WP3: What makes the best self-help?
Self-help is a huge industry, which makes complete sense to me. The market is worth around $13.4 billion and is predicted to increase by approximately another billion in the next 5 years (LaRosa, 2023). I know the feeling of seeking guidance because being a human and evolving for the better can be difficult to do when there is no actual instruction book for life. Self-help comes the closest to that. One of the comforts of self-help is that it offers a new perspective — that you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. Self-help authors are a resource for learning how to improve yourself, and therefore your life.
I’ve shared my close relationship with self-improvement on here, from how I consume to how I produce self-help media. This intense fascination has exposed me to a lot of content in the genre of personal growth, and this is the space where my analysis will culminate. This article will expand on the overarching question that my previous posts on here have begun the exploration of: What does the most beneficially impactful self-help teach us? Through reflection on the mental and spiritual impact I’ve experienced from self-help resources, I contribute intimately to the advice and examination I offer below.
While respecting the fact that different resources will work for different people and that there arguably may not be a universal self-help resource that resonates with every person, I argue the most beneficial self-help, to begin with, is the types of media that encourage self-discovery and self-acceptance more than anything. Some self-help will teach you how to be better in terms of being more “functioning”, more productive in society. But, I believe the most powerful self-help implores you to go into your own memories and thoughts to analyze them, and liberates you from limiting beliefs. Resources that do this with the aim of self-acceptance set up a stronger foundation for self-improvement. This is because external successes cannot outweigh internal peace and self-belief. I learned this in one of the self-help books that I recommended in my WP2: all about love: new visions by bell hooks (2001). I selected all about love because hooks (2001) provides suggestions on how to interact with yourself in a healthier way, by diving deep into what has conditioned your beliefs and what could be rewired. I found the most liberating self-help shifts the eyes we see ourselves through and opens our hearts more to the present self and present moment. This is demonstrated by hooks (2001), who teaches tools we already possess within ourselves, that just have to be activated in order to improve our relationship with ourselves.
Affirmations are one of my favorite tools that hooks (2001) explains. Many people feel weird the first few (or more than a few) times they try using affirmations — repeating a positive phrase that usually asserts something that’s desired to be emphasized or actualized. They tend to be short and simple because repetition is a crucially powerful component. With consistency and a willingness to push past the initial awkwardness, affirmations can be utilized to great benefit as a form of caring for your well-being, conditioning healthier thought patterns, or expressing/connecting to the feeling of self-love. The more you repeat affirmations, the truer they feel (hooks, 2001).
One of my favorite affirmations is: Everything I need is within me.
To me, this solidifies the complex journey to my acceptance of myself and trust in myself and boils it down to one concise statement that captures the ultimate discovery that releases self-doubt and relieves the previously continuous loop of looking for external proof of my worthiness in order to raise my confidence and self-esteem. It evokes a calmness for me because it reminds me that some things are not in my control and that letting things happen naturally is usually the path of least resistance. This affirmation grounds me to the faith that I’m exactly where I am meant to be, with the tools and circumstances I’m meant to have currently. All in 6 words. The 6 words condense many expanded meanings relating to self-acceptance and self-trust.
It appears that the self-help I claim should be highly regarded echoes the sentiment of this affirmation. It reminds me that the most important tools for personal change are already existing within us, releasing the need to seek things elsewhere.
Useful self-help can also help us connect to ourselves deeper by making space for that connection, getting rid of the self-criticism that comes as a result of attaching other people’s opinions to your self-worth. In another book I regard highly in WP3, The Four Agreements, Ruiz (1997) highlights the release of unnecessary suffering that comes along with an effort to not take things personally. This is a key aspect in getting to know oneself, without the bias of what others can condition you to think. It also accounts for the differences between intention and impact of other people’s behaviors towards you. While self-esteem is often connected to your interaction with society, I have expanded on the possibility of detaching from taking things personally and how it is a crucial aspect of self-improvement in a recent podcast episode (which can be accessed here as it isn’t published publicly). The podcast is about self-acceptance and I relayed the story of how I noticed my self-perception being skewed negatively because of my judgments about an uncomfortable interaction with a yoga instructor (Paul, 2023). The interaction was uncomfortable for me because I felt judged and unwelcome. At first, I allowed it to affect my perception of my experience in the class and I questioned if I had done anything to deserve being unwelcomed. That was me internalizing a judgment about perceived hostility. Ultimately, I had to ground myself from overthinking the interaction, not to invalidate my discomfort, but to release the attachment to my perception of the instructor’s opinion, and instead trust my own knowledge of self (Paul, 2023).
There is a sociological theory, however, that explains it is at least normal to allow other people’s perceptions of you to affect your own picture of your identity. I found it kind of comforting, and I think it can relieve some of the self-criticism because it turns out that most people’s ideas of themself are largely impacted and even created through the lens of others. This theory is called the Looking Glass Self theory, produced by Charles Cooley, an influential sociologist in the 1900s (Lesley, n.d.). The Looking Glass Self theory says humans build their views of themselves through other people, who act as a “mirror”. We judge ourselves based on other people’s interactions with us, which produce signs that we distinguish and interpret while imposing our own personal judgments on them (Lesley, n.d.). The judgments are usually related back to our own self-value. For example, if the other person was impressed by me or I seemed to “say the right things”, I would take that and think highly of myself. However, the inverse would also be true. If the other person was disapproving of me, or I don’t have my best foot forward, I could take that and allow it to bring me down to feel bad about myself. The impact on self-perception could vary from minor to more substantial, but for most people, it will depend on the weight that the other person’s opinions hold.
There is a fundamental issue in allowing the Looking Glass Self phenomenon to go too far, especially if the initial self-worth is lacking and other people’s opinions are more likely to shake your grounding. The signals we attempt to gather during interactions are often misconstrued because the signs can be interpreted in so many ways. The way we assign negative or positive values can be biased in ways that do not match up, creating misunderstandings. Basically, to complicate things, the Looking Glass Self theory explains that we are not judging ourselves simply based on other people’s judgments of us, but rather what we assume to be their judgment.
Connecting this back to self-acceptance though, we could appreciate the mindfulness of noticing when we are allowing the overthinking or attachment or assumption to affect the self-view, especially in a negative way, and make the conscious acknowledgment that other people’s (assumed) opinions are not always the truth, and whether they are or not, the person with the potential for the fullest and truest picture of yourself is you. One of the biggest things I have learned thus far on my discovery of self-help is that nobody knows you better than you know yourself. It may sound simple to some people, but it’s also very human to naturally form opinions and judgments about yourself based on your social experiences. We are a social species, and interacting with other humans can tell us a lot about ourselves in positive or neutral, authentic ways. But, my point is to suggest practicing self-acceptance in order to achieve a stable and reliable discernment for what is authentic and what is essentially unnecessary. We do this by 1) getting to know ourselves and by 2) releasing control of other people’s opinions of us.
The Looking Glass Self theory describes how we typically want to achieve a balance where our desired or believed perception of ourselves matches the feedback other people are giving us in our interactions (Lesly, n.d.). There’s just this innate desire for there to be an agreement between how we see ourselves and how people experience us. Maybe all of this means we cannot fully detach from the impact of what we assume about others’ points of view but rather strengthen our knowledge and acceptance of self so much that the foundation is less susceptible to negative change. Self-acceptance comes in to relieve the burden of being overly aware of, interpreting, and reacting to social interactions with high priority to maintaining the agreement. The journey to self-acceptance takes a lot of practicing self-acceptance during the process while learning to be more mindful of what I internalize from my perception of others’ thoughts. It is easier said than done, but I continue to practice rerouting my thoughts away from overthinking about how I appear after learning to step back a bit from the looking glass.
Through my interactions with self-help, I have come to the present conclusion that the best self-help encourages this reconnection with one’s core self, trusting oneself by remembering who your actual self is and then supporting you in nurturing that self.
References:
hooks, bell. (2001). all about love: New visions. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
LaRosa, J. (2023, September 8). Self-improvement market recovers from the pandemic, worth $13.4 billion in the U.S. Market Research Blog. https://blog.marketresearch.com/self-improvement-market-recovers-from-the-pandemic-worth-13.4-billion-in-the-u.s#:~:text=Self-improvement market size%3A Marketdata,%2C and self-help apps.
Lesley, U. (n.d.). Perception is reality: The Looking-Glass Self. Perception Is Reality: The Looking-Glass Self. https://lesley.edu/article/perception-is-reality-the-looking-glass-self
Paul, C. (Host). (2023, November 7) a chat about self-perception (№1) [Audio Podcast episode] P6 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Szxv6v3UKllKyi36Xcwole-viPWSVVVW/view?usp=sharing
Ruiz, D. M. (1997). The Four Agreements. Center Point Pub.
