Self help books

[zorkan]

Haven't had much success with any of them, but maybe I don't try hard enough.

Example 1: The Secret: Stop worrying about those bills in the letterbox and fix your mind on cheques in the post instead.

Example 2: Rejection therapy: Aim to get rejected several times a day. Sounds like being miserable eventually does make you happy.

Example 3: Say F**k It whenever life gets too hard. Is it really the ultimate spiritual way?

Example 4:: The New Testament. Getting drunk on Jesus is similar to going down the pub.

Now I'm reading Happy by Derren Brown. Looks more promising.

[Tank]

I have never read a self help book. Has any one ever helped you?

[zorkan]

I have never read a self help book. Has any one ever helped you?

There would have to be copies of me in parallel worlds.
1st copy reads a certain self help book while 2nd does not.
A 3rd copy sees if there is any advantage for the one that read the book.

Most appear to be for entertainment only.
"I can make you thin." "I can make you rich." "I can help you sleep."
We could close down the NHS.

I notice in the last few years they have moved into the realm of how to live longer and healthier.
"Lifespan" by David Sinclair.
"Age Proof", "Outlive" are other titles.

Pay your money. Take your choice. There are hundreds of titles.

[Tank]

Well that's sort of why I asked. They tend to strike me as excuses to make money from the gullible 'ish.

[Recusant]

Pay your money. Take your choice. There are hundreds of titles.

Oh dear.  A dilemma there for me, agreeing with Tank. Can't see paying for one, but then how to take free advice seriously. 

[zorkan]

Quote:
"The self-help industry has exploded in recent years: According to NPD Group, U.S. sales of self-help books grew annually by 11 percent from 2013 to 2019, reaching 18.6 million volumes. Meanwhile, the number of self-help titles in existence nearly tripled during that period, from 30,897 to 85,253."

People want meaning, and holy books can't provide it like they used to.
The world is now too complicated. People want be guided by more than just myth and fable.

You'd be crazy not to read them, and reading them will make you crazy.

[zorkan]

I've found a book called "This Book Could Fix Your Life", a New Scientist publication.
Sub-titled The Science of Self Help.

Chapter 1: How not to worry.
Chapter 2: How to be happy.
Chapter 6: How to live healthier for longer.
Chapter 9: How to be smarter.

Covers a hundred books!
Bin the rest.

[Asmodean]

Pay your money. Take your choice. There are hundreds of titles.

Oh dear.  A dilemma there for me, agreeing with Tank. Can't see paying for one, but then how to take free advice seriously. 

Yeah... I cannot remember ever having owned or read a self-help book beyond the setting of education. That is, there are books meant to teach you how to learn, not to mention exercise books that are meant to improve your language or maths or what else have you. Technically self-help books, but I am disregarding that segment based on the assumption that zorkan does too.

As for the "rest" of the genre, why would I want someone else to tell me how to improve myself? That person would have no idea of my parameters for improvement, measuring success or failure or my hierarchy of priorities, so as I see it, the best they could do is dispense "generic" wisdom which I like to think that I can manage to arrive at on my own.

I want to try and fail and pave my own way, unless time is of the essence. When it comes to my own self-realisation, I'll keep doing it until I'm a vegetable (or like... a dead vegetable) and I will not have any capacity to care about my failures beyond that point. So yeah... I don't need a book on, say, how to impress women or uncover the "key" to "success" - them's my railroad tracks.

*Mileage may vary for the less well-adjusted (and/or arrogant) advice-takers.

[zorkan]

Self help books have been around for ages.
https://publishingperspectives.com/2013/11/a-short-history-of-self-help-the-worlds-bestselling-genre/#:~:text=The%20earliest%20progenitor%20of%20self,moral%20behavior%20and%20self%2Dcontrol.

In some way any fiction is likely to contain an element of self help which can make you feel better about yourself.
It seems that just picking up a self help book can work wonders.
Yesterday I dipped into one by a 40 something woman.
Why do some people want to take such extreme measures to look good?
Made me feel better about myself because I've never needed to diet.

Recently I put rejection therapy to the test, and found it didn't work.
I asked a stranger for a lift, and I got it.

[Asmodean]

In some way any fiction is likely to contain an element of self help which can make you feel better about yourself.

Hmm... I... Don't disagree.

To me, the purpose of fiction is to, at its extreme, live a different life vicariously - either as a character in a universe or even a non-interventionalist god of said universe. It's not a matter of making me feel better about myself, as much as allowing me to experience a different sort of world to the one I live in.

I suppose one could even argue that a particularly excellent work of fiction could make one feel worse about their own world, after having been immersed in the fictional one... An interesting thought.

Why do some people want to take such extreme measures to look good?

Insecurities. Wanting to be perceived for what you aspire to be rather than what you are. Assuming the world looks more closely at you than it probably ever did. Assuming that the world gives a toss, or would give a toss if you were just a tiny bit prettier. Assuming that the world would judge you by your standards. Skin-deep psychological whatnots. And more insecurities.

Made me feel better about myself because I've never needed to diet.

That's a win for you, I suppose.

I approach the whole thing differently; how I feel about something is, to a pretty high point, irrelevant. Either I'm good for "it" in the eyes of myself, or whoever else I happen to have something to prove to, or I am not. If I am not, but I do want "it," then I have work to do - not on convincing me that I'm worth something with regard to "it," but on being so, whether "it" is a skill, a different style of beard, a stronger friendship with someone specific or my ability to drift my front-wheel drive car without losing bits of trim to the environment.

I don't feel bad about what I'm good enough at, and I don't feel bad about things I'm actively working on. As for the rest - they carry obviously-low priority and thereby no specific emotions attached to my lack of success in them.

Recently I put rejection therapy to the test, and found it didn't work.

"Rejection therapy," you say? I think you could to that for free "all day" by applying for jobs you are patently unqualified for. 

[zorkan]

I like the idea of being invincible.
Just being on this forum has already shot me down quite a lot.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rejection-Proof-Beat-Became-Invincible/dp/080414138X

It might even help me live 10 years longer.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nordic-Guide-Living-Years-Longer/dp/0349415404

Only snag I'd need a control group who hadn't read the books and implemented the advice.

[Asmodean]

I'm happy to provide myself as someone who has never read that kind of a self-help book. It is, however, possible that I have implemented advice therein as generic wisdom is generic for a reason - it's not outside the realm of self-reflection to arrive at it.

As for being shot down, I think there are more constructive ways of looking at it. To put it in strictly-binary terms, yes, you can find a place where you will be validated in your knowledge and beliefs - have your weaknesses and shortcomings celebrated, even - or you can view them as fluid and ever-changing by improving your mind-model of reality and ever keep learning and evolving. I'd like to think that I would always choose the latter when those concepts are mutually-exclusive.

In my experience, most of us are generally open to constructive dialogue. Some, like my own ever-so-sweet self, go hard and fast after opinions, talking points and conclusions, with little to no regard for the emotional baggage - don't take it too personally. It's a reflection on me drawing a hard line between the matters of fact and (pseudo-)pragmatism, and those of aspirations and emotions. Other approaches with varying degrees of validity in the eyes of each other are available.

We go head to head about sensitive, volatile and largely-settled issues alike sometimes. This place is not a bubble - that in itself has value that far too many social media outlets these days quite simply lack. The flipside, of course, is that you can expect us to look for leaks in your ideas. The flipside of that again is that there is an opportunity to plug a few - to evolve your thinking or, if you are simply wrong, to change your mind. You won't get it from a bunch of yes-men.

I suppose my self-help advice here is that if a battlefield of ideas is a place you'd like to navigate with confidence, then don't be too hard on yourself through the eyes of others.

[zorkan]

I've always been led to believe there is no such thing as absolute.
Like absolute time, position, truth.
Then along comes Atomic Habits by James Clear.
But I'm unclear as to how I can improve every day by 1%.
One percent of what?
Something to do with he aggregate of small changes in your life.

https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

Is there a self help book which explains?

 

[Asmodean]

Ooh, I like that! A self-help book on reading self-help books. I pretty much guarantee you that unless they already exist in a saturated market, then there be gold in them hills.

I think there are absolutes. They just happen to be relative to a frame of reference.

It's counter-intuitive and not very meaningful as observations go - just a fun mental exercise. On the scale of infinities-of-infinities, there probably are no functional absolutes.

[zorkan]

"A self-help book on reading self-help books"

I was basing this thread on someone telling me I should read a book by a woman to improve my mental health.
Then I picked up this book for free.
'Help Me!' by Marianne Power from Archway in London.
If you live at the bottom of Highgate Hill then self help is a must.
I mean, have you seen the property prices there.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Help-Me-Womans-Self-Help-Really/dp/1509888527

"On the scale of infinities-of-infinities, there probably are no functional absolutes."
What is the result of multiplying infinity by zero?