Why Self-Help Books Don’t Work

Bookstores. It’s a rare person who will pass one without wandering in.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A guy intent on Change walks into a coffee bar, which happens to be attached to a bookstore. The guy forgets all about the coffee as row upon row of “I’ve-Got-Your-Answer” tomes call to him, siren-like, from the soaring bookshelves.

If you’re like me, you’re someone who believes that there’s always room to change, to grow, and to learn. And all that changing, growing, and learning is fun — or ought to be.

But if you take a good look at your own bookshelves, I bet you’ve got somewhere between dozens and hundreds of New Age and self-help volumes that you haven’t even read.

Oh, those siren titles…

These books look terrific in the store.

They have sexy titles, good cover art, and delicious-sounding tables of contents.

The back-cover recommendation blurbs sing the author’s praises.

And as you flip through this one or that one, a paragraph or exercise catches your eye. You think, Hmmm…maybe this is the one that will work!

So you buy it and bring it home.

Perhaps it sits on your “to read” shelf or your bedside table for a while.

You skim a chapter or two when you have a little time, but for some reason, the book just doesn’t grab you the way it did in the store.

And so it goes into your general library — to silently remind you that you “Still Haven’t Found What You’re Looking For,” (thank you, U2).

Guess what? Me, too.

The Sixties were incredibly fat-phobic. No surprise Weight Watchers was founded in 1966.

I remember the first self-help book I bought in 1968, when I was 13. And I remember one chapter specifically:

“Judy has far out clothes. Judy has a fab hairstyle. And her makeup is always groovy. But nobody likes Judy, because Judy’s fat.”

Few books have ever done me as much damage as that first self-help paperback.

So that first chapter set me up to accept that no matter what I did, I’d never be good enough if I didn’t do exactly what the author said. And in my case, that was to see my perfectly normal body as elephantine, because I wasn’t Twiggy-emaciated.

I immediately started down that dreadful road of the perpetual dieter, those words keeping me miserable for decades, convinced that my looks made me a loser.

Take every self-help book that doesn’t work for you and toss it out! Right now!

From books that promise to make you a thin, sexy, and datable teenager, to ones that promise to make you thin, sexy and happily married post-menopause — not to mention compassionate, worldly-wise, activist, mindful, abundant, fearless, and happy in 350 pages or less — they are all designed to say You don’t have your own answers and you can’t trust yourself. I’m the expert; trust me.

If the author thinks a woman with three kids under 12 and a 50 hour a week job is going to get up and do yoga at 4 in the morning and avoid foods with leptin because they say so — they’re the ones who need a self help book to get rid of their overweening ego.

The person who knows you best is the one in the mirror.

Here’s the truth: what all those volumes — read and unread — have done is prove that the only one who has answers for you is you.

Oh, they can give you ideas. (I’ve even written one myself that I hope does just that for you.) But the ideas are worthless unless you filter them through the life you’re dealing with right now — and THEN decide whether they might be useful where you are.

Me? I’ve experienced successes and failures.

I’ve been fast tracked and shoved into the parking lot.

I’ve had days where I got to get up in the morning and days when I had to (quite a difference, let me tell you).

And along the way I learned, figured out what did and didn’t work for me, and realized that all the self-help books in the world don’t do a thing if they don’t speak to who you are in your life as it stands right now.

Read the books, yes — but only take what works for you, and throw the rest away!

Feel free to read these books. (Mine too.) But I want to inspire you to take your own journey, without comparing it to mine as an author or anyone else’s around you.

Because everyone’s experiences or challenges are different, it follows that any healing journey taken by my readers will also be unique.

One of the ways to find healing is through self-knowledge: understanding why you do what you do and how that brings certain events into your life. But what those answers are will totally and completely be up to you.

Find your own answers to discover all the wonderful things Life has in store for you.

It’s your life’s work, my friends. Find your own answers, design your own toolbox for Life, and discover that healing the old and creating the new can be a positive, joyful experience.