| Cool. You know a lot about this topic. I didn't connect self-help with philosophy turning super analytical in the early 1900s, that's interesting. My opinion is more from just my experience with self-help, and others who were also really into it. Self-help, and people engaged in it, have an undercurrent of anxiety. But that's just my experiential knowledge of it (I would say the same for psychology and philosophy majors). Also I wouldn't place Marcus Aurelius or Aristotle or some of my favorite philosophers under the umbrella of 'self-help'. If you really wanted to take it out there, then self-help is really everything. What is the purpose of anything but to improve the set standard with which you measure the experience of a human being, a society, or a civilization? You could extend the umbrella forever, and include psychology, etc., with diminishing definitiveness. The main gripes I have with growth-mindset is the rigidity of it. It is hard to think a positive thought while you are 'negative'. But also, it is hard to think a negative thought while you are 'positive'. To the mind, negative and positive sentiments do not matter because they are simply the responses that were generated by one's beliefs. Now growth mindset proposes that you could magically make negative beliefs positive. This is poor psychological advice. There is a reason why those beliefs are negative. While direct examination of those beliefs (an interrogation of sorts) might not be the best way to re-form those beliefs, just plain forcing positivity on a negative belief is just as harmful as forcing negativity on a positive belief. Forced hope is just as violent as forced hopelessness. It's one thing to encourage someone, and another to say that 'the reason for your failure is that you are not positive enough'. Or to say 'if you just change your mindset, you can succeed'. It really a) cheapens how difficult it is to change yourself and b) takes the person away from actually understanding themselves on a deeper level. I really started changing when I stopped trying to change myself so much. Self-help (and basically zero Western philosophy) doesn't understand that. You could take the route from modern clinical psychology (memory reconsolidation, etc.) and get there, or find a good martial arts master and learn taoism. Yeah, thinking back on it, self-help sucks. |
I totally agree with everything you said. What you are rightfully criticizing goes under different names — "positive thought", "creative thought", "the secret". It's all the same woowoo indeed, you described it perfectly.
For some reason you haven't grasped or recognized the 'correct' mechanism or technique in that book (or I guess many others in the domain), but you got it otherwise so it's likely just a matter of cultural / personal fit — language that speaks to you. Martial arts certainly is one way, not fit for everyone either, though.
The actual 'magic' IME is the discovery of that "third-eye" skill i.e. 'controlled' introspection (to look into oneself). That's why I recommend Covey because he's got some of the best paragraphs on the topic, and this one thing is literally a game-changer for people who never explored for themselves the immensely vast space (and time) that exists, when trained, between "input" (things outside, things inside too) and "output" (a response, both external and internal). This quote: (emphasis mine)
> “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
It really is a superpower from a cognitive standpoint (actually trained in cognitive therapy too, immensely, but sadly for now psychology is mostly focused like medicine on curing the ill, not improving the 'normal').
The Stoics saw that space —explicitly so, all of them. In Tao too I hear, though I have yet to read the Tao Te Chin myself.
It's a skill-with-no-name (probably had/has a Greek word for it) that pervaded cultures to this day obviously. But it is the actual key to what you referred as "magically make negative beliefs positive", except it's not magic, not by a long shot: it's work, it's hard on yourself, it requires effort and time, training, lots of failure. But there's only benefits and zero side effects so...
It's a trained skill. At first, you fail miserably, like anything. After about a year, it's become second nature (still de-trainable though, one must remain self-aware on occasion). At first it's conscious effort, spent willpower, it's tiring and you want to just stop, let it go. But it gets better. Effortless eventually, like riding a bike. It's certainly closer to Zen than any form of first-degree 'blind' emotional 'management' (I mean, all therapies and such help, but they merely pave the way to a deeper understanding and meaning that only one can create for oneself).
> I really started changing when I stopped trying to change myself so much.
This, to my ears, is when you began actually doing the work for yourself, by yourself, stopped believing in some shortcut-magic trick in any one book however classic or popular. Each 'real' skill is actually just the opener to a whole other level, bigger problem space. You became the creator of your own solutions, and that, if I may, is the Graal. Like literally I think it's what a lot of 'magical' metaphors (enlightenment, elevation, etc) quite physically or biologically refer to.
There is a fuckton of self-power to be released when you get serious about that path.
I'll tell you that in my anecdotal experience, most people run the other way (back to outside gratification / validation) upon discovery that "the enemy within" generally consists of getting what feels like mentally naked (vulnerable, opened, honest-to-Self) to your deepest oldest layers, and the battle is about healing the child in you left alone for so long, and welcoming him/her back into your life, in its right place.
I profoundly think that you heed those words, wherever they come from and in whatever shape or form however imperfect and partial, when you are ready to hear them, i.e. when you need them.
It's a survival thing, I don't know of going so deep otherwise (it's not like "deep inside" has an "up" or "left"; you need a pulling force like proverbial 'gravity', gravitas, i.e. emotions that run deep, to make sense of that inner space). You eventually find your way through the maze, if it's on your path, I suppose.
But honestly, taking education seriously in that regard (I argue starting with children, as important as managing physical health; and to boot with most adults thinking of this as a health matter, like exercising or nutrition) would do a huge service to society. We can and should train people massively. IMH opinion, experience, research.
So yeah, thinking back on it, I agree self-help sucks. A century later it's nowhere near realizing the social benefits it could claim because it's been too busy giving itself a bad name.