Self-Help: Are You Fooling Yourself?

With the huge growth in sales of self improvement books and the proliferation of personal development websites, wouldn’t you think that you would by now have witnessed a major shift in human awareness – a demonstrable improvement in the human condition? In fact it’s not just that there little evidence of improvement, all the evidence points to the opposite – increased levels of anxiety and worry as the economy nosedived having been hijacked by a small number of people obsessed with their own greed; a rise in anti-social behaviour and violent crime and the ongoing inappropriate behaviour of people who should know better on the international stage of so-called diplomacy and politics.

So, what are all those people who are indulging in self-help books doing? Actually, in the course of my work I speak to or meet quite a few of them and, undoubtedly, whilst some are taking major leaps forward in their lives, there are many who, as in every other facet of their lives, are going through the motions, fooling themselves into thinking that their mental state, attitude, behaviour and lives are being transformed.

It’s very simple to pursue a course of personal development and slip into a routine not dissimilar to all your other routines – habitual, repetitive, automatic and ultimately mindless. The minute anything becomes routine, it becomes useless to you in creating a better life. And, so, I encounter many people who have convinced themselves that they are developing their mindfulness – but who have ended up doing something else mindlessly! I’ve met plenty of people who meditate, who tell me that they’ve never felt as calm and focused in their lives – but, if they were to take one step back and take a look, they would discover that their lives are crumbling around them.

If you have embarked on the journey of self improvement you should immediately notice positive results in your everyday life. If you see no tangible results or benefits in terms of both personal effectiveness and the downstream benefits in your professional, personal and financial life, you are fooling yourself. And the longer you fool yourself the more dangerous it becomes – because you will convince yourself that your life is changing for the better when, in fact, you are becoming more divorced from the real world.

There are hugely useful and practical personal development resources around – but they are tools that have to be put to the appropriate use. They must be used during the minute to minute rough and tumble of your day – not just whilst you’re sitting in the lotus position at seven o’clock in the morning! Mindfulness – and all that flows from it – is something that must be practiced within the day – not in preparation for it. Until you bring what you’ve learned in your personal development courses and self-help books into the very moment to moment behaviour of your daily life not only will things not improve, they’ll get worse.