The Global Self-Help Addict

The evidence is in that good advice has become the most often exchanged email, book, video or website. Inspiration and motivation is a global industry growing at a fantastic rate. First we figured out we must work, then we figured out we must keep on working and now we are finding out that even that isn't enough, we have to keep working at something we LOVE TO DO because we need to work more than our grandparents did and we better like doing it because Prozac doesn't work.

Ok, I admit it. I am a self-help addict. At least it isn't mills and boons. One divorce and one child later, one's ideas about love and romance undergo a metamorphosis whose happy ending is the paycheck at the end of the month. But self-help, despite continual failure to find or create my ideal life where I live happily ever after, I have to admit the lure of the smiling peaceful bald guy (Robin Sharma) or the smiling beautiful woo woo lady (Doreen Virtue) who have become my bed fellows. Yup, these people with their answers for life, universe, everything i.e., YOU are my companions in a rocky sea. Ok, I thought I was the only one, turns out there are MILLIONS of people into self-help all over the world. More people read non-fiction than anything else. Fiction is for the ones without a dream and self-help for the careerists, the entrepreneurs, the gotta get somewhere crowd. Ask that tense looking guy on your daily commute on a train or if you aren't eco-conscious ask the tense looking guy in a leather jacket taking the extra large double espresso coffee at Starbucks (or the biryani/chat/chai shop), 'When was the last time you read a story book, eh?' or 'Arrey Bhai, Aap Ney kahani kab parhi?', If the person exudes a high degree of power, my suggestion is not to smile, instead lean slightly and say, 'I bet you don't read fiction'. If he is a high powered executive who is in a nice mood, he might shrug or simply stare into your eyes. You know your answer, he doesn't want to waste his time on a live person ergo, no, he doesn't read fiction.

Why is self-help so popular? It draws both men and women. There is self-help for every kind of human need and emotion. 50 years ago, self-help wasn't common. People read newspapers, magazines, comics and good ol fiction and poetry. Self help as a category of reading is postmodern and meant to cope with modern problems and ambitions. The earlier precursor, books on ethics were written for people to conform to someone's idea of being worthwhile. The oldest self-help (a book to qualify as self-help must not be written by God or his minions) that I can recall is a dense treatise called 'Bahishti Zevar' in Urdu. The title means the jewels of heavan. It is a book written by a highly educated (in the Islamic tradition) man who wanted to teach women how to be successful women. It has all sorts of pearls of wisdom on hygiene, feminity and divinity. Back in those days men spelled out what it takes for a woman to succeed, it was rather kind of them, but it was misunderstood as oppression. Such a book cannot be written anywhere on the planet today--even Tora Bora has become emancipated. Communication between the sexes is very difficult now because the guy isn't able to spell the rules clearly and you have to guess at them. The ones who can guess (read the self help literature on dating, romance and breakups) the rules do really well, the ones who want equality, those women can just find other women. The modern age is a wonderful age of options and the sky is the limit to what we can achieve. Actually, err, we can get whatever we want. Even though something tells you that isn't really true, you can't possibly allow that negativity to enter your mind because shhh, it can attract bad things into your life....

In an odd kind of way, self-help gets people to behave in a way that maximizes their chances of success. Back when, parents were supposed to do that job, now it is a bald guy, a bearded guru or a pretty lady with a perpetual enlightened smile, telling you what to do/think/be.

Who reads self-help? The self-help addict is a professional who hasn't figured out that it can't happen. He/she just hasn't made peace with his/her mediocrity. If he had, he'd be as slimey as the guy in the next virtual office. But till his idealism lasts, drink a toast to him because he give millions of dollars to other hopefuls who write about how anything is possible, all you have to do is think of it hard.

There are seven chakras of self-help addicts:

1. The super idealistic kind, who reads self-help and actually goes out and gets a visioning board, pins his pictures of his perfect life on it and looks at it every day and regardless of setbacks to this happy picture, keeps on rooting for himself. This guy is the born entrepreneur, who will somehow find a way to get where he wants.
2. The basic idealistic kind. This guy will do the visioning, but hide the board behind a cupboard. He will jealously guard his secret dream, lest other people laugh at him.
3. The average guy. This guy will read the book, or watch the movie, but he won't do anything in particular, other than get the main idea, be patient and persistent. He will set a moderate goal (get to work and work) and keep at it day in and day out till he retires.
4. The 4th category is the one who gets discouraged, he'll try something, it won't work, he will give up and either try to be average or above average instead. He realizes that his ambitions must be moderate. The world's company's are full of average people.
5. The 5th category is the saddest creature. He reads this stuff voraciously, but stands like an iceberg frozen as it were, unable to change, unable to move forward. He is the guy who never talks to you about how much he knows, yet under the piles of paper in his cubicle, he has tomes of literature and snippets of ideas. He just hasn't got it that he better start moving.
6. The 6th category are people who say they read self-help, but actually don't really. This is a unique new age phenomenon, the wanker is a person who says he wants to live an idealistic life, yet he/she is so happy being mediocre that he won't ever want to change. This category reads self-help to just talk about it in front of friends. This person is happiest watching movies and sitcoms, because he is just too satisfied.
7. The 7th category of self-help readers are people going through some significant change in their lives. These people read self-help to cope with a recent death, break-up, failure, lay-off, because he/she has no-one to talk to and even if he/she could talk, it doesn't really help. The 7th has a strong impetus to change and the crossroads in his life is a fanstastic opportunity to turn the tide, however, whether he actually become category 1 is a throw of a dice.

It is a fact that people who read a lot, don't do a lot--at least not right away. Till the self-help addict stops reading and starts doing, his energy is all potential. It takes guts to actually change and start believing in your own ideas. That kind of courage isn't easy to find. It comes from the heart and few have hearts that have space to dream and do for others, greatly though we may want to live that kind of life.