The Vicious Cycles of Self Help
As a kid I absorbed a popular notion: that life was about growing. Not the kind that made you tall, but the kind that helped you overcome your “issues.” My dad—as a psychology professor— knew all about issues. Most people had them the way dogs had fleas. Whenever you spotted one, you had to triumph over it—fast—before it ruined your life.
Beyond triumphing over weaknesses, the ultimate goal of growing was never clear. But it seemed to mean becoming someone else—someone nicer, smarter, and better.
If my dad never exactly told me that, his bookshelves did. He had many books. Some were weighty academic tomes by psychologists like Freud, Jung, and Skinner. But he also had stacks of brightly colored self-help paperbacks.
The variety of titles showed that issues took many forms. And for every insecurity, weakness, or shortcoming, there was an army of experts who had written books about it.
I gathered that a self-help book was a kind of fairy godmother who escorted you through life. Under her benign tutelage, you could shatter your worries, snare happiness, make friends, stop procrastinating, heal relationships, or vault to the top of something called a “corporate ladder.”
By the age of seven my head was stuffed with self-help maxims: “Think positively,” “win friends and influence people,” “be motivated.” I remember bouncing around the living room singing a positive thinking mantra, “Think enthusiastic and you’ll be enthusiastic” as my parents looked on in amusement.
My giddy chant had come down to me from one of the self-help courses my dad taught to his college students, lectures about adopting a positive attitude, getting along with people, asserting your rights, and achieving goals.
The teaching guides came with visual aids. My favorite was called a “warm fuzzy”—a tiny orange fuzz ball with google eyes, small enough to fit in my palm, and soft, with an adhesive strip at the bottom. It was a metaphor for a compliment or a kind act—the opposite of a “cold prickly” which was an insult or a snub.
My dad had a whole bag of warm fuzzies. I filched handfuls while his head was turned and stuck them all over everything, including my notebooks that I took to school with me.
The cottony creatures were always falling off and seemed to proliferate on the tiled floor like the tribbles on Star Trek. Once, I looked across my classroom to see a boy cleaning his eyeglasses with one of them.
Other than warm fuzzies, my dad—at one point—also had a bag full of brightly colored plastic coins, each of which had the letters “TUIT” printed on it.
They were a gimmick for inspiring others to achieve their dreams. The idea was that you carried your “Tuit” around in your pocket; then, whenever you met a procrastinator, you would wait for him walk into your trap. For example, he might say, “I want to start exercising, and someday I will, when I get around to it.” Then you would hand him your plastic coin and say, “There. You have a round Tuit. Now go join that gym!”
Games like that dazzled me. But the fun ended when I discovered that I had an issue: I was shy. When my dad learned that I was getting bullied at school for it, he was ready: he weighed down my arms with books about how to triumph over my shyness.
The books inducted me into the confusing paradoxes of self-help. By defining shyness—and not the bullying—as a problem that needed solving, I became ashamed of my shyness, which only made me shier.
The books treated shyness a disease or a character flaw. The prescribed cure was to talk more. I tried this, but since I had nothing I really wanted to say, the other students could tell my efforts were forced, and the bullying redoubled.
My childhood would have been far more tolerable if I had known that there was nothing wrong with being shy—and that would have actually made me less shy.
After I failed to “triumph” over my personality, I decided my dad could keep his self-help books; I never wanted to look at one again.
But I did. When I turned fifteen, my dad bought See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar, a bestselling motivational book about achieving goals. The book was filled with amusing quips, cartoons, and anecdotes. It was a hit in my house and my dad was always quoting from it. It focused on how to get rich while also becoming a better person, using the corporate ladder as a metaphor for life.
I knew nothing about corporate ladders, but goals I understood. In fact, I already had one. I had decided that I wanted to be the best at something. I wanted to be a straight A student.
I read the book and followed the advice: I wrote down my goals, a list of potential obstacles, and all the ways I planned to overcome them. Three months later when my first quarter report card came out, I exulted over my perfect record.
I began to dream big. Someday I would get a PhD in biology. And a dog. And I would live in a quaint stone house on a remote mountain precipice. A seething ocean would batter the boulders below. I would spend my time writing poetry about seagulls, and eating chocolate, and thinking deep thoughts.
But chasing goals, as a lifestyle, came with discomfort. You could never stay still or look out windows. Life was an unending climb toward some hazy pinnacle. The future was where all the prizes were. My todays dimmed because it lacked the sheen of my tomorrows, which were unfairly haloed by the flattering light of fantasy.
Gone were the carefree summer days of drawing my cat, writing vampire stories, pecking on the piano keys, and daydreaming. Life was a chore, and to be unproductive, even for a day, was to fail at life.
My brother Steve, seven years older than me, felt the same pressure. But he dealt with his in an odd way. As an adult he began hoarding self-help books.
At one time, they literally littered the floor of his apartment, so that there was barely room to walk. He had rarely read more than few pages of any of them—including the one that promised a clutter-free life. But just having self-improvement books around made him feel more in control, so he refused to part with them.
I understood. We had grown up in a household where a self-help book was the remedy for everything. So why not brick yourself inside your apartment with them? It made perfect sense.
But I had to tease him anyway.
When I was in college, Steve and I used to walk around bookstores together. As I wandered the store, Steve would always gravitate toward the self-help aisle. I wondered what he ultimately hoped to find there: the meaning of life? A great epiphany? The secret to saving the world?
“Have you found The Book yet?” I asked him one day.
“Huh?”
“The Book.” I had to explain that, obviously, he must be looking for the Ultimate Book which contained the Answer to Everything. Otherwise, why was he so obsessed with that one aisle?
He knew I was kidding and laughed, but he really did want that imaginary book. For that matter so did I.
“The Book” became a wistful joke—the rare volume that would magically solve every problem imaginable. It would give you more time and riches and eternal youth and a diet that let you eat all you wanted. Upon request it would even offer a personalized schedule for maximizing productivity.
But even in our dreams, The Book was elusive. The reason we had not found it yet was that, naturally, it was always getting sold out. Even if you spotted it, someone was liable to jump in front of you and snatch it.
But someday—the fantasy went—one of us would find The Book, the magical distilled essence of every self-help book there ever was, and our lives would be transformed. We would become super beings—productive and creative and rich and never sad.
Many years later, neither of us have ever found The Book. But my wish to be “better” remains. I stay away from self-help books though. I remember how fighting my shyness only made me shier, and how setting goals projected happiness beyond my reach. I remember how a book on reducing clutter only became part of the clutter.
Even without books telling me what to do, my self-improvement efforts always seemed to lead to vicious cycles. Whenever I tried to concentrate better on my reading, I ended up concentrating on concentrating, and I forgot about the book altogether.
Such ironies make me envy my cat. I recently found her lying carefree in the sun and stretching in a posture of total bliss.
I thought how lucky she was to never have to worry about being a better cat. No one had ever given her a self-help book on how to be a better jumper. She never fretted about needing a fluffier tail. I never looked at her and thought, “If only my cat would be more productive.”
I accepted her as she was, even when she shredded the furniture. I thought that if I could accept my cat unconditionally, I could do the same for myself. But even that may be an improvement beyond my grasp.
Maybe I just need to start meditating. That will solve everything. I will have to begin soon though. This afternoon maybe. Or tomorrow. Or next week. Or at least when I get around to it.
But who knows when that will be? Nobody has offered me a Tuit, of any shape, in years.
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