Why I Feel Self-Help Books are Useless

My English skills have come a long way from not being able to form a sentence to writing quality articles. I used various techniques to make my skills climb up the ladder but maximum attribution has to go to indulging myself in book reading. The starting point for my book reading habit is one of the famous self-help books, “You Can Win” by Shiv Khera, for which the tagline is “Winners Don’t Do Different Things, They Do Things Differently”. I read books from different genres after that. Out of all, I enjoy fictional novels a lot. Agatha Christie and Arthur Hailey are my current favorites. The scale of imagination and research that goes into their novels is mind-boggling.

Post You Can Win, I read many books of that kind, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”, “Living with Honour”
“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Who Will Cry, Whey You Die” to name a few. Those seem to be amazing books once and useless now. I am aware that my opinion is contradictory but the realization which forged that opinion is not drastic.  Most of these books talk about habits that you need to cultivate in order to be highly successful or to win. Should life revolve around success? Shouldn’t happiness and peace be the focal point of life? Even if we consider success and winning, the process and results differ from person to person, time to time and situation to situation. Bill Gates didn’t become what he is just to get himself labeled as successful, his achievements are driven by the happiness he experiences.

Also, most of the advice these books provide are too generic, senseless and impractical. You will see an absurd sentence “Find the Purpose of Life” in many self-help books and hear in many motivational talks, but can anyone in this world find it? Do you think Sachin Tendulkar at the age of 10 realized that his life’s purpose is to play cricket and started practicing it and excelled in it? Do you think Narendra Modi realized that his purpose of life is to become Prime Minister of India? Many circumstances and feelings drove them to be so. Schedule your day with essential and important things only, seriously? How can anyone decide what is essential for others’ lives? I might feel like going on a drive with friends, it makes me happy. If you have to categorize that, it falls in the “unproductive, unimportant and most inessential”. Should I restrain myself from doing it? My answer for this is never going to be a yes.

Meditate, this is one of the most overused and highly confused words in the last two decades. Most of the authors define it as a process in which you close your eyes and try to switch off your brain or think of a peaceful environment. Never forget to do that in the early morning :).  Meditation actually means, an act of focusing on a particular subject, one might feel meditated while playing a game or a musical instrument or while singing or while dancing. It differs from person to person. I feel mediated while playing Table Tennis and while writing an article for my blog. Wake Up Early in the Morning, why should one have to wake up at 3 AM or 4 AM in the morning to be productive? You have to wake up in the morning to dedicate time to take care of your health, to add extra hours to your day. Ratan Tata might feel motivated to work in the early morning but AR Rahman feels motivated and produces the best music at midnight. Try Something New Everyday, isn’t this contradicting the other advice Be Productive Everyday :). Many professions such as drivers, teachers, watchmen, lift operators, sandwich maker, vegetable cutter and so on are exceptions for being productive everyday or trying something new everyday. A lift operator cannot ask more people to get into the lift to feel more productive. Many in the world have standard template jobs, they do that day in and day out efficiently and are happy to be in the routine.

Who Will Cry, When You Die! I don’t think anyone has to care even if the world ends a second after their death. I know the book title implies, you have to live in such a way that many people have to cry when you die. If you give it a thought, the number of people who cry depends on many aspects. Very few people cry if a person dies after 75 years of life and very few people cry when a person dies after a lot of suffering. On the other hand, a lot of people cry if a famous politician dies, irrespective of how corrupt he is. The people who cry are either fanatics or oblivious of his corrupt practices. Should we consider he has practiced the greatest traits to have many people cry when he dies? A relatively greater number of people cry when a youngster dies suddenly. So people crying for your death has nothing to do with the way you live. 

Research based books such as The Blue Zones, which offer ideas and practical suggestions on leading a healthy life have a lot to offer. It feels amazing when you read self-help books, giving a serious thought to the suggestions mentioned will make you realize that there is no point in reading them. As one of the standup comedians mentioned, those books are to SELF-HELP books for the authors.