Self-Help Books

What's your opinion on self-help books?

Personally, I have not had much experience of them, but what I have had I am very wary, about on a par with make money pyramid schemes. From my limited experience they tend to involve lots of repetition of things like positive thinking and shallow ideas borrowed from elsewhere, other philosophies/religions etc. It is a massive industry though and some people swear by one or two of them - 'life changing' seems to be one common expression, though from as far as I can see people tend to make their money from selling self-help books themselves. There's a bit of a paradox going on there I'm sure.

Anyway, for example one book I heard someone raving about the other day was How to Win Friends and Influence People - (neither things I am interested in) but...any thoughts in general?

I've read one or two, but they never did any good.

I picked up a Self-Help book about revising effectively once (for school exams), but got bored after the first few pages. It didn't really help at all.

I fear the only person they help is their author, and by which I mean they help him towards a third house in Barbados...

Sadly, I think they are a rather predatory in nature, and play on peoples' gullibility and desperation: people who are after a quick fix in life, and spend money on titles that promise to make them thin/fit/rich/attractive to the opposite sex. It is, I'm afraid to say, the modern equivalent of snake oil merchantry.

Interesting topic, and another in our world that's firmly nested in the grey.

Some self-help books are absolute trash, written by people who have no business telling other people how to be happy or whatever else they claim to help with. These are predatory, and offensive, not to mention completely ineffective.

Other books explore real, effective strategies to improve your life and are written by amazing people with amazing fortitude and inner strength. Personally, I really respect Anthony Robbins and his books. I don't read non-fiction at all, but I did read Awaken the Giant and it was an incredible book. It explores so many useful techniques for controlling the insanity inside our minds , like NLP, a real, proven psychological technique. I don't use all of the techniques, and I've forgotten quite a few, but that's because I'm lazy and there's something strange about trying to manufacture the life you want. I do use NLP regularly though. It also opened my mind to the power of physiology, in how you feel and how others see you.

I'm not a fan of 'self-help books' which is a paradox, but I don't think it's all bad. If a person really attacked them with an open mind and put into practice the lessons within, depending on how good the book was, they'd probably make some positive changes. Even focusing on improving yourself is good, so I don't think they're all bad. Although, like you say Lokasenna, some of them are like snake oil merchants.

Ihave been considering writing a book "Help For Procrastinators". I am sure that it would help many people, but I haven't yet gotten around to finishing it.

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Other books explore real, effective strategies to improve your life and are written by amazing people with amazing fortitude and inner strength. Personally, I really respect Anthony Robbins and his books

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Yes I recently saw a public speaker (in school) who mentioned his name as well.

I depends on what you want to learn or do. That's all there is to it. Obviously if you have a lot of experience in something, it would be extremely stupid to get one of those books expecting it to be advanced without realizing that they are written for someone who's just beginning. Also, if the writer is insane, the help might be philosophical. LOL

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Originally Posted by cafolini

I depends on what you want to learn or do. That's all there is to it. Obviously if you have a lot of experience in something, it would be extremely stupid to get one of those books expecting it to be advanced without realizing that they are written for someone who's just beginning. Also, if the writer is insane, the help might be philosophical. LOL

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Yes but the type of self-help books I'm on about are the ones in regards to 'becoming successful' or 'making money' 'thinking positive - YOU TOO can CHANGE YOUR life FOREVER' etc, sort of set-up, I'm not talking about self-help in regards to DIY or gardening, just the typical 'Power of Positive Thinking' types.

Edit: When I think of 'self-help books' I'm thinking of the sort of prose like this, crammed full of cheap rhetorical tricks (though I'm sure I'm doing many decent writers/books a dis-service in this 'genre' but this is the type of thing that springs to mind):

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YOU too can become RICH and successful, if you only follow my Simple Steps to Success. YOU can make YOUR dreams come true. Just imagine that dream job, that fast sports car, that house on the hill. That can become YOURS if you only follow my Simple Steps to Success. YOUR dreams, YOUR future, starts right NOW.

I want you to look in the mirror. Look in the mirror and ask YOURSELF one thing. What is YOUR goal in life? What is YOUR dream? When you have this in mind, I want YOU to say 'I will achieve this' three times. Visualise it in YOUR minds eye. Believe it or not this is the FIRST step on YOUR journey to a successful, happy life. This is the power of positive thinking that I will guide you on YOUR journey to a successful, happy life, guaranteed.

But you will say successful, happy people are born. It is luck chance. This is not so. Successful, happy people are made through the power of positive thinking, the secret of which I will share with you in my Simple Steps to Success. (Insert extended anecdote here about how I was poor but now am a multi-millionaire etc, etc.)

But don't believe me. Here are just a few letters I received from happy, successful people after reading my life changing book Simple Steps to Success.

Dear Mr Neely,

I was once living in the gutter, eating scraps of food, bits of mouldy bread and old sausages, that I could find in bins, when I came across your amazing book Simple Steps to Success. After reading your book and following through the life changing messages I started my own business which grew to a multi-million pound industry. I now have a chain of hotels and enjoy a celebrity lifestyle. I want to tell you this that more people can enjoy your powerful messages too, so that they too can become rich and successful just like me.

That's right Simple Steps to Success is YOUR chance to achieve that dream you have always wanted. In it I will reveal to YOU the secrets to unlock YOUR own unique potential. Simple Steps to Success contains within it the seeds of YOUR future.

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As I say I'm sure there are some value in some 'self-help' types. Especially if some things are based on psychology or borrowed from philosophies etc but I just can't take anything seriously that conducts itself in such a manner.


(Simple Steps to Success is a future release published by Lazy House. Please contact Mr Neely with a large cheque for an advance, signed copy. Start your letter with 'yes I want to change my life forever, please reserve me my life changing copy of Simple Steps to Success today. Name...)

Not exactly self-help, but the test with StrengthFinders 2.0 of the Gallop company is pretty accurate. Can save a person from going down wrong career paths that they are not really naturally suited for.

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Originally Posted by byquist

Not exactly self-help, but the test with StrengthFinders 2.0 of the Gallop company is pretty accurate. Can save a person from going down wrong career paths that they are not really naturally suited for.

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Sounds good. I did one of these sort of things the other day. Of course it comes back with 'you are in the wrong job, you should be a...' artist/recluse type of figure, which I knew already (though I don't have the talent for an artist, one that doesn't involve beer that is) but it is good to have the confirmation. Seriously though these sort of things are probably very useful, just you could do with such things or in thinking things through correctly, prior to signing on the dotted line.

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Originally Posted by Lokasenna

I fear the only person they help is their author, and by which I mean they help him towards a third house in Barbados...

Sadly, I think they are a rather predatory in nature, and play on peoples' gullibility and desperation: people who are after a quick fix in life, and spend money on titles that promise to make them thin/fit/rich/attractive to the opposite sex. It is, I'm afraid to say, the modern equivalent of snake oil merchantry.

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I couldn't have said it better...

Neely - you are in the wrong job. You should be writing self-help books, making a fortune, buying your own Real Ale establishment and spending the rest of your life stringently controlling the quality of the stock.

When I was a boy, I remember seeing an advert for Dale Carnegie's book 'How to win Friends and Influence People' and even at that tender age it made me laugh.
Dale Carnegie sold 15 million copies but it's questionable as to how many became his friends after being influenced to part with their money. Perhaps Messrs Cameron and Clarke shoud have read it for there's one sure way of not winning friends and influenceing voters than to call them clowns and fruitcakes so that they go out and vote for Nigel Farage and end up looking like clowns and fruitcakes themselves.

Years ago there was a copy of 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway' lying around at work, and my friend and I were reading bits out to each other and falling about laughing. Even the title is funny. These books are part of the vast amount of mumbo-jumbo in the world.

I downloaded the free sample of How to Win Friends and Influence People out of some sort of perverse curiosity, just to see if I had done it a dis-service. I had not. The entire free sample was filled with absolutely no content whatsoever other than cheap sales talk as above. Unbelievable!

Yes Kasie I think I might as well write some such nonsense, very easily done.

I am interested in reading psychology, real psychology, so I'm searching for decent psychology book if anyone has any suggestions. There's a lot of hocus pocus about.

'I was once living in the gutter, eating scraps of food, bits of mouldy bread and old sausages, that I could find in bins, when I came across your amazing book Simple Steps to Success'.
So, presumably, the person who threw the book in the bin is still living on mouldy bread and old sausages. Now why would anyone who has made a fortune bother writing a book about how to do it instead of watching the toiling wage slaves from his ivory tower? The words ‘simple’ or ‘ easy’ are an obvious prerequisite for writers of self-help books because potential readers are looking for an easy option, but there isn’t one. Whether looking to lose weight, bodybuilding, learning another language, playing a musical instrument etc. etc., all human endeavour requires some effort, so there isn’t an effortless solution. This seems so obvious that it’s almost incredible that so many people are prepared to pay in order to find out the hard way.

Ah but you see Emil, if you buy the book and follow the quick and simple steps it lays out, you don't need to put in any effort at all!

That's right. My Simple Steps to Success, is just that, simple steps to a richer, happier life. My secret (that's another good word) is found within these pages. Get ahead of the crowd and fulfil YOUR dreams, order today.

People obviously want easy quick fixes and are prepared to swallow horrendous prose in the hopes that it improves their lives. Even if 'the power of positive thinking' really is an important element in success (and I don't know about that anyway) then you hardly need a complete book on this, a page or two is probably enough, that's why there's so much bumpf in these sort of books they have to pad it out with something. This is where all the gushing stories and sales chatter comes in.

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Originally Posted by Volya

Ah but you see Emil, if you buy the book and follow the quick and simple steps it lays out, you don't need to put in any effort at all!

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I suggest that you try learning a foreign language in three months, which is what one well known brand ( Linguaphone) advertises, then come back to the forum three months hence and let me know how you got on.

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Originally Posted by Neely

I downloaded the free sample of How to Win Friends and Influence People out of some sort of perverse curiosity, just to see if I had done it a dis-service. I had not. The entire free sample was filled with absolutely no content whatsoever other than cheap sales talk as above. Unbelievable!

Yes Kasie I think I might as well write some such nonsense, very easily done.

I am interested in reading psychology, real psychology, so I'm searching for decent psychology book if anyone has any suggestions. There's a lot of hocus pocus about.

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I read a couple of works by the eminent psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Storr which received critical acclaim when published back in the 1990s. Looking at them again, I see that they are worth another read. One is called 'Solitude' and the other is 'Music and the Mind'. The first deals with the necessary part that solitude has played in the works of certain writers and artists whereas the second, as its title implies, is an exploration of the importance of music in the lives of both performers and listeners. You might care to give them a try as they are fairly short works at about 200pp. each.

Thanks I'll have a look at those. I might also just order a standard undergrad/A-level textbook. Some of the slightly out of date editions (3rd edition instead of the 4th for example) are dead cheap and good enough for what I want it for.

They don't exist; these books are 'help' not 'self-help.' If you did it yourself you probably didn't need help.

Excuse me, important news: Maya Angelou publishes her new book, Mom & I & Mom. Can't miss it.