Your Self Improvement Blog

Each year tens of millions of people buy tens of millions of self help books. Every year surveys suggest that an increasing number of people are unhappy in with their lot in life, fed up with their job, worried about their finances and suffering from stress. Am I missing something, or is something really wrong?

Unfortunately, most personal development books are feel good books – no better than a good thriller that you can’t put down but that makes no difference to your life. Unfortunately, many self improvement books are penned by multi-millionaire self improvement ’gurus’ , who couldn’t get their head around the ups and downs of ordinary everyday life. The Brian Tracys and Deepak Chopras of this world are not struggling to pay the bank or the school fees. Practicing the seven steps to this or the seven secrets to that is easy when you’re gliding along in your limousine!

But, the biggest problem with self help books, however, is that they don’t provide ordinary everyday people with the practical and simple steps that you can take to change your life. These books don’t provide the reader with any appreciation that personal development is something that you’ve got to put into practice not just every day, but again and again during the course of the day. The reader doesn’t appreciate the commitment needed. Nor will the normal reader be able to conceive of the benefits – because he or she has yet to do what it takes to experience them for themselves. Above all, I’ve yet to come across a personal ‘success’ book that gives the reader a compelling enough reason to fully commit themselves to changing how they go about their lives.

In short, self help books are like badly produced holiday brochures. These books encourage the reader to read up on the destination but they don’t compel you to actually buy your ticket and embark upon the journey. That is why self improvement writers are getting wealthier while the normal guy in the street looking for a bit of practical advice is getting increasingly disillusioned.

Self improvement means just that – it’s the ultimate DIY. If you went out and bought a new electric drill or power saw, you’d go through the user’s manual and then start actually using your new toy. Sadly, we were not provided with a user’s manual – but we do need to know how we operate before we can operate ourselves to the optimum. Before you can change your life, or simply be happier, you need to know why you’re not happy at present, or why it is that you’re not wholly at ease with who you are. Psychological research gives us a great deal of information about how we work – but the problem that I have with psychology is that it’s mainly negative.

If you want to change the course of your life, if you want to go on that wonderful journey, if you want to experience life the way that it’s meant to be lived, you must start with the little steps of, for starters, understanding what makes you tick and, secondly, the tiny changes that can be easily and consistently made to fine tune what is a high performance machine… you.

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