I Think Your Self-Help Book May Be Selling You a Lie

Self-help books offer their sacred and moneymaking services to help you in the areas of identity, personal growth, relationships, and coping with life in general (work, death, disappointment, etc.). When you buy one of these volumes, along with it you are paying for a lie: Think positive about what you desire, and it will materialize. We must remember wishing is not a performative act.

It is a fact that whenever people force themselves to have positive thoughts so as to become more successful, happier, generally better, they start performing poorer: their positive thinking increases along with their passiveness, for their brains believe this positive thinking will solve it as they save themselves the effort (efficiency means less work for better results, right?). For example, a student forces himself to think he is to get a good grade in an upcoming test, as if this “positive thinking” is actually transforming reality, and he starts studying less and, in general, working less to achieve his goal—Guess how he does in the test. You got it right—. You can check the research From Thought to Action: Effects of Process-Versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance by
Lien B. Pham, Shelley E. Taylor (1999).

Personally, I have always disliked self-help pseudo literature. I believe that, generlly speaking, this industry is a scam. I am sure there must be some good examples out there, though. The thing is I have always thought, there is a difference between offering a reading for therapeutic purposes, offering a work of literature for aesthetic fascination, and offering cynic help that is going to make you feel fake self-achievement.

I bought this book once—I am not telling you the title—, which told me the story of somebody who traveled a long distance to the place he was supposed to find what he had been looking for, desperately and unsuccessfully until then. He gets his very eager flesh and bones to the appointed place, and he is given the news: What you have been looking for is not here, little grasshopper, but in that place you have been always.

Now, let us understand that this place you have always been can be either a tangible or an intangible instance. Mostly, we have to read the metaphor—which some authors are benevolent enough as to explain it to us by means of morals or parables that regurgitate the message/teaching/truism/etc. E.g. it can be that you have gone far away to find riches, but a treasure chest has been buried in your back yard all this time; you have just been unwise enough not to see it. The meaning? It is there, you just need to open your eyes, open your heart, appreciate what you are and/or what you have. (Go look for that shovel, will you.)

I have never liked these books because they give you the false sensation that you have unveiled a spiritual mystery of mythical proportions, and this is not true. I consider that if you are not able to appreciate what you have, you might be just immature, or you probably need professional help so you see better what you are doing and where your life is going.

Picture under CC0 licensing (Max Pixel)

I do believe though in the healing power of literature. Every book we read has an effect in us; not all books will make you feel well. Take my case; I got so angry when I read that book by Mr. PC, this scam which pretended to present ancient wisdom like his own, but I did something good out of in the end. I learned. So here you are, my own little piece of self-help: it is not what happens to you but what you do with that.