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

by Marianne Power

As I lay in the bath, the madness of the last month flashed through my mind like a video montage of a soap opera’s best bits. The icy dip, the karaoke, the nudity … I’d done more crazy things in January than I’d done in a lifetime. But had any of it helped me? Changed me? Well, yes. I’d once read that our fear is not that life is short, it’s that we don’t feel alive when we live it. But during my fear-fighting, I felt alive. Exhaustingly alive. Every day felt like a day when something could and would happen. I’d learned a lot too. By jumping in the pond, I saw that life begins the moment you decide to switch off the telly and get off your arse. With public speaking and the stand-up I learned that I was capable of way more than I’d realized. From karaoke I’d learned that life is much more fun if you just lighten up. And with the everyday things like parking, motorway driving and phone answering, I was surprised what a rush of confidence you can get just from doing the little things that you normally avoid. It was the opposite sensation to the energy-sapping worry and stagnation I normally lived with.