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BY JENNIFER SILVERMAN
I’ve always been partial to self help books.
Lately though, my appreciation of self help reading has evolved into something entirely new.
I’m not exactly sure how to coin said evolution, but let’s say it borders on a self help book addiction and induces a sort of self help stupor.
It all started when I was a newbie divorcee working towards healing. Regularly listening to the sage advice of others became a crucial source of motivation.
What began with seeking insight from family and friends gradually expanded into thought leaders and experts. Eventually Oprah’s Super Soul Podcast and Gabby Bernstein’s Dear Gabby Podcast became encouraging essentials in my daily routine.
Next, I branched out to inspirational TV shows and began watching Touched by Angel reruns on the regular. (What can I say, it’s an uplifting TV classic and I find Della Reese utterly delightful.)
Eventually, it became painfully obvious that I was consuming way too much self help content and reading way too many self help books.
One self-help book completed over a period of weeks evolved into five self-help books being read simultaneously at warp speed. I jumped from one book to the next to the next depending on the events of the day. (I also went through several packs of hot pink highlighters.)
Finally, after enough devotion to the self help genre that I presume I could earn some type of degree, I realized I was completely, hopelessly, confused.
I imagine most people go about reading a self help book over their habitual timeline, soaking up the information, retaining it, and hopefully implementing the self improvement tools they’ve gleaned into their lives - gradually.
At least that’s how it began for me. When the initial few self help books proved effective, I decided to up the ante. “What could be the harm?”, I thought.
I admit to a long-held desire to be a good student. To sit up front, raise my hand, study hard, and get good grades. Even though I hadn't been in a classroom in many moons, I realized these hopeful high-achiever habits still die hard today. That perfectionist pupil thing reared its familiar head, and I regressed to my scholarly cramming mode.
It turns out that reading multiple self help books by various authors simultaneously does not put the "help" in "self help" - in fact it's anything but helpful. Needless to say, overindulging in self improvement can get puzzling – very puzzling.
Sometimes self help advice from diverse sources is aligned and personal development experts express similar theories in distinctive ways. Unfortunately, due to my chosen menagerie of authors, this was not the case for me.
It was during a session with my divorce coach, (yes, divorce coaching is a thing) when I realized I might be overdoing it. With her encouragement, it finally occurred to me that by striving to learn as much as humanly possible, all at once, as quickly as humanly possible, I was pretty much learning nothing at all.
So, my coach prescribed a self help detox to treat my apparent addiction. It’s now been three weeks since I allowed myself to hear Oprah’s voice or read a written word by Michael Singer.
Although at times I’m still tempted to sneak a peek at a page, any page, for just a minute, I have successfully resisted – at least thus far.
With some healthy distance from my desire to self help, I can see that such pursuits are best accomplished with focus, patience, and clarity.
Another essential ingredient in my future self-improvement recipe is salt – a grain of it to be exact.
Perhaps I’m better off letting one author’s advice simmer for a while, remembering that their recipe may be slightly different than the one in my cookbook of life.
Thankfully, lesson learned. (Maybe I should write it on one of those little recipe cards.)
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