The School of Life

This starts the next ten weeks in which I’ll be posting links to great websites that I’ve come across…

First up this bunch of guys who do what I’m attempting to do here – but on a much bigger scale:

The School of LIfe

Let me know what you think.

(9) What I learned about self help books

The Secret The Self Improvement Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know (a good old rant from me!!)

All personal change can boil down to some very simple elements.

Over the last twnety years or so a huge industry of self-improvement has developed and flourished around these simple elements. If you look right back to the ‘grand daddy’ of modern self improvement himself – Napoleon Hill – his book Think and grow rich, published in 1937, outlined these elements, then elaborated them over a further 250 pages or so.

We all know what happens if we don’t change, develop or follow our dreams. We continue to get the results and circumstances that affect our lives today, good and bad. If we are not contented with our life we may visit a book shop, browse the now bulging self-help shelves to seek out an author that has the answer we are looking for. An answer that appeals to us because it seems to sum up our situation, excites us about our possibilities and the very act of buying it gives us hope for the future. We fall upon it and devour every word realising that the secret to our happy lives is contained within. After finishing the book we have great plans, see sunny lives in front of us and, for a few days, we have renewed hope and faith in ourselves. Then, something unpleasant, but familiar happens. We become uneasy that the book contained all the answers, how could it? I mean your situation is different, you need to have the right moment before you can change. You need to be a little more secure in your work / relationship / home before you can start making changes. Your dreams are only that anyway, no one has everything they want in life? Not real, ordinary people like you. The inner anguish begins and the book seems less and less likely to be a practical use to you. So the restlessness surfaces again then maybe, after a few months, off to the bookshop you go again. It’s an endless self help cycle

Come on! How much more dressing up do you need? How much more blended, pureed and palatable do you need it to be? Books largely spoon-feed you the simple elements of personal change. They chop it up into tiny manageable bites and flavour it with stories and examples of what has happened to other people. Some books even provide the space on their pages for you to write in your answers. They are selling you a book that YOU are writing.

Self development books have a useful role whilst you are changing and developing, but don’t expect them to do all the work for you. I should know, over the last twenty years I have read my way through literally hundreds of workbooks and programmes all promising to improve and make sense of my life for me. And which book was it that finally got me to where I am today?

NONE. I GOT MYSELF TO WHERE I AM TODAY.

No book can do it all for you, it’s not good enough to simply buy a book, read it and expect your life to change. You have to take action. Focussed, planned, appropriate action. And after taking action you have to do something even more vital. You have to keep taking action, over and over again, changing your focus if necessary and overriding all the desires you have to give-up, have a rest or focus on something else. And this is the bit that you cannot get out of a book or a programme or an audio CD set. The sheer determination and grit needed to follow your dreams. And if all this seems like hard work – it is! But the rewards of getting what you truly desire at the end of it are worth it. Aren’t they? If your rewards are not motivation enough, look again at your goals. Are they inspirational to you? If not, chose others. No one else can decide on your goals, feel what is right for you, regularly test the feeling, check if you still want the goal, examine your motivation. Stay on track.

So there you have it. The secret the self-improvement industry doesn’t want you to know: All effective change and self improvement comes from three elements:

•  
  • Have a goal
  • Create a plan to get to your goal
  • Become relentlessly determined to follow your plan and reach your goal

 

There it is, spelled out for you as clearly as I can. You need no more than this information other than your thoughts and strength of sprirt.

Now go get it!