What self-help books won’t ( & can’t) tell you
As a trainer specialized in behavioral science and an Amazon No 1 bestselling author of four titles under holistic personal development, I often used to be confronted with the question regarding the utility of self-help books. There are people who claim that these books are helpful, while others who question this contention also are large in number.
As majority of the books in this genre is behavioral science and that being my domain, I felt the need to investigate this issue and find a reasonable answer to the conundrum.And my findings and conclusions are captured in a top-ranked book, which shares its title with this article.
Self-help is a paradoxical term, said George Carlin. “If you are looking for self-help, why would you read a book by someone else?”
Do self-help books really work? Opinions differ. Still, the genre has grown steadily and gained much popularity over the past few decades. If these books do help, why the topic gets hotly debated on social media and elsewhere?
How do their authors mesmerize people to believe that these books are veritable treasure troves, and why do their votaries vehemently vouch for them?
If they are indeed helpful, to what extent are they facilitating in self-development? If they don’t, what are the reasons thereof?
The author, a behavioral science trainer, made an in-depth study of this argumentative conundrum. Among other things, his findings threw out certain critical factors that generally get glossed over by the writers, users, and critics of self-help books (SHBs) alike.
The common criticisms against the SHBs are: They’re not focusing on the whole person, majority of these books seldom go beyond theories, philosophies, and principles to offer any framework for action, they have only a placebo effect, any behavior-change is a tall order, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, not followed by concrete exploit and perseverance, etc.
The booming of the SHB industry has been thanks to the easy availability, accessibility, privacy, the excitement of reading a best-seller, social proof, etc.
While these contentions are more or less valid, the critical constraining factors failing the SHBs lie elsewhere and are enigmatic. Many of these hidden factors render free will non-functional or non-existent.
What can you do if you don’t have the required talents for self-help? Can you create them? The answer to the first question is, if the self-help perforce needs a talent, and if you don’t have it, the self-help books won’t help. Talent, albeit cannot be created, can be developed,and the SHBs may help in it.
Can SHBs overcome or change the dysfunctional samskara or vasana of a person? The answer is an emphatic no, and that explains why majority of these books fails to bring off the desired results.
Can you erase your karmic imprints by using any tips the books offer? Again, no. To know more about karma and how it operates inexorably, I invite the readers to studying my book.
Why the spiritual premise that each person is a ‘crowd-in-one’; what challenges does it pose? Each one of us carry the karmic imprints provided by our innumerable forefathers, the worship systems they followed, the deities they worshipped, and much more. That way, individually, we’re all a crowd-in-one. We can get extricated from the karmic influence of our ancestors only through an effective spiritual intercession. No SHB can do anything about it.
Is there a difference between talent and vasana? Can vasana be overcome, and if so, how? Both talent and vasana are innate in nature but have different genesis. Vasana is born out of past karma, as against talent which is created by human physiology — by the interconnections of the brain cells. All the impressions of the past lives getting accumulated in the human mind will transform to become a tendency. It is an inclination or disposition to move in a particular direction or act in a certain way. A large number of these impressions on the mind will coalesce and become a habit, whih is the outward manifestation of your samskara. Self-help books can do precious little in altering them by the usual temporal methods they suggest.
Can you create or change your destiny, and if so, how? How about fate? The answers to both these questions are in the affirmative. Please read my book for the details.
Is there any way by which one can escape from the ancestral karmic baggage? Yes. But the route is spiritual; not through books.
More on that, later.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09FZJST33?https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09FZJST33?
Dr. K R S Nair
