I've always been a little skeptical of "Self Help" books and media. I feel a part of me becomes too proud to ever think about using such books that make me recite things to myself, make an effort to smile more whether I want to or not, or come up with impossible thoughts to stretch my mind, all because a book told me to. In a way, it seems very far from self help, because you're getting help from this author or this voice who is making a living out of empowering people (don't get me wrong, people need plenty of empowering, and if it works all the more power to them and the author). But I guess that's the secret to it, enlisting million dollar-level, focus group-tested, research-based help and disguising it as innocent words that you found in a book. And when you read them, they become your own words so that it's you that's helping you.
The other part of me knows I'm being stubborn and would probably buy into some of the crap they tell you to do, and have it work by way of some kind of "Michael's Secret Stuff" effect as in Space Jam, when it's just water the whole time. But I never really get to that point because I sort grimace whenever I see them in stores. I think it's not as much that I feel too proud to take help from a book, but that I can't get over taking help from something so impersonal as a book that is directly trying to help me (I'd rather get help from books trying to take me somewhere completely unrelated to my present life), especially when I know other people are getting help from the exact same book. I want to preserve that selfish notion that I'm so unlike others that some generic book isn't going to get me like I was just another pawn struggling over the same dilemmas and annoyances of life as everyone else (and I bet a mass group of people want to feel that way too).
This is why I inevitably will trust people who know me to help me, because they know me as someone discernable from the sea of billions, with specific traits to myself. I don't think that is too absurd, although I know it could be (like everything) followed to a fault, where you'd never consider the opinion or words of an outsider viewer. It's also hard to hate on the self-help books for me in a way, just because I'm drawn to that tone so much, the tone of speaking to strangers as if they were familiar. But in the end, I do think self help has to come more from the self and being open to the forces at hand, including not just the positive ones of friends or family, but the negative ones as well, of shitty situations that confront and challenge someone to figure out how to get themselves in a better situation. You have to have your own brain to actually help yourself. Like right now, in deciding whether I'm full of shit (as I often wonder when I write).
I think you can just as easily get some form of "self-help" from great works of literature as from designated self-help books. I too have somewhat of a bias against them and am skeptical, and I probably need to get over that, since they seem to work for a lot of people, so I shouldn't knock it. After all, what do I ever do to help other people?
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