Over the last half-century or so, “Self-Help” sections have sprouted up in bookstores. From books to seminars and weekend retreats, self-help/self-improvement has become a multibillion-dollar global industry that’s projected to double in the next decade. The materials can be remarkable tools in helping us realize and succeed in our own journeys. To be successful in your journey you need:
- The realistic belief that your goal is attainable.
- The will to make it happen.
Self-improvement books and other materials provide instructions to help us in our own hero’s journeys. They educate on things like understanding ourselves and others. They also help provide continuous motivation, as heroic journeys require dogged determination. If hero stories show us what to do, self-improvement materials show how to do it, making the journey so simple that it’s almost like paint-by-numbers! Simple, but still not easy. If it were easy it wouldn’t be heroic.
Before discussing the power of these books, let’s do something that few of them do. Let’s talk about the downside: Self-help books often contain how-to recipes for achieving success. But sometimes the goals are not worthy, and some self-help books have been justly criticized as self-serving in their aims. Books in this genre that focus on oneself may do more harm than good; the last step in the monomyth model sees the hero returning with “boons to bestow on his fellow man.” The worthwhile journey has the end goal of serving others. The journey that’s taken for selfish reasons is not a worthwhile quest. At worst, these books can be seen as primers on how to manipulate and hoodwink.
Also, the term “self-help” does a bit of a disservice. People who need help often need professional counseling. The term implies that people can heal themselves by themselves, which is not always the case and can even be dangerous to the person who needs help of the professional kind. With this in mind, “self-improvement” is less likely to lead people to look at these books as panaceas for more serious psychological ills.
“Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” —Napoleon Hill
While this quote is catchy and inspiring, it’s not completely true. While it is true that in order to achieve one must first conceive, then believe, we live in a world bound by physical laws, so we need to include “the wherewithal to make it possible.” Without that, no amount of belief or determination will matter.
A three-hundred-plus-pound NFL lineman will never ride the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby. If the lineman thinks of it and deludes himself into believing he can do it, he will fail no matter how confident and determined he might be. (It does make for a very silly image though!)
A successful network marketer told this funny little story to illustrate the limitations of belief. He explained that if you decide that you don’t believe in gravity, here’s what can happen:
“You can head for the rooftop of the tallest building in your city or town, fervently asserting, ‘I don’t believe in gravity, I don’t believe in gravity’ all the way up.
You can then jump, repeating all the way down, ‘I don’t believe in gravity, I don’t believe in gravity.’
When you hit the ground, you’re going to be just as dead whether you believe in gravity or not!” — George Halsey
I spent six years in the network marketing industry. On the whole the experience was educational and a lot of fun. I had some success, making enough to cover my travel expenses and then some. Wendy and I even got an all-expense paid trip on the company’s dime. I gained a lot of experience in public speaking, which has helped me in among other things, making YouTube videos (Youtube.com/@GoldenRuleCentral -Yes, I even had training. Imagine how rough the vids would be without that!)
My biggest criticism of the industry as a whole is its dirty little secret: While nine in ten business startups never see profitability, the number who never make money in network marketing is closer to ninety-nine out of every hundred—maybe more.
In network marketing, aka multi-level marketing, passive income is the dangled carrot. The lure of the lifestyle brought by passive income motivates people to get and stay plugged into the education systems that are provided by most MLM companies or their affiliates. For most, the education itself ends up being the main benefit.
There are some advantages to plugging into a self-improvement system as part of a group: The educational system can include a mentoring system, where participants get guidance from people who have more experience. In pursuing your goals on your own you can get a lot of the mentoring through the materials themselves, but one thing they cannot provide is accountability to others. There is also a contagious energy that can come from being part of a group. Taking the self-improvement journey without a support group or personal mentor requires more self-discipline. There may be other ways to get this energy and accountability. If you have the means to do so, hiring a personal success coach can be a great thing. (If you cannot afford to engage a coach, you might need to just use your poverty as motivation!)
Another means of external support can be friends and family, but there can be pitfalls along this route. Some of those close to you may not be supportive and can even drain you. If you show them your dream you may be met with something like, “C’mon! I know you. You will never do anything like that!”
There are lots of ways and lots of “reasons” why those closest to you might sap your belief and energy. You will need to distance yourself, if not physically, at least emotionally from them. Do not continue to put your dreams and aspirations in front of them. Rather, you will need to protect yourself from them. They may be great people but in this regard you will be casting pearls before swine.
The most beneficial part of the system I plugged into was the suggestion to read for fifteen minutes every day from a positive book. One of the claims that was sometimes attached was that if a person reads for fifteen minutes daily on any subject for five years they will become an expert. Now, I wouldn’t want that to be the sole qualification of my brain surgeon, but in the time I spent in the industry I read a stack of self-improvement books wider than my wingspan. I came out the other side a better person to my wife, our children, and to myself, and you can’t put a price tag on that!
Some wise advice from another network marketing leader was to concentrate on your strengths while working on your weaknesses. I mentioned repetition as one of the keys for reprogramming; I recently read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” for at least the sixth time. It’s starting to sink in.
The most powerful thing that an ongoing commitment to self-improvement can do is rewire your brain. As I’ve mentioned, our thought patterns are fundamentally set at an early age. That’s why they’re called “the formative years.” We all carry baggage, both negative and positive, that was programmed in during childhood. It’s the source of most negative, self-defeating self-talk.
Do you have a running monologue in your head? Left to its own, it just talks at you based on your ingrained experiences. It can be, and often is, full of crap.
The good news is that it can be changed! It takes deliberate and ongoing effort, but it can change your life; good thoughts make good things happen!
So what do you need to do to change your thoughts? It doesn’t require a lot of time on a daily basis. But to be most effective, it does require daily effort, which can take as little as fifteen minutes; it’s actually better to limit your time each day if you’re reading or doing anything that needs your undivided attention. Listening is a different story. Recordings can be played in the background while you’re doing other things like housecleaning or driving. The most important reason to limit your daily time commitment is burnout; reprogramming is a marathon, not a sprint.
I cover some options to help you design your own brain-training program in the blog post entitled, “Why Self-Improvement?” If you’re considering retraining your brain and you haven’t read it, give it a look.
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