply want to make the point that the lessons you learn in life will always trump those you read in a book.
Many years ago, a friend of mine dedicated himself to read one self-help book each week. When I asked him what type of books he was reading, he replied “Anything and everything.” Needless to say, I was impressed by his dedication and constructive use of his spare time. I asked him, “Why are you reading all of these books?”
He replied, “To become a better person.”
As an avid reader myself, I nodded in agreement, but found myself pondering:
“What makes a person better?”
If I cannot speak in public, and then read about public speaking skills, am I now a better person? Is the pursuit of perfection a worthy goal?
In my youth, my older brother, now a stupendously successful individual in his field, caught me reading a self-help book. From memory, it was a book by Anthony Robbins. Passing by, he said:
“Why are you reading that garbage?”
In my defense, I said:
“It’ll help me overcome any shortcomings I may have.”
Walking away, he replied:
“Shortcomings are what make people interesting. If you were perfect, you wouldn’t be you.”
He was right. A year later, I brought up the topic of self help with him, to which he gave his opinion:
“Imagine if everyone dedicated themselves to self-help, the pursuit of perfection. If everybody achieved the goal of being perfect, the world would be so boring! We would all follow the same rules, take the same steps and value the same goals.”
He continued, “Imperfections account for almost every memorable moment in my life. Every funny story I share with a friend is a result of acting inappropriately to a given situation. Misjudgement and error are what makes us human. I live to enjoy life more, not to add more guidelines to live by. Life is more fun without the pressure to be perfect.”
I share his opinion with you because he is somebody who is happy, wealthy and successful without reading a single self-help book. He is living proof that perfection (and the pursuit of perfection) is entirely unnecessary to live a complete and fulfilling life. He elaborated:
“While the rest of the world reads about life, I’m out there living it. You can either read about negotiation, or start negotiating. Life’s too short to read about it.”
If you are anything like me, you’ve read dozens of books with hundreds of ideas. None of which you have ever taken action on or implemented. This is made worse by the almost unlimited information available covering any topic you wish to explore.
As an example, I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine named Eli. I have known Eli for over 10 years. When I first met him, he was an avid reader of personal finance books. He was quite sure that in a few years, he would be actively trading the stock-market for a living.
Ten years has passed. He still has not purchased a single stock. He is still reading books about money management and technical analysis, but has replaced action with information.
Eli is not an isolated case. In fact I have also been guilty of inaction. I can remember many times in my life when I read something of true value, but never formed the advice into a habit. I was comfortable reading, but not doing. I convinced myself that reading was “good enough”.
Today, I’m quite a different person. I read less and do more. I try to figure out the “steps” myself from each human interaction. As children, we learned to play sports by picking up a ball and throwing it into a hoop or kicking it. Do you remember reading about kicking a ball? Of course not, you just went out there and did it.
Self-help material can be misused into making us feel secure in our inaction. By reading, we excuse ourselves from doing. Reading about public speaking is quite different to standing in front of 400 people. It is more comfortable to read about it then to physically put yourself out there for judgement.
Life is full of lessons. We might think to ourselves, “Why not learn from the experience of someone else?” In truth, you will never truly learn a lesson until you’ve made your own mistakes. Besides, mistakes build character. These articles would be so dull if they weren’t filled with pages of my own mistakes.
Just like Eli, you will find that no matter how much you have read on a topic:
Eli has spent the last 10 years without purchasing a single stock because there is always another book he needs to read first. With thousands of finance books on shelves and hundreds of new books released every year, Eli will likely go to his grave with the mind of a billionaire and a portfolio of a peanut.
You will never know everything there is to know about anything. A hundred books on parenting will still leave you unprepared for children. A hundred books about investing will not prepare you for investing your life savings. The divide between advice and experience is far, and we must fill this divide with our own experiences. Reading another book cannot fill this gap.
This may be limited to my experience, however I have found that the majority of employers I have worked for strongly encourage employees to read personal development books. During my early job interviews, employers would sometimes ask me if I read personal development books. I would proudly say yes. A particular employer even had a library of self-help books that employees were encouraged to take home.
I thought this was a generous offering from our employer, but changed my tune a few weeks later. After reading through several titles (by self-help giants like Brian Tracy), I found a common pattern emerging in these books.
The pattern was: Work harder. Get to work earlier. Leave work later. Always go the extra mile. Manage your time better. Squeeze more work into your day. In your spare time, read more about your field.
Of course, this was blended with subtlety, but the message was clear. It dawned on me why employers are quick to encourage “personal growth”. Though this looks more like “employer-help” than “self-help” to me. The purpose of this pattern is simple:
“Make work your life”
How is this “personal growth”? Sure, your salary may increase. However, if you throw away all of your spare time with the only goal of acquiring more money, then you have not grown at all.
Over the years, I have become increasingly critical of individuals who charge thousands for personal growth advice. Self-help books have become a stepping stone for authors to promote expensive seminars. By offering little in knowledge and plenty of promises, readers are convinced that the answers will be revealed in Book 2 or Seminar 1.
This is never the case. If an author cannot deliver meaningful and actionable advice in a single book, then you should be sceptical of the author’s knowledge and method of delivery.
I have seen authors use words like “Intermediate”, “Ultimate”, “Advanced” and “Mastery” to run multiple seminars that offer little more information than what is contained in the book. Individuals who walk out of an Intermediate seminar will be convinced that the answers will be revealed in the “Advanced” course.
Nowadays, I turn to the last page of a personal-development book first. If I see a mention of an expensive seminar, or the words “Advanced” and “Mastery”, I simply put the book back on the shelf. Authors who have something of value are happy enough to share it with you. Anyone who has read a Dale Carnegie book will know that he has poured his soul into his writings to the benefit of readers.
I recommend readers stay away from books in which the author has an agenda of selling seminars. You will likely get no answers in the book. It is a 200 page sales pitch.
Have you ever met somebody who took self-help too far? They read a book, and began acting it out in real life. I can safely say that self-help is directly responsible for some of the most disingenuous individuals I have encountered.
One such individual was a man named Matthew. His resume was forwarded to me before he joined my team. The pages of the resume made a few clear mentions of “self-development”, “self-help” and “personal growth”. In fact, he mentioned that he recently completed several books on “Communication”.
On his first day, he introduced himself. Shook my hand and held a strong stare into my eyes for 15 (very creepy) seconds. He used my name at the start of every sentence. What’s more, he had “Googled” my name and several others in the team. By checking into our background, he tried to build rapport using details he had obtained from search engines. This created some very awkward conversation.
He turned to me and said, “Jay. I am familiar with your University research. Tell me more about it.” I politely told him that I had very little more to add. He then turned to my colleague and said: “Adrian, I know you were an actor in a production in Vancouver. Tell me more about it.” The look on Adrian’s face was priceless.
Almost everything Matthew did and said, he had clearly learned from self-help books. It was impossible to take him seriously. Not only was he completely oblivious to how disingenuous he came across, these books turned him into a corporate moron.
He ran into his first conflict within 2 days of employment. The following day, he was proudly showcasing two Conflict Resolution books right next to his computer. I asked him if he had sorted things out with the other employee, to which he responded:
“I care about my fellow worker. I’m going to read through these to ensure we reach an outcome that satisfies both parties.” I was speechless. He spoke like a robot awaiting its next instruction. He failed to understand that human interaction is a natural process, not a formula that requires days of study. Within 2 weeks, Matthew was the victim of numerous bullying incidents. Self-help, like any addiction, caused him to suffer isolation from his fellows. He was eventually discharged from our team, and placed in a cubicle at hour head-office to write documentation in isolation.
I would like to share an amusing experience from an old friend of mine, Dessie. At the age of 26, Dessie was a young attractive female on the hunt for the perfect man. She met a young gentlemen at a party and they exchanged numbers. The following week, they had their first, and only date.
During dinner, the young man spoke almost continually about his goals and his determination to achieve them. As they approached his car, he opened the trunk to reveal two dozen self help books. He picked 6 of them out of his trunk, handed them to Dessie, and said:
“Before our next date, I need you to read these.”
She took the books and lowered them back into his trunk. She replied:
“I’m not reading all of this!”
“From what I gathered in our conversation, there are a few areas in your life that you can improve upon. You need to develop your skills and confidence in the areas covered by these books. Our relationship will be better for it.”
She laughed. She wrongfully thought he was joking. He wasn’t. When she told me this story, I couldn’t believe it. Yet, I personally know a few people who are not far from acting in this manner. His intentions were to help her, but those who have buried themselves in the land of personal-development books forget that some people don’t want help. They like who they are, and who they are not.
If you are showing signs of becoming a self-helpaholic, perhaps it is time to walk past the bookstore and fight the urge not to walk in.
Personal development, is in itself a selfish pursuit. Our goal is to focus solely on ourselves, to make us feel better. Of course, we all know that the best way to help the “self” is to help others. In fact, we often judge the value of others by what they are able to contribute to those in need. A poor man who breaks his bread to share with another is infinitely dearer in our eyes, than a successful businessperson.
The improvement of self oddly comes about when we are helping everyone else. The focus of self is a common technique used in Advertising. By telling us that we are the most important person (hence focussing on the self), we are more likely to purchase a given product. Self-help gurus focus on our selfish desire to be the “best”. We want to be “smarter”, “funnier” and “richer” than the rest, and they promise to tell us how to do it.
True personal growth comes about when a human acts selflessly. In my youth, my brother said:
“Imagine if everyone dedicated themselves to self-help, the pursuit of perfection. If everybody achieved the goal of being perfect, the world would be so boring!”
Ultimately, this statement would sound quite different if everyone focussed on the helping of others. Think about it. “Imagine if everyone dedicated themselves to helping others.”
Some of the finest books I have read focussed on contribution to society, rather than focus of self. These books became the standard to which I hold myself to today.
Although the bulk of the article focussed on some of the negative aspects of self-help, there are also many positive aspects. My goal has not been to demean the role of personal growth in our society, but simply to become more critical of the role it plays in our lives. Great people have achieved greatness long before the “self-help” section opened up in bookstores. Relationships had blossomed long before “Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus” was released.
The ability to learn from experiences are already built into our function. We simply need to get out there and learn the lessons of life through our own chances and mistakes. There is no shame in reading self-help books, as long as we know why we are reading them. It is pointless looking for answers if you have no questions.
If there is something you need to do, just do it. Eli, my stock-trading friend (with no portfolio) will always find more information to excuse him from taking action. Every single one of the articles I have written are a culmination of experience in human interaction, I have found “experience” to be the best teacher in any given topic.
This is a controversial topic, and I am curious to see how you feel about it. It is difficult to find authors with genuine interest in helping others, so I would love for people to leave suggestions of their favourite self-help book/author.
Tags: audio books, books, career, office, personal development, personal finance, personal growth, professional development, self help, selfhelp
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Farfield
1 year ago
Great article!
It’s good to see all those books in perspective. I think the most imporant sentence in your article is this: “It is pointless looking for answers if you have no questions”. If you have questions though, reading the right book can often provide a lot of answers or moments of recognition.
‘Too much’ is never a good thing. But getting new ideas and implementing them in your life is a good thing in my opinion, as long as they blend in with your personality and don’t make you someone you’re not. And taking action is the most important part. I agree with that. You can read about something all the time, but there’s no point in just reading and not acting.
A dangerous thing about these books is that readers start to feel superior to the people around them, looking at all the ‘mistakes’ they make in life. That’s what happened with the guy offering those books on his first date. It’s very important to separate your own development from that of others, I think.
I like to read books that aren’t just about being more productive to be able to get more work done and then work more and more. I like to read about being more productive and efficient with my time to be able to have a good amount of time to just do other things. That’s why I like ‘The Now Habit’ by Neil Fiore, and I just read ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’ by Tim Ferris. I found especially the last one very inspiring.
Jackmo
1 year ago
Nice one Jay, I totally agree that there is no substitute for experience.
And you’re on the money (as usual :p) about people reading books as a substitute for action – I’ve heard someone theorize that it stems from a fear of failure. By not taking action you don’t risk failing, but by reading another book you satiate your desire to grow / achieve.
Obviously this won’t achieve anything and you need to make mistakes to grow and learn from them.
One point I’ve always found useful re self-help books is reflecting on past mistakes. E.g. when training I would occasionally get people that would be difficult or even disruptive. I recall one middle-age lady, I dealt with her as best I could but didn’t understand why she was difficult until months later reading a story about Milton Erickson influencing one of his difficult patients. This allowed me to realise what she was feeling and in hindsight, what the best course of action would have been.
another interesting and thought provoking article, cheers!
Mikael
1 year ago
“Not only was he completely oblivious to how disingenuous he came across, these books turned him into a corporate moron. ” – HAHA!
Your articles are really awesome, I just ain’t sure where you’re going with all of them. I would categorize this blog as some kind of self-help-website, so it seems some kind of contradicting to say that we should learn from our own mistakes instead of learning from self-help-books (and pages like this) etc. You say that almost nobody has genuine interest of helping others. I think you’re right. It seems like you have the interest of helping others, but when you think about it, there is ALWAYS a reason for helping others, and not just to be kind. Many people smile to the world just to the sake of themselves, not to actually see the smile of other peoples faces. When looking at this blog, for instance, I can think of two realistic reasons for you doing it:
1: You get better conscience, because you know that you’re helping other people (like donating money for 3rd world countries)
2: You use the blog to speak to other like-minded people, to share ideas.
This would be some of my reasons for writing a blog, what are your reasons?
I really liked this article, as you add more perspectives to see success from (not just the “self-help-book-successful”)… But I don’t agree in everything you say.
You should not look for answers, but why not know the answers, so you’re able to answer important questions? You normally only make fatal mistakes once, why not try to minimize the damage by knowing the right things to do?
You should not read the same answer again and again (like reading self-help-books), you should be critical, and think about what people are trying to put into your mind.
Enrico
1 year ago
I’ve discussed this topic recently with my girlfriend who, like your brother, is a successful person with a strong hold on life and real experience that hates the self-help approach.
I’ve started my “self-help” path with the usual books: Richard Bach, Saint Exupery, in my 20s Coelho, books that gave me the belief that you can learn something good from written words. It was like a flow of water that after the first resistance break free and invade everything: from Jonathan Livingstone to Tony Robbins the step was easy.
Now I’ve a good collection of self-help books, some read and some not, mostly never applied to real life.
I must admit that in some cases they helped me to understand something, as you say “to answer a question”, but most of them contains just the same words you find everything else, even on bible or other ancient books. Nothing new, just a way to push the same buttons and get our money: the same formula “happy-rich-cool-slim-smart in 5 minutes”.
If you think about it, it’s the same as in past centuries when self-calling doctors gave drink of eternal youth and health to people in the streets, and they get money just because people (aka: we) want to believe in easy remedies to their problems.
The mother of this kind of problems, I guess, is thinking that this kind of problems exists and to look for remedies. Most of the problems, the one that came from our self-image, are just a matter of perceptions.
I remember an interview to one of the few that survived the suicidal jump from the golden gate. He said “a split of a second after the jump, I realized that all of my problems didn’t exist, that life is wonderful, that everything could be changed for the better… and I wanted to not have jumped, to get back on the bridge”.
In the end he was lucky, I found the truth and survived to his quest. We that read Self-help books could go on with this for all of our life and, like your friend Eli, never attain anything in all of our precious life.
stockmarketreviews
1 year ago
books motivate us to take real actions in life . but yes real life experiences are best
Kelvin B.
1 year ago
I always have fun reading your articles, though this one was a strange one to take in. More often than not, I never really “learn” anything from the articles of yours i read, I usually just get the lessons I’ve learned put more clearly into words. This one sorta leaves me thinking, a lot. Personal growth is something I’ve been striving for in the past two years, and i feel its been really successful, but i tend to make a lot of mistakes. This article made me realize that the more regrettable mistakes were made from me acting selfishly around others. Perhaps i will lessen those mistakes with some of the information i learned from this.
I don’t want to be a suck up, but i feel like l got something really good from this, and I want to thank you for it.
jb
1 year ago
funny that THIS post of all of the ones I’ve read over the past 6 months or so is having the biggest impact on me and drawing out the most action and change. Thanks.
Karthick
1 year ago
Great article Jay. I enjoyed every word you wrote on this. And so much of it is true. There are some books though that are a must read to know the subject, but true knowledge comes from experience.
THE only problem I see is that when you are older you wish you were a bit wiser in somethings you did, while you learnt what to do and not to do you sometimes wish that someone told you this beforehand.
That’s where the genuine books might help. That story about Matthew was lol.
Rose C
1 year ago
Yes the story of Matthew was somehwat interesting. My question is that after his “self help book interview that you found so amusing, and his creepy 15 second stare, “Why did you hire him?” So you could throw spitballs in his cubicle ilsolation box?
Just curious.
Rose C
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tilly
1 week ago
great read agree with all the no no on self help books been there got the t shirt, life experiences are for the REAL learning but if naievity reigns as in my case then painful patterns can be repeated….ie being kind is taken to be stupid etc and not knowing or realising why i got such negative and sometimes abusive response that is until i read your article….being comfortable with who you are does not mean it is ok to sit back on our laurels self satisfied , but to try to improve the qualities we have and use for the benefit of others and ourselves,….. also gaining some of those we do not have inherently, and therefore improve and strenghten a better being within ourselves…we will never reach ‘pefection’ or make our quality of life necessarily prestigious but we can attain quality and care about our own being that is individual, warts and all….to be happy and content with who we are whilst still on a learning curve (till the last breath)are the tools we carry and the best of books to read is our’ conscience.’..let that be our guide…for those that are not acquainted with that particular ‘book’ nothing but experience will teach