Self-Help Isn’t.
“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.” — Steven Wright
Consider these stats about the self-help industry:
- In the United States, self-help books make up about 20% of the book market.
- The self-help industry is worth a whopping $11 billion globally.
- Last year, over 18 million self-help books were sold in the United States.
And here is what I want to say to all of this self-helpiness (Not a word, should be)…
Self-help isn’t.
Self-help has come to mean you asking for help from someone else. Then, typically, someone else and someone else… Said another way, you are asking for someone to share what has worked for them or what they think might work for you and NOT helping yourself.
I know that we are all on a quest to find those magic words and formulas that will magically change our lives (Much of this could be said for the business book industry as well).
These books do give you new insights and are not interesting reads but all too often they fail to create the behavior change we are hoping/yearning/begging for. Without inner clarity and the drive to compel lasting change, we simply take in all of this information and find it damn near impossible to put it into practice.
Why?
We are great at seeking out advice from others, often great at giving advice and TERRIBLE at advising ourselves into action.
Time and again, I provide my clients (and friends) with sound advice about their businesses and/or their lives. Time and again, they think it makes sense but then they feel it is impossible to act on it. Something within them decides they cannot take the next step. Sometimes the inner drive to push themselves to get out of their comfort zone, even when that comfort zone is really uncomfortable, is stuck in neutral.
Changing behavior hits us right in the sweet spot of fear.
I bumped into this again recently when working with a client and decided to try something different. A few weeks after giving some counsel that he was half-assing, I went back to this client and told him that I needed his help with another client that was in a different industry. I set out an entire scenario for him. Details about the business, where the CEO was stuck, etc… I asked him how he would handle it based on his experience and expertise.
He gave me solid and specific advice and was starting to say how much he could relate when he caught me grinning at him. He smiled, looked down, shook his head and laughed. Click!
We already have the advice we need to give ourselves.
You have probably caught yourself giving advice to others that you need to be giving to yourself.
There are a ton of self-help books that will explain why we cannot advise ourselves well. Trauma from our past, limiting beliefs, ego, fear of failure and fear of success. I believe we are just too caught up in the hurricanes of our lives to get out of our heads long enough to direct ourselves with some perspective.
So we keep seeking help from someone (Anyone!) else than ourselves.
If you have already read your 20–30 self-help books and absorbed 100+ motivational podcasts and are in the same place, may I suggest you start asking yourself?
Trust that you already have the answers to your most vexing problems inside of you and try my little trick. Consider yourself your own closest friend that is in need of candid and direct advice to solve the issues that trouble you the most. How would you advise that “friend” if you were totally committed to seeing them win?
If it helps, I find doing this in my journaling app helps me separate from my head and inner negative thoughts. I start with the question that I want to solve and focus on giving myself advice without thinking about the thoughts they bring up in my head (Writing or typing quickly helps me to stay ahead of those thoughts).
Then, without stopping, write out the next action you would tell this “friend” to take and when they must take it.
When you are done, read it back and do what you told yourself to do when you told yourself to do it.
THIS is self-help.
P.S. Yes, I appreciate the irony of writing a self-helpy (Also not a word, also should be) article about why self-help doesn’t work. Such is life. ;-)
