Does Self-Help Really Help?
abracad, · Categories: reviews, self helpA recent episode of the BBC arts and culture series Imagine examined the huge and rapidly-growing self help industry. The Secret of Life started with presenter Alan Yentob watching recent blockbuster The Secret and declaring his skepticism by suggesting the only way to get rich from self help books is by writing one.
What follows is a journey through the self help business in the form of interviews with some of its leading gurus. Together they provide an intriguing overview of what is meant by self help.
Writer and self help addict Amy Jenkins has a large collection of self help books and admits she begins her day reading self help in the way most people have a cup of coffee. Though the underlying messages occur repeatedly in different works, Jenkins believes it can be helpful to study different presentations.
Of particular note as discrete disciplines were cognitive therapy - change your thoughts and your feelings will follow; and NLP - the idea that negative behaviors can somehow be re-programmed out of us by installing an upgrade in our mental software.
Most depressing were the views of the psychoanalyst who informed us that, according to Freud, the best we can hope for is "everyday unhappiness." In contrast the philosophy of Freud's associate and later rival C.G. Jung offered greater optimism. No wonder that Jung occupies a significant position in both the self help and new age movements.
The key, of course, is how much note we actually take of the literature. You can read a thousand self help titles, but if you remain unchanged by the message within then you cannot expect to see any life improvements.
But for those that actually act on the principles self help inspires self belief and offers hope. In so doing it encourages us to be the very best we can. By visualizing success we achieve far more than settling for mediocrity. We set in motion our mind, Spirit and Will to realize our visions.
Yentob concludes his investigation by admitting there's more to self help than he thought at the outset.
The Secret of Life is available for a few more days on BBC's iPlayer [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/]
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