Self Help Books – help yourself by not reading them

If you take a glance at the library in my parents office, you'll see a whole section dedicated to self help books. You know the type, Seven Secrets of Highly Effective People, Chicken Soup for the Soul, You Are Your Best Friend and the list goes on. We have all given advice before, and quite a lot of it comes from a background of failure, we may preach and may not have actually put that advice to practice.

Its easy to tell people what to do and how to do it but doing it ourselves? Well that's not so easily accomplished. The key to these books and their success would flow back to the basics of the Bible. It is a book, that has a bunch of lessons and life guidance through which people 'find their way in life'. It allows the helpless to feel on the right track. Now these self help books follow the same ideals, give advice and set back to see how it all goes. The authors may never have been in the situations they offer advice on, but they feel the need to be dictatorial about what is the best method to recovery.

This book worries me, as it claims to have seven steps to changing your life, which is a pretty big thing, yet its a 'Quick Read' according to the top of the book.

I have always been skeptical about people sharing secrets of one thing or another, because sharing a secret, well, means it loses its secret status. If you had a secret to great sex or million dollar stock market success, would you really write a book about it so that everyone else can jump on the band wagon and lower your chances of making the big bucks? Its a tough call, do you help society, or just yourself.

If you read a range of these self help books, you'll quickly discover the differing opinions from author to author. One may tell you to love yourself, the other may say loving ones self is unproductive. Maybe we could sit all those authors in the same room and come up with a new Bible, a super self help book. It would sell like hotcakes (do hotcakes really sell well?). In fact it would probably get book of the month with Oprah and then world wide control would be in the hands of a few PhD nerds.

If you need help, you wont find it in a book, you'll find it by talking to the older generation, our war heroes, pioneers of industry and your parents. For they hold countless tips on realistic, common sense situations. Chicken soup is for appetite and hunger, not for the soul.