Help Me!: One Woman's Quest to Find Out If Self-Help Really Can Change Your Life

by Marianne Power

And maybe if I didn’t always have my guard up, waiting for people to judge me, I might realize that they are there to support and help … because deep down we’re all as scared as each other.

Psychologists say that there are two sources to all our fears. The first involves our physical safety – so people are scared of heights, snakes and fire because they can kill us. The second source of fear is of social isolation, which is why we are so scared of looking stupid in front of people or of being rejected.

She argues that just as crash diets won’t work unless you understand why you overeat, no attempts at saving and budgeting will work unless you understand why you are the way you are with money

She argues that if you love yourself you look after your money. People who don’t look after their money – either by spending too much, getting into debt, or keeping themselves in the dark about how much they have – are not ‘free spirits’; they are actually self-sabotaging.

That’s the thing with rejection: it’s painful for both sides.

The dangerous expectation that can be created by self-help books is that if you’re not walking around like a cross between Mary Poppins, Buddha and Jesus every day you’re doing it wrong. You must try harder.

‘Every ego wants to be special,’ Tolle once explained to Oprah. ‘If it can’t be special by being superior to others, it’s also quite happy with being especially miserable. Someone will say, “I have a headache,” and another says, “I’ve had a headache for weeks.”

many of us build our identities around our problems and so we are loath to give them up because it would feel like losing who we are.

Tolle says that at any moment, if we are worrying, we should ask ourselves, ‘Is there a problem right now?’ and ninety-nine per cent of the time there isn’t.

Enter the mysterious ‘pain body’ which, according to Tolle, is old pain that we carry around with us. From the day you wet your pants at school and felt ashamed, to the pain of your first heartbreak and that anger with your father … all that emotion, if not felt, expressed and let go of at the time, stays with you and informs how you respond to day-to-day life, even fifty years after the event. We unconsciously look for situations that confirm that our ‘pain body’ is right. So, for example, insecure people will find constant affirmations that nobody likes them and will even seek relationships with people who are not interested in them, just to confirm the feelings of their pain body.

opposite of being in the Now. Tolle describes stress as ‘being “here” but wanting to be “there”’. He says that it’s natural for all of us to plan things for the future but that we must never prioritize the future over today. You can set goals and work towards them but you must give the most attention to the step you are taking now, not the end destination. If you don’t do that, ‘your life is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it”. You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside, nor are you aware of the beauty or the miracle of life that unfolds around you.’

Sooo stop and smell the roses?

There were thirteen-year-olds with more game than me.

So much for the Power of Now. She’s starting to irritate me.

When you are as unhappy as I was for years, your unhappiness leaches into the air and affects everyone around you. You are not patient, you are snappy. You are not truly kind, you are cut off from others, locked in your own prison of misery. You are also, quite often, a worry to those who love you.