One of my kids will be home any second now so I’ve been down on my hands and knees hiding my secret stack of books under the bed. Sounds pretty rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t it? As if I have a particular penchant for porn, or a collection of feminist literature so radical it would castrate all my boys on the spot (except for the little one he can’t couldn't be bothered). But the truth is much more shameful – I recently became addicted to self-help books…
It all started in Oxfam in Kensington High Street in January. I spotted a copy of Fiona Harrold’s Be Your Own Life Coach for 20p. The friendly, orange cover promised to show me how to take control of my life and achieve my wildest dreams. Success and eternal happiness for less than the price of a Twix? I couldn’t refuse. The past three years of my life have been in parts, tragic, sad, confusing, and most of all totally disorganized, so what could I lose?
Now, you don’t have to tell me that self-help books are distinctly un-British, horribly self-indulgent and inherently naff. Like most of us, I’ve felt rather superior, Hello magazine has always got some ‘troubled’star spotted with a copy of something like How to be a More Loving, Caring Person – the Celebrity Way sticking out of their Gucci's. But I thought buying a self-help book would be a laugh. I had no idea.
With a few uplifting words and some easy exercises (‘Spend some quality time with yourself’, ‘Imagine your ideal life’), self-help books make you feel as if you can take on the world. Okay, so sometimes they slip into squirmy hippie-speak (‘What do I tolerate in my life that demeans my divineness?’) but for the most part it’s like getting a one-on-one ego massage. And it really works.
I wrote endless lists of my personal goals, repeated such mantra’s as, ‘I deserve the best’ (very, very quietly and only when the kids were out) and I felt happier and more confident. I booked an adventure filled holiday (‘Try something you’ve never done before’) and even made a ‘shrine’ to myself with photos of me as a child, as a reminder that I was a ‘divine being’. Yes, I told you this was shameful.
Soon I was hooked and, like any addict, I needed my next fix. Faster than you can say, ‘self-obsessed, new-age bollocks’, I was researching the self-help section in Foyles every time I landed in London. My first visit was a grubby, sobering experience. The only other person there was a middle-aged man furtively eyeing up titles like Get Anyone to do Anything by David J Lieberman and Feel the Fear and do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers. When he saw me staring, he definitely felt the fear and grabbed the nearest book – How To Be An Assertive (Not Aggressive) Woman in Life, in Love and on the Job by Jean Bear – a mistake, I’m sure, and disappeared.
Scan the self-help shelves in any bookshop and you’ll find hundreds of promise-laden titles. Practical ones that will inspire you to get a promotion at work, and more airy-fairy, spiritual ones that will help you reach sainthood. The latter are mainly American and thanks to the fluffy pictures on the covers, generally the most humiliating to purchase.
I, of course, like everything else I’ve been into so far, bought the lot. And, as the months passed, I realised I was in trouble. My goal to always be punctual was scuppered by having to do three breathing exercises, four mantras and practice my smiley face in the mirror before getting in the shower. I couldn’t even cross the road without examining my motivation…. Is it a positive step? Lou has also pushed me into the 'take a deep breath before work' direction...
But, like any other addict, I had to reach rock bottom before I could come up again. I knew I was desperate when I clicked on to Amazon.co.uk and found that (based on my recent purchases) the book they thought I’d most like to read was Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in your Work and your Life by Spencer Johnson. However, the clincher came when ‘him indoors’ admitted he couldn’t go near me in the bedroom because the photo of me as a cutesy eight-year-old in bunches staring down at him from the ‘me shrine’ freaked him out too much...
Now I’m going cold turkey. I’ve hidden my books, dismantled my shrine and torn up my mantras. Once I’m free of all the ‘believe it’s possible’ baggage I might even write my own book – a kind of self-help book to self-help addicts stop buying self-help books. Actually, one has already been written: Self Help Nation: The Long Overdue, Entirely Justified, Delightfully Hostile Guide to the Snake-Oil Peddlers who are Sapping our Nation’s Soul by Tom Tiede.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so busy with my mantras and my shrines I would have got there first? …
It all started in Oxfam in Kensington High Street in January. I spotted a copy of Fiona Harrold’s Be Your Own Life Coach for 20p. The friendly, orange cover promised to show me how to take control of my life and achieve my wildest dreams. Success and eternal happiness for less than the price of a Twix? I couldn’t refuse. The past three years of my life have been in parts, tragic, sad, confusing, and most of all totally disorganized, so what could I lose?
Now, you don’t have to tell me that self-help books are distinctly un-British, horribly self-indulgent and inherently naff. Like most of us, I’ve felt rather superior, Hello magazine has always got some ‘troubled’star spotted with a copy of something like How to be a More Loving, Caring Person – the Celebrity Way sticking out of their Gucci's. But I thought buying a self-help book would be a laugh. I had no idea.
With a few uplifting words and some easy exercises (‘Spend some quality time with yourself’, ‘Imagine your ideal life’), self-help books make you feel as if you can take on the world. Okay, so sometimes they slip into squirmy hippie-speak (‘What do I tolerate in my life that demeans my divineness?’) but for the most part it’s like getting a one-on-one ego massage. And it really works.
I wrote endless lists of my personal goals, repeated such mantra’s as, ‘I deserve the best’ (very, very quietly and only when the kids were out) and I felt happier and more confident. I booked an adventure filled holiday (‘Try something you’ve never done before’) and even made a ‘shrine’ to myself with photos of me as a child, as a reminder that I was a ‘divine being’. Yes, I told you this was shameful.
Soon I was hooked and, like any addict, I needed my next fix. Faster than you can say, ‘self-obsessed, new-age bollocks’, I was researching the self-help section in Foyles every time I landed in London. My first visit was a grubby, sobering experience. The only other person there was a middle-aged man furtively eyeing up titles like Get Anyone to do Anything by David J Lieberman and Feel the Fear and do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers. When he saw me staring, he definitely felt the fear and grabbed the nearest book – How To Be An Assertive (Not Aggressive) Woman in Life, in Love and on the Job by Jean Bear – a mistake, I’m sure, and disappeared.
Scan the self-help shelves in any bookshop and you’ll find hundreds of promise-laden titles. Practical ones that will inspire you to get a promotion at work, and more airy-fairy, spiritual ones that will help you reach sainthood. The latter are mainly American and thanks to the fluffy pictures on the covers, generally the most humiliating to purchase.
I, of course, like everything else I’ve been into so far, bought the lot. And, as the months passed, I realised I was in trouble. My goal to always be punctual was scuppered by having to do three breathing exercises, four mantras and practice my smiley face in the mirror before getting in the shower. I couldn’t even cross the road without examining my motivation…. Is it a positive step? Lou has also pushed me into the 'take a deep breath before work' direction...
But, like any other addict, I had to reach rock bottom before I could come up again. I knew I was desperate when I clicked on to Amazon.co.uk and found that (based on my recent purchases) the book they thought I’d most like to read was Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in your Work and your Life by Spencer Johnson. However, the clincher came when ‘him indoors’ admitted he couldn’t go near me in the bedroom because the photo of me as a cutesy eight-year-old in bunches staring down at him from the ‘me shrine’ freaked him out too much...
Now I’m going cold turkey. I’ve hidden my books, dismantled my shrine and torn up my mantras. Once I’m free of all the ‘believe it’s possible’ baggage I might even write my own book – a kind of self-help book to self-help addicts stop buying self-help books. Actually, one has already been written: Self Help Nation: The Long Overdue, Entirely Justified, Delightfully Hostile Guide to the Snake-Oil Peddlers who are Sapping our Nation’s Soul by Tom Tiede.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so busy with my mantras and my shrines I would have got there first? …
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