Scientific American recently posted an article by Michael Shermer on the “Self Help and Actualization Movement (SHAM)”, painting self-help as a scam industry. It’s an interesting piece and well-worth a look at, although based on my own experiences I have to disagree with Shermer.

The core of Shermer’s view is quoted below:

SHAM takes advantage by cleverly marketing the dualism of victimization and empowerment. Like a religion that defines people as inherently sinful so that they require forgiveness (provided exclusively by that religion), SHAM gurus insist that we are all victims of our demonic “inner children” who are produced by traumatic pasts that create negative “tapes” that replay over and over in our minds. Redemption comes through empowering yourself with new “life scripts,” supplied by the masters themselves, for prices that range from $500 one-day workshops to Robbins’s $5,995 “Date with Destiny” seminar.

That’s pretty scary, and the worst part is that it’s not entirely false. There are people out there addicted to the stuff and shelling out an amazing amount of money without corresponding results. There are also plenty of self-help “gurus” out there more than happy to provide high-priced products and like with any other industry, not every product is worth buying.

I Have Received Great Results from Self-help Without Spending a Fortune

I have only been reading material that would fall under the category of self-help for three or four years. I don’t read it often and I am picky about what I do choose to read. To me every book is a significant investment in time and mental power, so I pay close attention to reviews and try to be objective about what I can expect to gain from reading. The results have been absolutely phenomenal.

The single greatest thing that self-help has taught me hasn’t been optimizing my sleeping patterns, eating better, thinking positively, or exercising regularly. It has taught, or to be more accurate, infused in me the notion that the average is highly below standard. This isn’t about crazy elitist egotism, although humility is a skill to be learned in itself, it’s about realizing that surpassing the average is really easy. That’s a complete 180 degree reverse on how most of us are brought up, and certainly how western society as a whole is shaped. As a society we put people who make significant accomplishments on a pedestal. They are out of the ordinary, blessed with exceptional talents, mental abilities, or bodies. An elite super people, a portion of which we follow on the TV with hungry eyes wishing we could be like them, but knowing that these are just silly dreams and that it won’t happen.

These super people really aren’t that better, they just did certain things and had certain attitudes that most of society does not. Attitudes that most of society has learned to fear and dismiss in order to revalidate their viewpoint that what they have is all they can get out of life.

Most self-help gurus, regardless of the quality of their individual advice, realize this fundamental problem and the need for an attitude shift. They preach this information in the ways that they can, and thanks to supply and demand the ones with some business savvy make a lot of money. They attract some people who take this advice to heart and use it to change their thinking and ultimately their lives. Then there are the people who are looking for a quick fix and in best case will read the book, feel “motivated”, run around in circles, and eventually fall back into their old patterns. Then they buy more stuff and create a ghastly scam image.

and Here’s Why I Disagree With Shermer…

Shermer points out a statistic that the biggest self-help customers on a topic are those who have bought a product on that topic before. Shermer then suggests that if the previous book on the topic should have helped you, then you shouldn’t need to buy another one. That’s only a valid argument if you are one of those people that reads a lot but learns nothing, or if you buy into the fallacy that self-help admittedly loves to paint - everything is a quick-fix. Books and lectures aren’t magic. They can be empowering, motivational, and educational, but ultimately it’s still up to you to get up, take the book’s advice, and then apply it for 30 years, not 30 days. Concepts tackled by self-help are deep subjects just like engineering, architecture, and philosophy. A single $19.95 paperback won’t educate you about everything there is to know on the subject and with so much left to discover in these areas what you end up reading is only one method or viewpoint of a single author.

Take charge of your life and be responsible for your actions and faults. If a book promises you results and you don’t achieve them, the solution isn’t to buy a $500 audiotape or attend a $6000 seminar. Go look at what went wrong. Is the advice the author preaches reasonable for you to implement? Are you actually doing what the book tells you? Did you give up after 30 days?

So how much have I spent on self-help? Not a whole lot. Depending on which books in my collection you classify as self-help, that number is as low as $200 or as high as $300, over the course of several years. To put things in perspective I spend about $60 a month on coffee, an unnecessary and unhealthy habit. A university course costs $500 a pop in Canada. If you aren’t attending $6000 seminars then self-help is some of the best value out there. Every book provides nuggets of useful information and even one “Eureka” moment per book can have life altering results.

Other Viewpoints

• “Self Help and Actualization Movement (SHAM)” by Michael Shermer
• WHY read self-development books? by Paul Piotrowski
• Is Self-Help a Scam? by Steve Pavlina
• Analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by John T. Reed

Waiting. It’s a fact of life. You’ll wait in line, you’ll wait to get somewhere, you’ll wait for a package in the mail. Waiting eventually brings on frustration, and that brings on complaining. Well complaining can be fun and I like to indulge a little myself sometimes, but…

Wouldn’t it be better to turn this time into something that will radically change your life for the better?

A little dramatic? Perhaps, but not far off the mark. I did this just yesterday on a flight and it came as easily as staring into space, shifting uncomfortably in my seat, or overpaying for a hamburger.

I accomplished it by picking up a book. Profound? Hardly. There is a little more than that to it, but not much. Specifically I made a conscious decision to learn something new in the 8 hours of my life that I would be devoting getting from point A to point B. Having made this simple and easy decision I packed accordingly, stuffing into my luggage Josh Gordon’s Selling 2.0 and The Wine Brats’ Guide to Living with Wine for a lighter read.

I arrived at my destination with 5 new ideas to immediately implement into my business sales process, along with information on how to build a wine cellar cheap.

The lesson here is that while you can’t always (or even often) choose your environment, you sure as heck can drastically alter the results you receive from your situation. The best part is that the line between complacent inaction and amazing achievement is very thin. You stand on it everytime you choose between staring at the neck of the passenger in front of you, watching the in-flight movie, getting work done, or picking up a book. All it takes to end up on the great side is shifting your balance a little towards it.

I highly recommend choosing educational reading above all else. The absolute best part of putting wasted time like this to good use is that you haven’t committed to getting the other mundane but somehow important stuff done during it, such as answering e-mails, washing dishes, or writing a report. The time has already been written-off as wasted, it’s sitting there in the discarded inventory bin, and now you have the opportunity to seize it to get all that reading done that you’ve been putting off. A famous quote by an author whose name escapes me states “The people who complain the most about not having enough time are those who waste the most of it”. This is your chance to eliminate that “I don’t have the time” excuse and learn new concepts and ideas that can literally reinvent your future.

Another great task to do when in a waiting situation is the infamous goal planning. Putting pen to paper and setting or revising goals for your business and your life is in my opinion one of the very few things that you could do which will have an even more lasting and beneficial impact on your life as education.

Stop dreading the Wait and make it the most productive and insightful time you have!

A couple weeks ago I came across a site called bookcloseouts.com They sell brand new books at heavily discounted prices - typically 50-80% off. I was able to purchase 17 books, mostly on business topics, and all of which are currently available in stores, for a total of $30 Canadian. The dollar 4 dollar promo rewards you with free books as part of your purchase if its large enough, and that helped make the already amazing prices even better.

How do they do it? The website states:

“BookCloseouts.com is one of North America’s largest sellers of Bargain Books. Bargain Books are new, unread books that the publisher sells-off in volume to reduce excess inventory. Sometimes the publisher printed too many copies, in other cases bookstores purchased too many copies and have returned them to the publisher for credit. The books therefore have been handled a few times but are still in excellent condition.”

Works for me. The books do have black marker lines on the side, but they do not impede reading and aren’t even really noticeable. Give them a shot if you are looking for some reading material.