Self-Help Addiction
If you’ve ever found yourself thinking that life’s pretty ok, there’s nothing much pressing, no issues to deal with or problems to be solved, and then find yourself still reaching for that self-help book, stop! I find myself doing this sometimes, even though I’m exactly where I need to be and have got good plans sorted for myself and am moving in the right direction. The thing about it is, there’s always that thought, “Oh, but it could be even better, or maybe that next technique will save me or change my life and bring me eternal happiness”. There’s a fear of missing out, an obsession with figuring it all out, and an illusion that every second of life should be amazing (perhaps it could be, but you won’t experience that while using words like “should”). It’s procrastination too, thinking that you have to learn so much or be some certain thing before taking action, overcoming your fears, or being the person you want to be and living the life you want to live.
So, I put it to you (and to me), let’s stop reading for a while, stop trying to figure everything out, stop trying to get that next new technique. Let’s just play with what we have for a while, be content not to know the answers to all things, safe in the knowledge that those answers and potential solutions will still be waiting for us when we return to our questions. After all, who knows what you might learn from actually living instead of studying about life.
August 1st, 2006 at 12:46 am
LOL lewis i can honestly say that i own exactly one self help book and that was a gift
if i feel i am missing something that is my cue to take the dog and walk down by the canal and river and see what inspiration nature can show me 
good post
beccaxx
August 1st, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Ah, well I am being very general when I say self-help. Take that to include any self-development book, any spiritual or religious text, or even spiritual message based novel. Just anything with the aim of improving your life somehow in an obvious way. And I’ve got tons of them, more than half my library is made up of them. I have to say I got rid of many that I no longer refer to, but there’s a great many I still do.
Only one of those books then? I’m amazed! Well done on going to source for your answers, our consciousness paints a wonderful picture on the canvas of reality, nature can show us wonderful knowledge.
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 pm
I always remember when I discovered the Five Dragons Kung-Fu torrents site. I was enthusing to an instructor at my Tai Chi association about it and telling him about all the Tai Chi and martial texts and videos there were.
He said to me “You already have everything you need.”, which I took to mean that if you have one good set of spiritual (or in this case, martial) tools, use them to their fullest. If you keep running from place to place, system to system, you’ll never find what you seek.
August 3rd, 2006 at 11:10 am
Ah indeed. It amounts to finding the balance between finding the things that best suit you, and similarly sticking with certain techniques and systems long enough to get some depth and some understanding of them. Fortunately, as time has gone on I’ve realized just how similar most things are (just described in a different way) and thus it’s often easy to adjust and adapt without having to start again completely when moving from one system to another.