Self-help: Hindrance, Help, or Fantasy Escape

How to decide on your own to use, ignore or kick to the curb

History of Self Help

In western culture, in the early 1400s and 1500s, there was a concern with self-fashioning. This term was first introduced in Stephen Greenblatt’s 1980 book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. It refers to constructing one’s identity and public persona to reflect cultural standards or social codes.

A nobleman was instructed to wear the finest clothing he could afford, be well-versed and educated in art, literature, and sport, and comport himself self-consciously with arrogance.

This early Renaissance produced a flood of educational and self-help materials. For example, the Florentine writer Giovanni della Casa in his book of manners published in 1558, suggests: “It is also an unpleasant habit to lift another person’s wine or his food to your nose and smell it”’.

The Middle Ages saw the genre personified in Conduir-amour (“guide in love matters”)’; while in classical Rome Cicero’s “On Friendship” and “On Duties” became ‘handbooks and guides through the centuries.

What is Self Help

A self-help book is meant to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles

Three themes predominate in self-help literature.

Problem-Solving: Self-help books can provide practical advice and solutions for many problems, such as stress, anxiety, relationship issues, and financial difficulties.

Inspiration: Self-help books can be inspiring and uplifting, providing people with the motivation they need to make positive life changes.

Self-Confidence: By learning new skills and techniques, people can build self-confidence and self-esteem and feel more empowered to face life’s challenges.

In my case, in writing for Medium, my subject matter is personal advice based on what has worked for me. The focus is on how to bring about more self-respect via various disciplines.

The Literature

Americanon, a book by Jess McHugh, highlights Americans’ extreme appetite for spiritual and physical self-improvement. McHugh introduces the book’s perfect exemplar in its closing pages when she describes how Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, would begin his day by reading the Bible while riding a stationary bike.

The book establishes these qualities through reading habits, and it highlights two qualities that haven’t been as well covered: Americans, he claims, are prescriptive and hypocritical.

We love to invent and subscribe to rules and discipline, but when it comes to implementation, we fall back and lapse into hypocrisy. (The best example is the immediate decline in gym attendance after the first of the year.)

In 2005 Steve Salerno portrayed the American self-help movement — he uses the acronym SHAM: the Self-Help and Actualization Movement — not only as ineffective in achieving its goals but also as harmful. Salerno says, “80 percent of self-help and motivational customers are repeated customers, and they keep coming back ‘whether the program worked for them or not.’”

Others similarly point out that with self-help books, “supply increases the demand. The more people read them, the more they think they need them; they are more like an addiction than an alliance.”

Salerno points out that the self-help movement promotes two contradictory tendencies: victimization and empowerment.

It’s true. I see myself as a victim of these two dynamics, but they are not contradictory.

I was a victim of early disrespect, which has led to an excessive appetite for redemption by empowerment. Skill building and self-care became my method for overcoming victimization.

Comments by Readers of Self-help books

From a reader of Salerno’s book:

“According to my own experiences, most of the books are not worthy of reading, you feel great after reading them for a few days or a few hours, but then you become again the same guy. Then you begin to buy other books to lift your spirits, the chain of events begins again, in a circular fashion. This book says that the customer to buy a self-help book is the customer who has bought a similar one in the last 18 months! ”

“When I think about what particular books have taught me after reading, most of them are nothing. They are just words to uplift your mood for a while. This book says it correctly; most of the self-help books’ teachings are the same ones your mother would have taught you. The difference between a self-help author and your mother is that the self-help author is a better writer to explain the obvious.”

Reader: “The best self-help books are biographies, autobiographies, or books by a person who has done x himself describing how he did it! Then do it yourself with the learned idea.

Gladwell’s Outliers, which instead of offering quick five or seven step fixes or dropping people into buckets such as genius and non-genius, suggests that years of hard work and deliberate practice can lead to self-improvement. “That does not mean everyone will be above average, as the old joke goes. It does mean that the average should rise, and everyone willing to put in the work can more fully realize his potential, if not necessarily his dreams.”

However, dreams of the perfect relationship, career, and weight continue to sell off the shelves.

“If you read a lot of self-help books, says Salerno, you will discover and learn something about life, but most probably, you will learn that you are really on your own in working it all out!”

Salerno exposes these self-proclaimed gurus with no credentials or research to support their claims and how they have taken over many people’s minds and penetrated culture on many levels.

An alternate approach, where the impact is more significant from role models, is conveyed by Teddy Roosevelt.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The Self- help literature comes down to simple answers to complex challenges. Most people know what’s true and what’s needed to better our lives. But most don’t want to do the necessary self-reflection and hard work to make it happen. If we’re honest, most of us are content just to get by.

I have sometimes thought that reading self-help literature is a form of displacement from doing the demanding work of behavior change. Some people would rather dream about change than do it. Those of us who write in the self-help genre, me included, are frustrated by this dichotomy.

Further Critiques

As this author states, self-help literature promotes the false narrative that success can be achieved easily and doesn’t require challenging work. This perception may cause people to give up on their goals earlier because they believe that most successful people do not encounter obstacles during their journey.

Ironically, this may result in readers of self-help books becoming less successful than if they hadn’t bothered reading self-help books in the first place. Self-help books are intended to motivate their readers to reach their goals. But they may be having the opposite effect. By suggesting that success can be achieved quickly with minimal resistance, readers may be discouraged from pushing on at first sight of an obstacle.

Reasons to be Skeptical

Comparing the advice given in self-help books with psychological research about the conditions of happiness reveals two sides to the story. There is evidence from previous studies that self-help books sometimes perpetuate psychological myths.

1. Venting your anger is good. Wrong. Research shows that expressing your anger helps maintain it.

2. When depressed, think happy thoughts. Wrong. Research shows that trying to think happy thoughts when we’re depressed can actually make our current unhappiness even more obvious.

3. Visualise your goals. Not the whole story: in order to achieve a goal we need to focus on the problems that stand between us and reaching our goal.

4. Use self-affirmation: “I’m a tiger!” Doesn’t work, it seems we don’t believe our own praise. What we really need is praise from others to raise our self-esteem.

5. Use active listening to communicate with your partner No luck here either. Loving couples don’t seem to use this technique.

Summary

Self-help books can provide practical advice and solutions for many problems, such as stress, anxiety, relationship issues, and financial difficulties. By learning new skills and techniques, people can build self-confidence and feel more empowered to face life’s challenges.

Comments by readers of self-help books suggest that many are not helped. From a reader of Salerno’s book: “According to my own experiences, most self-help books are not worthy of reading, you feel great after reading them for a few days or a few hours, but then you become the same guy again.

A self-help reader suggests: “The best self-help books are biographies, autobiographies, or books by a person who has done x himself and describes how he did it!”