SELF-HELP BOOKS: HOW MUCH DO THEY REALLY HELP? BY SANDRA HARRIS.
SELF-HELP BOOKS: HOW MUCH DO THEY REALLY HELP?
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
Millions of self-help books have been sold since the dawn of
publishing, and I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if most of the sales have
been transacted since the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when it suddenly became
vitally important that people be aware of and look after their mental health.
The twin industries of ‘mindfulness’ and ‘self-care’ suddenly
exploded and, now, here we are in 2024 and nearly every bookshop now has its
own vast ‘MIND, BODY AND SPIRIT’ section. But do we really need all of these
books in our lives? And how did we ever manage before them? Are they a load of
old bollocks, or do they really work? As in, do they really help us to lead
happier, more productive and fulfilling lives as happier, more confident
people?
I recently ‘self-helped’ by giving a big bag of self-help
books away to charity. I had too many of the kind I just knew I would never read, books
written by professors and scientists who used language that was too specialised
and ‘science-y’ and who utilised studies, reports, graphs and mathematical-looking
diagrams to make their points. I like simple language, easy-to-follow bullet
points and concepts that normal, non-scientific people can understand.
If I do buy/read a self-help book, and I’ve read a few over the years, it will usually be by a female lady-type person, simply because I feel that women understand the woman’s experience better than men can. Sorry lads, but that’s just the way I feel, lol.
I won’t read anything too heavy; some of my favourite books will
just have a few simple self-care-slash-mindfulness tips in them that I can
relate to. Tips on standing up for myself as a woman in certain situations are
welcome also.
I must say, though, when I handed over the bag of unread self-help books to the lady
in the charity shop, I immediately felt lighter, and the sense of relief was almost
palpable. Having them in the house made me feel guilty, because I’d paid money
for them and I knew in my heart I wasn’t going to read them.
Owning them was a bit like having a horrible school assignment to do
that kept looming larger the more you put it off. Or filling the fruit bowl and
the fridge with fresh fruit at the start of the week, while having a sneaky
suspicion- or a sinking feeling- that it was all still going to be sitting
there at the end of the week, uneaten, turning black and squishy and attracting
bluebottles.
Today, I’d just like to share with you the sum of my
knowledge relating to living a happy and fulfilled life, after years of making
mistake after mistake and repeatedly doing all the things the books say you
shouldn’t do. I learned by hard experience, and now, I can impart my learnings to
you, the reader, in the hope that there might be some gem or nugget of wisdom
in there that might help you in your own lives.
1. Someone once told me that ‘happiness’
is really just being ‘in touch with what’s happening.’ I spent years of my life
agonizing over the past and being terrified, I mean paralysed with fear, of the
future. Try for one day just living in the ‘now,’ today, the present, and be
really present for whatever’s going on in your life.
2. Try gratitude journaling; Oprah
Winfrey swears by it. Write down everything that you’re grateful for in your
life right now. You’ll find you have more than you thought!
3. Try positive thinking; end every day
writing down three good things that happened to you today. Or start each day by
writing down three good things you hope to achieve during the course of the
day. See if it makes a difference.
4. I love journaling, or filling in
those workbook-type journals with lined space for you to write down your goals,
dreams, lists, impressions, ideas, thoughts, memories, whatever. I found a
great one in a charity shop this week for next to nothing, and the original
price on the back was twenty-seven euros and ninety-five cents!!! Nearly thirty
quid for a journal, and I bought it for two euros!!! I rarely buy new journals.
It pays to keep your eyes open.
5. Self-care is a perfectly legitimate
and sensible concept, and we don’t need an expensive therapist to tell us that
happiness is in those little ‘mindfulness moments’ when we’re really looking
after ourselves and putting ourselves first. My favourite self-care things to
do include reading a book on the balcony in my deck-chair, having a quiet cup
of tea before rushing to the next appointment, and petting our hamster, Mr.
Jingles, because anything to do with animals is so therapeutic. People who keep
pets and love them probably have better mental health than people without pets.
6. I learned to do affirmations after
reading Shakti Gawain’s book, CREATIVE VISUALIZATION, the one self-help book
I held on to. Just keep saying positive things to yourself until they become
true, and, if you have to ‘fake it till you make it,’ well, so be it. At the
moment I’m telling myself, I’m glad I was born and I’m enjoying my life, and
I’ve had a lot more happy moments since I started doing it; or, at least, I’m
more aware of them. You can make up your own affirmations, and they can relate to anything
at all in your life.
7. Another tip from Shakti Gawain’s book
is to constantly visualize yourself being happy, thin, popular, successful,
confident, whatever, and then asking the universe nicely to please ‘manifest’ it for you.
8. Also, tell yourself constantly that you’re
worthy of all the abundance and good things the universe has to offer, and then
the idea is that the abundance and good things will make their way to you. I
tried this myself, and then the strangest thing happened. Just like when doing
gratitude journaling, I realised that the universe had already provided me with
pretty much everything I needed to live a fulfilling life. I had already been the
recipient of abundance and good things, and the universe had already provided
when I needed it to…
Finally, I want to tell you about something I recently read. It was Truman Capote’s short story, A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, and, in it, a female character regarded as too poor and elderly and disabled to matter a damn to anyone but the author himself accidentally stumbles across the meaning of life on a particularly wondrous Christmas Day long ago. The secret is simply this:
When your time comes to meet your Maker for the first time, you’ll realise that you’ve already met Him many times before on beautiful, wonderful days like that long-ago Christmas. It's as simple as that. As the lady says, she’s so happy on realising this amazing, mind-blowing truth that ‘she could leave the world with today in her eyes.’
The meaning of life in a free blog post. Who’s a lucky reader, then...?
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