Have you ever read a self-help book only to find its promise didn’t work for you?
That could be because most self-help books are about the author, not the reader. It’s somewhat like sharing your favourite recipe with friends, only to be told later it was one of the worst meals they ever ate.
Self-help books are recipes which make their results unpredictable, and in many cases, not what we had hoped for. So what draws us to that section in bookshops?
I have often recommended titles I have found useful, only to be told later that they didn’t have the desired effect. To be fair, everyone is on a life journey that is uniquely individual.
Self-help books, though often as pointless and unproductive as new year resolutions, satisfy a human curiosity. They show us a different way of living — a way out of a life we no longer feel comfortable inhabiting or no longer associate with on an unconscious level. But to reach for new possibilities, we need to change — and change is very difficult, because one life change causes a domino effect of others.
“I want to change how I live, but I still want to be me,” a friend said to me recently. The number one fear that holds people back in life is change. Yet when you change how you live for the better, you finally move closer to who you really are.
Big life changes frighten us to our core. They require us to abandon old beliefs and values. So perhaps we’re drawn to self-help books because we can read them without having to make changes.
Over a million self-help books are published every year in the US alone. One of the earliest I came across was called , written in 1948 by Dale Carnegie, who says in the preface that he wrote it because he was “one of the unhappiest lads in New York”.
He went on to say that what made him sick with worry was how much he hated his position in life.
His best-known book was , which always struck me as a strange title, as though the more friends we have the happier we will be. It doesn’t work like that.
Meanwhile, by M. Scott Peck, published in 1978, was the first self-help book I ever read. “Life is difficult” are its opening words.
I was 20 when I bought it. I barely made it through its first chapter before realising I just wasn’t ready for a 300-page lesson in spiritual psychology. I finally read it from start to finish when I was 40.
It had taken me two decades to realise that the message was in those first three words, but we’re rarely ready to deal with problems until they become unmanageable. I didn’t know then what this less-travelled road was.
Almost 45 years later I still don’t, other than that stark reminder that life is difficult, and even that’s an understatement. Life throws up unexpected challenges that go way beyond anything we could have imagined during those younger years, and that’s when we must figure out this new road we often travel alone.
Maybe another reason we are drawn to these books at the start of each new year is because they’re a distraction from committing to the nasty job of learning about ourselves, of admitting that life consists mostly of confusion, boredom, frustration, and low-level helplessness. If we can admit that, then there’s a good starting point for change.
Sometimes it is as simple as that.
The big reason self-help books fail to improve our lives is because of a “negativity bias” that we are all prone to. It means that when something positive occurs, our default negative nature, informed by past traumas, relationship problems, and unpleasant thoughts, has a greater effect on our minds than those brief moments of positive wellbeing.
Often, it’s easier to read about someone else’s life-changing experiences in the hope that they will help to change ours; which is unlikely, because personal experiences are weighed heavy with emotions — our emotions, not theirs. There will always be a place in life for self-help books, but not if we’re just not ready to help ourselves.
In recent years, I have found myself looking instead to the wonders of nature to restore and enrich my mental health. Spending time in nature, whether that’s forest-bathing or hill walking, brings us back home to ourselves, to the natural balance of life which satisfies that deep yearning within that we have neglected for too long.
As the mountaineer John Muir, or John of the Mountains as he was known, once said: “In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” In the words of the great nature essayist, John Burroughs: “I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”
So last weekend, while much of Munster was waiting for the thaw, my wife and I decided to drive from Killarney back to Skibbereen, up through the low hills of McGillycuddy’s Reeks, along the curvy narrow roads of the Caha mountains, in through Turners Rock Tunnel, carved by hand and opened in 1842 on the spin between Kenmare and Glengarriff.
Standing at Ladys’ View, with its stunning scenes above the Upper Lake and Purple Mountain, taking in the colossal panorama of these soaring peaks covered in snow left me speechless.
Surrounded by such natural beauty, there are no mental distractions because it is all-consuming. It’s a journey that demands the attention of all of the senses. Life is nothing short of overwhelming.
Unless we can reset our minds and harmonise the body’s energy system, then we will constantly feel anxious and become depressed. Dare I say, it really is that simple, but we rarely do it — and that’s often when we reach for the self-help books.
I’m not criticising self-help books — even if some of their titles made me cringe whenever I handed them over to pay at the check-out. After all, I did write one many years ago that I am still proud of.
None of us knows how much crap is layering that part of the brain where we bury the painful side of life, in that “stuff I’m scared off” padded room of toxic twilight that we keep saying we’ll open someday.
Usually, the day comes when we have no choice but to look inside. Life is difficult. When it doesn’t go to plan we hit a brick wall. Dale Carnegie once said: “One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living.”
We can spend years of our lives hoping to find the holy grail of self-help books, only then to realise it’s been right there all along in the mountains and beaches and forests, and in the stars in the night sky; if only we take the time to realise that nature offers a gift we will rarely find in any book.
In the words of the great environmental writer Edward Abbey: “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
This post was originally published on here
