The Trouble With Self-Help

“If you want to know where you are going, stop; look at where your feet are pointing and look behind you to see where the footprints are that got you here.” ~The Author.

I have been a part of the positive psychology, human potential and self-help movements since the late sixties. At this point in my own journey I am pausing to understand where we’ve been, where we are and where we are going. This pausing process seems to be a helpful one to go through now and then. If nothing else, it is likely to show you the way ahead and help better prepare for it. Personally, I sense we are about to head into uncharted waters without a map.

In my travels around the US and world, I have noticed that I fall prey to a very common habit, which I call priority reversal. This is when I approach a new situation in the reversed order, which always seems to put failure ahead of success. The habit in travel tends to lead you to focus on problems, discomforts, inconveniences and all the other negative things you don’t like about your new situation and feel a compelling need to fix everything that is annoying. Then after awhile (usually 3-years of living in a foreign country, working in a new job, or being in a new relationship), you start seeing more positive benefits of where you presently are, and think less of the drawbacks.

I think this personal habit reflects a strategy we all use in life and that is what all the positive psychology, human potential and self-help guidance is always trying to change about the movements themselves. We approach new situations in life automatically assuming we need to improve them or otherwise change them for the better. We fail to see the wisdom of the Zen Master’s advice of, “Let’s just wait and see” in reaction to the immediate judgment of the good or bad of a situation upon us. Maybe it is the pre-judgments and expectations of a new situation that we are prone to make, which cause the priority reversal. We’ll probably never figure that one out.

It has taken decades of some pretty harsh bumps and bruises along my journey to see the right order in which to approach new situations that confront me (and I do feel strongly that the skill of adapting to change is the most important one for all self-helpers to learn and practice). The correct order, to avoid the tail wagging the dog syndrome, is to make an effort to fit in the new situation first, and then set out to make beneficial changes to the situation you are fitting into, from the inside-out.

One benefit this re-sequenced approach to a new situation brings me, is that by taking the time to better understand a new reality I am already part of, I can clearly see what really does need changing and what doesn’t (the real priorities). And I also see how to be much more effective in changing a few things about the few things that do need improvement (the real tragedies, hardships and injustices for others in life; and my own approach in seeing and doing something about these things).

But the odd part of this learning curve is that failing first in trying to change everything and then succeeding in understanding and being a better self-helper, is what lets me know I am on to something important. And isn’t this what the whole self-help movement is all about? Now of course this revelation reveals the three stages of self-help—where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.

We have pretty well figured out the “what” and “how” of success in life, work and relationships and that is where we are now. That leads us to where we are going and all the hard work that will involve. We know all about the proper prescription for succeeding in thriving past life’s main tests. We have learned the important things: Knowing our fundamental purpose, having the right perspective to best see ahead, being clever in using our God-given talents to carry out our purpose, mustering the determination and perseverance necessary to keep us from caving in and quitting, and then being unselfish enough to share our piece of the treasure map with others.

What really remains is learning why and how to practice the virtues that are essential to make what we are trying to fit into easier and more comfortable, and help us see and change the few things that bring tears to God’s eyes. These things are war, ignorance, poverty, disease, divorce, child abuse, crime, scarcity, mental illness, violence, wasted talents, lack of appreciation, win-lose mentalities, laziness and lack of love.

How to actually learn and practice this purpose with the necessary single-mindedness and the patience in seeing this is where we are all going, is the real challenge before self-help gurus. And the trouble behind that challenge is the huge gap that is widening by the nanosecond between those few success thrivers way ahead of the remaining tribe of survivors trying to get past lives of quiet desperation.

The self-helpers that are in the trenches and doing what can be done to close this gap, are just too busy fitting in that they don’t have time to write about the real “how” of it. Maybe it is time they do pause and reflect, and then step forward, remembering and sharing how they did what they needed to do to go from surviving to thriving, themselves. I’ve tried to do this in my own humble way.