Skip to main content

Self Help

This column by Oliver Burkeman at Guardian is a succinct summary of what ails the bulk of self-help books. The few times I've picked up one, I've felt more distressed than helped or as Burkeman notes felt "kicked" rather than "nudged" to fix what's broken in my life. The one thing about advice of any kind is that it is credible and inspiring only when the advisor has done in their life exactly as they preach and has found it effective.

This is not unlike a parent teaching their child right and wrong. You can make the best speech and the most convincing argument for your case but if you haven't walked the talk, chances are the child will tune you out. The problem with the self-help genre is two-fold. The nudges outweigh the kicks so vast swathes of the population cannot relate . They drown the reader in platitudes as they prescribe their one size fits all cure-all. An
article in Salon describes the self-help industry as follows :

...the self-help industry is a modern boondoggle and annoyance -- more disturbing than, but akin to, that damn noise the kids call music these days. It's a waste of money, it saps folks of their gumption, and no one can prove it works

The most fundamental flaw in the rationale of the self-help genre is that for a few dollars anyone could get a genie in a bottle who could magically make everything right for them. This is like expecting to graduate Med school only by reviewing a set of CliffNotes.


Ms M, my mentor from high school days swore by the power of biographies. She believed it was the best source of inspiration and guidance for our own lives - these were companion volumes to the unfolding story of your own life. You read them over and over again and learned new things each time. These books were like maps you took on a road trip but they were not teleportation devices that whisked you to your destination effortlessly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...