Self help is for times like these
November 10th, 2008 -
When what we are experiencing in the economy is described as having similarities to the “Great Depression,” it seems like a good time for us all – elected officials and ordinary people alike - to remember what Einstein said about getting ourselves out of problems.
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
On a personal level, one place you might to look for ideas that can spark new thinking for youself is in the self help section.
Self help ideas can expand our own ideas of what is possible.
At its core is an ethos of personal responsibility. By this, I don’t mean what usually comes to mind when we think of taking responsibility- getting a job, buying a house, or getting married. I refer more to the self-reliance espoused by Ralph Waldo Emerson, that of being responsible for how you interpret your experiences.
The self help genre actually grew out of times of uncertainty and the collapse of traditions. It might be helpful to look at some works that are included in this “literature of possibilities” to see how we can apply their key messages to our personal experiences in times like these.
First book in the genre
It all started with a book called Self Help in 1859. Samuel Smiles was a political reformer who concluded the real revolutions happened in the minds of people.
He took the idea of “progress” in the 19th century and applied it to personal life. Using the power of biography, he shared stories of people who demonstrated a never-say-die pursuit of their goals. The key message in Self Help is reliance on your own efforts, not waiting on government help or any other kind of patronage.
Self help during the Great Depression
The biggest overall self improvement seller (over 15 million copies sold, in all major world languages) is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It was first published in 1936, when America was still in the clutches of the Great Depression.
The book quotes the American philosopher John Dewey who believed the greatest desire in human nature is “the desire to be important.” In this book, Carnegie offered people in a time when jobs were scarce, especially for people with little education, a way to get ahead using the one thing they owned outright – their personality. Carnegie believed that the person who understood this deepest desire for appreciation would also know how to draw the best out of others. This doesn’t happen through flattering but through genuine appreciation of another person’s good points. This requires one to really see another person in all their goodness, perhaps for the first time. The key message is that you will never influence a person unless you first truly like and respect him. Such “people skills” are needed in all times and can be practiced in grocery check out lines, equally in boardrooms.
Like a tree in Autumn
In times like these, we might try to focus less on whether what is happening is “good” or “bad” and more on what important life change it presents. While we might have set expectations that life after 30 would mean stability, it doesn’t work like that. You were never meant to be the same person all your life. Whether you chose a change or change has been thrust upon you, a transition is certain. The good news is transition is as natural as the trees shedding their leaves in autumn.
Based on the “rites of passage” identified by anthropologists, William Bridges shows us how to make sense of life changes in his book Transitions. This is more than a how to book for coping with change. By explaining the psychology of change; Bridges demonstrates how transition - in its three phases - results in a renewed sense of direction.
Thinking for times like these
As in any other time, happiness only can come from within. It is the state of personal responsibility.
It isn’t part of our nature as human beings to be held hostage by events in the world because we are part of something greater. A self-reliant person will recognize this and will find ways to live in this world and improve it, not be merely another product of it.
Find a title right for you
Tom Butler-Bowdon has read the best in the self help genre and put his recommendations in 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books to Transform Your Life. For each book, he shares insights about the author, the book’s primary concepts, and who could benefit from reading it.