How To Read a Self-Help Book

BY MITCH HOROWITZ

Most of the self-help books that I personally read and recommend are what might be considered “golden oldies.” As I see it, some of the greats, such as The Power of Positive Thinking and Alcoholics Anonymous, contain most of the wisdom that underlies the overall self-help field.

 

As I’ve written previously on this blog, I distrust many of today’s cognitive studies on happiness, and the adjunct wave of bestsellers on “happiness science.” When reading such studies – versus the news coverage behind them – I find them questionably designed and overhyped. Moreover, I have a metaphysical perspective on life – I believe that thoughts are causative, a factor beyond the purview of most social scientists. In matters of personal philosophy, I embrace principles over data.

A recent request from a friend made me want to provide a few guidelines for getting the most out of classic self-help books. My close and longtime friend works as a prosecutor in a large city, and asked for my help in broadening and expanding his vision of his job. My friend, a principled law-enforcer, is not content simply to “put away bad guys;” he wants to tackle the racial and class-based iniquities of our justice system.

 

I urged him to read David J. Schwartz’s 1959 classic, The Magic of Thinking Big. I felt he could benefit from Schwartz’s message of expanding one’s sense of possibilities. But my friend is someone who has rarely considered New Thought or self-help literature – so I offered a few pointers to avoid getting lost on the way. The four principles below can help anyone, newcomers or old timers, get the maximum benefit from literature of self-development.

 

 

1. Do not get distracted by hackneyed language. Many of the classics use gender stereotypes and predictably dated references. Most pioneers in New Thought and spiritual therapeutics were ardently liberal for their era; some were visionary radicals. Nonetheless, these writers could also use the flawed vernacular and inferences of their times. You’ll occasionally find a softly bigoted reference. Pay attention to the universal message, not the attitudes of past.

 

2. Never Think “I Get It.” You may encounter insights and ideas that seem familiar or provoke a been-there-done-that reaction. If you come across things like the Golden Rule or positive-mind aphorisms, don’t roll your eyes and start skimming. Rather, take it as an opportunity to revisit great and powerful truths that we might take for granted today. As I’ve recently written in Science of Mind magazine, the Golden Rule has deep layers of meaning. Our biggest mistake in life is undervaluing what seems familiar.

 

3. Do the exercises. It’s easy to save the exercises “for later.” This means never doing them at all. Even if you’ve tried something before (such as writing a list of goals), or if a technique seems burdensome (such as a daily meditation), the simple rule is: DO IT ANYWAY. If you really want to get something from a self-improvement program you must dedicate yourself to its details. There may be shortcuts in life – but they do not include skipping the exercises.

 

4. Imagine that your life depends on it. There is a “secret law” behind every self-help program. Without this law, nothing is possible. It is this: Do the program with everything in you. I once told a friend to read Think and Grow Rich “as if your life depends on it.” I mean it. If you proceed that way, things will happen. Almost any program works IF you commit to it with absoluteness. Chose your book or program – and then burn the fleet. Give yourself no way out. Dedicate yourself to it with passionate, obsessive intensity. Life rewards no halfway measures. If you put everything into a program it will give back to you in equal measure. An Arab proverb goes, “The way bread smells depends on how hungry you are.” Be starved for self-improvement. Passion delivers you.

 

 

Mitch Horowitz is the PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and One Simple Idea. The Washington Post says Mitch “treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today’s raised-voice discussions.” He is also the voice of popular audio books including Alcoholics Anonymous and The Jefferson Bible, and host of the web series ORIGINS: SUPERSTITIONS. Mitch is vice president and executive editor at Tarcher Perigee, a division of Penguin Random House. Visit him at www.MitchHorowitz.com.