How to Approach Self Help

The other day, I came across this instagram post by Mark Manson talking about self help tourists vs self help junkies. Which brought me to some of the thoughts I have been having around self help as a whole, its pitfalls, limitations and what the best way to engage with it is.

According to Mark, you could either be a self help junkie, the kind of person who jumps on every single trend, follows every other seminar, listens to all the podcasts, so much so that it consumes their entire lives. Such people get perpetually high on the thrill of a new epiphany.

Or you could be a self help tourist, only dipping into the space when something has hit the fan in your life, when things have broken down. These kind of people come in, get what they need and jump right back out until the next time there is an emergency.

Mark argues that you should be the latter rather than the former. I appreciate where he is coming from but I would argue something slightly different.

Over the few years, I've become a bit more critical about the genre of personal development, a space that I have loved, consistently written in and consumed a lot of. I have already mentioned some of those thoughts here and there, but let me attempt to flesh things out some more.

What's good about self-help?

No matter what your religious or philosophical bent in life may be, everyone can probably agree that there are certain principles, ideas, habits, etc that are better than others. And that understanding and learning those key ideas can help one live a better life. One that feels good, and is successful without undue suffering.

That is the promise of self-help. That through it, you can better understand and harness those principles and laws to make your life better. From how you perceive and interpret the world around you, to the actions you take and how you persevere in pursuit of your goals. Self help can give you many useful tools.

Now a lot of these ideas can seem quite common sense after the fact, but that is usually after some form of awakening has taken place. These things are not often taught in school, and many times are counter intuitive to what is actually taught in school or society. So once a person awakes into the possibilities of personal development, it can be easy to go 'overboard' with enthusiasm.

In those early stages or years, the neophyte can easily spend all their energy moving from idea to idea, guru to guru, from one school of thought to the other. It is a thirsty time of learning and soaking up as much as possible. And that is an important stage to go through. Once you have tasted the initial fruits of your labour, seeing yourself make tangible progress in your life as a result of a new insight, or perspective shift, you would want to do it again and again.

So what's bad about self help?

The neophyte drunk off the initial experiences in personal development can go so off the deep end that they start reaping diminishing returns. Anything in excess is bad after all.

It is very easy to get caught up in wanting to always experience that feeling of growth or transcendence, that earth shifting epiphany. It is easy to get addicted to it, and chase it perpetually. Digging in deeper and deeper into more esoteric and exotic ideas. But like Mark says, just because you feel like you moved forward doesn't mean you actually did.

Just because you felt the high of the epiphany doesn't mean it really sunk in. Putting into practice and making it a part of you is long, hard work. It is easy to keep chasing that shallow feeling as opposed to consistently putting in the hard and tedious work.

Couple that with unscrupulous individuals and brands and gurus, and you have an area ripe for exploitation. People are often hurting, vulnerable, looking for a ways to fix their lives and be happier. Media and society doesn't help much by piling on their insecurities and creating false needs. So anyone can pop up with that magic solution, that 12 step program, that course, that book, the conference, that would change your life forever and make bank off the pain and suffering of others.

Now many of these can be useful, offering tangible value and putting people on track. But the space also attracts too many charlatans and fake gurus that muddy the waters.

Another important thing wrong with self help is right there in the name - self. It is all about the self, and personal responsibility. Which is important. But at the same time, we do not live in a vacuum, and our actions are not isolated. Self help is also another symptom of cultural, social and economic systems that glorify individuals over the collective and exploit the rest. It makes you strive to solve systemic problems with only personal strength. In a world in need of radical thinking and solutions, It can't be the only tool in our toolbox.

So why should we pursue self help?

I personally like to think about personal development as fitness. The idea should be to be life fit. To be mentally, spiritually, and physically ready to handle the demands of your day to day as well as being resilient enough to endure abnormally tough times or situations.

As human beings, we are never really stagnant. If we do nothing, we are automatically moving backwards. If you don't exercise your body will atrophy. If you read less, your vocabulary and quality of ideas will take a hit. If you stop practicing, those skills will fade. If you stop improving, you will fade to irrelevancy.

Self-help should be a practice, a way of life. And by self help I mean the philosophy of always trying to live optimally, and get better. You can engage with it as much or as lightly as you like. You could approach it as a casual with a weekly running routine, or you could tackle it with the rigour of a professional sportsman. It all depends on what you want, and what you are trying to get done at the time.

Sometimes you might wake up at 5am sharp and run a precise routine with all the bells and whistles. Sometimes all you might focus on doing is making sure the hours you are actually awake are productive.

Ramp things up or cool things down as much as you like. But always have the tools and ideas at your fingertips. As long as you get the main things right, you should be okay. Set the right habits and routines. Absorb ideas from great sources, and beyond all that, live intentionally and enjoy your life.

That is what this is all about anyway.