Thoughts about self-help books 📚

People often ask me to recommend a self-help book that might help them achieve something be it losing weight, investing, building careers and etc.

Till date I always have the same reply, “I don’t read self-help books”.

I mean I’m sure self-help books can be useful if you can apply what the author is asking you to do seamlessly into your life. However I find that to be easier said than done.

An author can ask you to follow a certain diet, focus on a certain task, invest in certain stocks, save a certain amount of money, set reminders and goals and anything else. But often times an individual’s circumstances in life is not as straightforward as just applying what one person in a book is saying.

For example, a person might not be financially literate enough to even know how to buy a stock due to lack of education. Or a person’s abusive environment might not let him or her just set goals and follow them easily.

What I’m saying is that self-help books treat everything as black and white and assume there’s a cookie-cutter solution that applies to every reader. I think most people understand themselves better than an author that never met you in your life before.

Hence I would like to give an alternative to self-help books: read a diverse range of topics in general. I also recommend reading science from its basic sources such as physics, biology, psychology and neuroscience to help you understand what is within the realms of possibility and to also understand how your mind and body function.

If science just bores you that’s okay too. Read books about case studies and biographies–draw on people’s past experience and formulate what works for you. Rather than reading an advice that is telling you what to do, try to diversify your reading and pick and choose what can apply in your life in that specific moment.

In time I think you will find solutions to your problems that are tailored made for you and by you.

And with that, you gain the most powerful self-help ability: the actual ability to help yourself with a solution crafted by you.

Of course if a self-help book works for you then all the power to you too. They won’t be bestsellers if they aren’t at least working for some people.

But I implore you to try other books for a change, you might gain more insights than you think :)

Cheers.

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