Every now and then I weaken and buy a self-help book. I don't mean the really hokey Men Can't Cuddle, Women Won't Fix Light Bulbs nonsense , or the Vegetarian Pie for the Soul twaddle, let alone idiot pamphlets that tell you “Don't sweat the small stuff – and it's all small stuff”. Anyone who says that should find themselves out of work with two weeks' money in a dead job market, and we'll see how small they think buying food for the family is. Most of the stuff under “Mind, Body and Spirit” in even the proper bookshops (Foyles, Waterstones) is shallow, exploitative tosh.
I remember when I read Melody Beattie's Codependent No More . There a large part of me was, right there on those pages. I ticked the fifteen traits of a codependent without the slightest hesitation: I knew exactly what she was talking about. But by heaven she's written some fluff since. So has Julia Cameron (formerly Mrs Martin Scorsese): The Artist's Way is a neat book with a lot of good ideas. I don't do my Morning Pages as much as I used to, but there was a time I needed to and so I did. And that media-free week? Let me tell you, I did that, and I've never been quite the same since. But my god some of the follow-up stuff has been new-age chanting.
Then there are the You-Can-Have-It-All books. The ones that tell you how you can have a successful, meaningful, exciting life in a great job than you wake up and look forward to. Oh, if only. I steer clear of those because I know they're a crock. If there is one group of people I would wish to turn into, oh, say a qaat-chewing Somali and see what they make of themselves then, it's all those professional speakers who tell you the only limit to what you can achieve is your dreams. Absent their ability to raise the sponsorship, these people's dreams are just that. And we can't all live on each other's sponsorship.
Why do we buy self-help books? Because we think the writers know something we don't. But they don't. There's no research on this stuff. Pop economists always quote this or that paper by some behavioural economist or other, but you will never find a self-help guru quoting from research papers about motivation, regaining confidence, keeping unproductive thoughts out of your head, dealing with sudden redundancy (one piece of research found that people who were chucked out with a lot of money were more confident than those who got nothing – having been in both conditions, I will agree). Even if the research was there, I doubt they would quote it, because it would find that the way you felt was pretty much a function of your economic circumstances and the exact degree of insult inflicted on you. There would be a finding that certain people weren't badly affected, but they came from unusual backgrounds and had rare temperaments. Almost invariably the authors are peddling themselves as the success story – and it turns out that they have the temperament to handle being a self-employed author, speaker and trainer. Which makes them just like you and me. You can ignore the examples they quote, those people don't exist.
We buy self-help books because we don't have anyone we can trust to turn to for advice. Think about what that says about your parents, uncles, aunts and friends. That they're as clueless as you about how to handle whatever it is that's happening. If you thought they had some useful advice, you would ask them, not make some publisher's friend (self-help gurus are all friends of one editor or another) a little richer.
We buy self-help books because one of other of the “whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes” eventually knocks us flat, and temporarily takes away our self-confidence, our belief that we can get back up and start all over again and that there is anyone out there who wants to hire us, love us, help us, pick us for their team or generally extend some sign that we're not a total waste of space. From redundancy with beggar-all payoff, through re-organisations, re-locations, separation, divorce, break-ups, not even getting a date, not even getting an acknowledgement to your job application, being rejected for a job after a terrific interview, to being turned away at a nightclub or pub, finding all your alleged mates went off to a party Saturday night and forgot to tell you... the list is endless. The sources of happiness are few, the sources of upset almost infinite: so few Yes's, so many No's.
Thrashed with those whips and scorns, we have two choices. We can lie down and die or get back up and fight the endless fight. The only issue is how long we spend recuperating. Well, there is a third choice – sometimes: we can organise, so that employers can't just sling you out on the street with a couple of month's money or send the jobs over to Chennai. In the literature of self-help, the third choice does not exist. You are an isolated actor with no politics – though the guru may suggest you enlist friends as “coaches” or “cheerleaders” or some other such role.
Most people can take the whips and scorns of time reasonably well, experiencing a short-term loss of faith and general slump, before their natural good spirits plus some luck gets them back in the game. Also, being “most people”, they don't get whipped and scorned too often – one good reason for getting married and working at it. Some people don't have those natural good spirits, they don't believe in good things happening in the future, nor do they believe that anyone will keep their promises. Some people are just in the wrong places at the wrong times too often, others just can't choose decent people to work for, or love or befriend. Some people, in other words, don't do life very well. Self-help books are not for these people. Self-help books are for “most people”.
All these books need you to have an idea of what you want to do with your life. If you want to stop any self-help guru dead in her tracks, simply claim you have no idea what makes you happy or what is your dream job or lifestyle. Watch them ignore you or worse, tell you that “you must have some idea”. Most people can tell you what they want to do with their lives, just like most people can smile for the camera. Some people have no idea what they want to do with their lives, or worse, they do, but they can't make any money doing it or don't have courage to start and the determination to continue and the sheer damn stamina to finish. Self-help books are not for these people. And that would be me those books aren't for.
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