Any Other Self-Help Lovers Here?

Aristotle wrote that "It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a concept without necessarily accepting it."

This is my approach to reading self-help materials. I am interested and curious, and I like the way they can help boost my mood just by thinking of the fun results I might get from them.

Over the years I've read an enormous number of self-help books, watched countless videos and tried various techniques that would qualify as self-help related. I'd like to talk with others about different points of view from an eclectic perspective, comparing and contrasting different approaches. Nobody's perfect, so instead of charlatan-bashing, let's be playful in the discussion, focusing on what's worked for us personally or how and where an idea might possibly work with a little editing or tailoring.

Here are some of the books I've read that might be fun to discuss. I'd love to hear any from you I haven't mentioned, or just people or techniques you find inspiring who can be accessed on the internet. Off the top of my head...

• Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power, by Anthony Robbins
• The Sedona Method (book and CD course), by Hale Dwoskin
• The Abundance Book, by Larry Crane
• The Success Principle that Never Fails, by W. Clement Stone
• The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale
• Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill
• Psycho Cybernetics, by Maxwell Maltz
• The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace Wattles
• The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne
• The Miracle Morning, by Hal Elrod
• The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron
• The Game of Life and How to Play It, by Florence Scovel Shinn
• The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne
• Creative Visualization, by Shakti Gawain
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
• The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Dr. Joseph Murphy
• Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The Silva Mind Control Method, by Jose Silva
• The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, by Stephen Covey

Also I've watched talks by authors such as

• Marci Shimoff
• Les Brown
• Richard Bandler and John Grinder
• David Grove
• Wayne Dyer
• Joe Vitali
• Eben Pagan
• Esther Hicks
• Werner Erhard
• Lester Levenson
• and many of the authors who spoke in The Secret.

I think one of the reasons I never got the full value of the books is that for the most part I read them passively, forgot about them, and didn't really digest them the way a student processes information in a university; discussing it, experimenting with it, drawing conclusions from it, being tested on it. I thought getting a discussion going here could be a nice step in that direction for all of us.

So, please feel free to name favorite authors and concepts, describe how something has worked for you, ask questions about concepts you don't understand, and let's get a fun thread going!

Thanks!

 

Thanks, Taqwa! I quoted the ones I haven't yet read. I listened to the audio book of The Slight Edge while on long bike rides this summer. As just a concept (I remember Anthony Robbins referring to the slightest competitive edge being the decisive factor in winning in his big book) has been enormously valuable to me. Just doing one push-up when I haven't felt like it has gotten me onto the biggest exercise binge of my life in the last few weeks. I smile when I do them, too, imagining smiles in the deepest part of the tension. This relates to the "be happy now, not just later" concept we often hear in these books. And it's been working. I feel like I have been floating around on a glowing cloud of ease.

Wow - I don't know about Tim Grover. But the title gets my blood moving. Relentless is how I've been increasingly feeling in my recovery and in my exercise.

@JackStrident mentioned The Power of Now being a favorite of his, which could lead to rich discussion. I love the part of the book where Tolle instructs you to wait for your next thought to come as if you're a cat positioned outside a mouse hole.

Yeah, it's time to read Walden, finally. I'd actually love to read B.F. Skinner's Walden Two, since behaviorism is fascinating to me. I see its evidence everywhere, even in subtle methods like meditation and in Tolle's work. Anthony Robbins cited the work of behaviorist and renowned animal trainer Karen Pryor in A.T.G.W. Her books Don't Shoot the Dog and Reaching the Animal Mind have been big inspirations in getting out of the PMO habit. If a hermit crab can be trained to ring a bell for food, my animal brain can be trained to turn a PMO habit into a completing-novels-and-submitting-the-manuscripts-to-publishers habit, and many other, even better ones!

Here's a longer version of Thoreau's most famous quote from Walden to sign off.

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."

Wishing you a great day, brother!

 

Absolutely, Taqwa. That coffee shop meeting sounds delightful! In fact, I'm very tempted to take out a Craigslist ad or start a Meetup Group where I live here in Upstate New York for that very purpose.

I can just imagine a plethora of ideas, reveling in possibilities, the talk, already being a miniature form of action growing into larger, more wonderful actions. Wondeful thoughts, being things, dividing, replicating, merging, clustering, quite naturally into the genesis of much larger things. I have experienced this kind of budding, blooming inspiration in the past , where delightful thoughts segued almost imperceptibly into amazing actions, and it seems to be happening more frequently, always quite within reach, with this increasing PMO abstinence.

I found this 10-hour long Youtube video of Tony Robbins and some other Ultimate Edge materials there as well. Terrific.



If you ever want to have a phone conversation as a break from all the forum use, write me a message and we can exchange numbers or use a voice chat app if you're not in the states. I totally understand if not, since the anonymity here is valuable, if not vital to many members here. This invitation applies to any sincere and trustworthy person who happens to be viewing this post. I find that that animation of speaking accesses different parts of me than typing, so it can be a powerful boost, like a fresh powder applied to the ski slope of one's day.

 

Thanks for chiming in with such kind words, @JoePineapples! I hadn't known you had experience with The Sedona Method. It would be interesting to learn of your experiences with it one day. I joined a group near Albany, NY, led by a man who was getting certified as a coach. He guided us through the exercises, including "holistic releasing" some tapes of Larry Crane doing Release Technique exercises and possibly a potpourri of some techniques he'd picked up over the years. After a one-on-one session with him one Saturday I felt almost weightless and invisible, and the rest of the day unfolded in a sublime manner. By that evening, I had a girlfriend.

Personally I believe it's just a form of behavioral training using the micro-behaviors of thought and emotion. The 3 basic questions categorically change the response to the micro-behaviors and interrupt or redirect the pattern to a nicer outcome (release). Instead of reacting to the "No [I couldn't release this feeling]" with, "why the hell not, you stubborn jerk!?" or something typical of the escalating crisis life can become, you simply and calmly proceed to the question "WOULD you release it," thus entering the Synapse Less Traveled. The WHEN allows you a window on how nice things would need to be, which, as I see it, has much of the value of positive thinking (even though Hale has said that positive thinking doesn't work. Well, the product does need to differentiate itself in the market). The WHEN certainly implies the positive redirection of the micro-behavior.

Anyway, JoePineapples, if you're ever in the mood, I'd love to hear about what you got out of it - what worked, what didn't, any super-effective releases and any pertinent conditions, circumstances in which they took place, etc.

Be well, brother!

 

Yes. That was my experience, too, for the most part. I felt it seemed mechanical and tedious after the first half, although some of the later ideas blew my mind. Having done many stand-up comedy open mics, I found the game-like "argue your opponent's case against you with at least as much conviction as him/her" technique to be mind-blowingly effective onstage in, for example, siding explicitly with the audience as to how bad my last joke was in order to set them up for the next one. The comedian Louis CK had a bit in which he described arguing his wife's case against him forgetting to turn on the dishwasher with as much generic simplicity as if it came from The Sedona Method itself. And it got great laughs.

Thanks for explaining the questions to the uninitiated. To all readers: if I make any obscure references, please feel free to ask about them and I'll love to explain and get some good exploration in through elaboration. Sometimes I'm working within time constraints on my posts.

 

Thanks, ओं मणिपद्मे हूं! In the meantime, I'm curious what your experience with any of the books you've already read has been - any breakthroughs and/or things that haven't yet been effective for you. Clearly you've embraced some Sanskrit wisdom so far. It's always interesting to find out how a person got to embrace a particular philosophy or world view or way.

One of these days it might be nice to confine my Nofap.com interactions to checking out people's signature links. There look like some really good ones on yours.