Tag Archives for self-help

Confidence Course

Amy Alkon Shows Us How to Boldly Go Where We Want With Our Lives

When I watch old Star Trek episodes–either the original series or The Next Generation–I almost always feel inspired when I hear Kirk or Picard tell us it’s time “to boldly go where no one has gone before”. The confidence in those lines makes you want to launch out into space and square off with Klingons or the Borg or whatever the vast universe has to offer. It’s the kind of confidence you always want to have, but the kind of confidence that sometimes escapes us in our day-to-day lives. It’s the kind of confidence we need and crave, and it’s the kind of confidence Amy Alkon, in her book Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living With Guts and Confidence, shows us how to achieve and maintain.

A ‘Science-Help’ Book

Unfathomable reams of paper have been sacrificed in self-help books to show us how to live confidently and get all we want out of life. Some of these books offer little more than a course in magical thinking, usually shored-up, as Alkon notes, with some version of “the tempting premise that positive thinking works like a giant magnet to pull whatever you want right to you. Supposedly, if you want a new car, you just picture it and think grateful thoughts about it (as if it were already yours) and some pocket in the universe will unzip and out will drop your fabulous new dream ride, right into your life.”

Other self-help books offer some sound advice. Taking action, for instance, as Bryan Robinson in The Art of Confident Living notes, is better than reacting to the world. Alkon herself might agree. She’s quite the cheerleader for taking action. “Ultimately, if Unf*ckology does have a ‘secret,’ it’s that if you get off your ass and do what the science suggests, you can have a far better life.”

But these self-help books also tend to focus just on trying to maintain a positive outlook, as if positive emotions are the only way to go. Only maintaining positive emotions and straying from or avoiding negative emotions is often ineffective, and can become overwhelming.

“This is especially true if you’re a person who feels bad a lot of the time,” Alkon writes. “The natural impulse is to avoid your feelings. This works–about as well as sticking all of your unpaid bills in a drawer.”

How does Alkon know this? Outside of her personal experience, she’s researched the science of how emotions and the brain actually work and why such methods work. This is what “science-help” is: “advice that’s based on evidence from scientific research.”

This is the approach Alkon takes throughout the book. She draws from multiple fields–anthropology and social science, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, and biology and chemistry to name a few disciplines–and explains why and how the science works before showing us how to benefit from it and live our best life, shedding our loserhood like the skin of a molting lizard.

The approach is unique, atypical of the self-help genre, which is appealing, especially if you’re persuaded by a scientific and realistic approach to life, as I am. In my own quest to build self-confidence, I’ve read plenty of self-help books, including those that pester the universe for healing. At low points those books and the magical thinking can be appealing, but, ultimately that stuff doesn’t work and only proves frustrating and discouraging, especially when the car you want doesn’t appear in the parking lot or the life and success you want doesn’t appear sparkling at your feet.

Does Alkon’s approach work? Alkon provides anecdotal evidence from her own life that suggests it does. Research from social psychology, for instance, suggests that creating rituals “can help you dial down your anxiety, feel better about yourself, and have more self-control.” Rituals are symbolic and help break ingrained behavior, and Alkon writes she created a ritual for herself–a funeral for her old less-than-confident-self–that was a symbolic action to alert the brain changes were coming.

While giving myself a funeral seems a little creepy and discomfiting, I can attest that I’ve learned through other self-help books and through therapy techniques that have worked such as naming emotions to help quell anxiety. I can also say mindfulness meditation, which Alkon endorses, seems to work, especially when it comes to calming anxiety.

Will Alkon’s advice work for you? It’s possible. Taking action seems to be a key element. Action alerts and activates the brain to begin changing. You just have to do it by “Starting NOW,” as Alkon urges.

Help Your Self

I cannot condemn self-help books. (I’m reading some now; at a time of personal crisis, and without health insurance for therapy, I need some insight.)

As an American genre,the books have deep roots in our literature (think Thoreau, Emerson — to some miniscule extent isn’t “Self-Reliance” a precursor to self-help?). And my recent readings in the genre have guided me back to my interest in Buddhism and to explore Buddhist practice. (Meditation, I believe, has been beneficial, especially to calm a clouded mind.) I plan to continue to explore Buddhism further.

The self-help genre has taken hold in the UK, and The Guardian has an analysis of its renewed popularity. It’s clear the need for  self-help is a sign of the times. The article points out that classics of the genre such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich emerged during the Depression, just as their current counterparts have emerged as unemployment rates have surged. My own interest in the genre re-surged after I became unemployed. And as I think back, the times when I’ve embraced self-help have been times of personal crisis (unemployment again, family breakups, deaths). We need hope. Even quick-fix hope.

At the same time, I’m skeptical. Those who write about the “power of attraction,” for instance, offer hope as long as we change our patterns of thought and imagine what we want. We imagine; we get. And I’ve tried. I’ve yet to receive. But the proponents such as guru Wayne Dyer have experienced great increase. Is it all just snake oil?

I am like Mulder on the X-Files: I want to believe. But the skeptic in me has his doubts.

I also don’t want to feel so good that I forget to be critical. Which, as the article points out, is the problem. The story notes journalist Barbara Ehrenreich’s criticism of the genre as a dangerous force shaping American thinking, or non thinking, rather. Optimism without critical thinking. Lack of critical thinking turning us into corporate robots.

In the meantime, I’m going to see what I manifest. Perhaps it will finally be prosperity. Or at the very least a new, good quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys?

Booking Through Thursday: In the Niche

Here is this week’s Booking Through Thursday question:

There are certain types of books that I more or less assume all readers read. (Novels, for example.) But then there are books that only YOU read. Instructional manuals for fly-fishing. How-to books for spinning yarn. How to cook the perfect souffle. Rebuilding car engines in three easy steps. Dog training for dummies. Rewiring your house without electrocuting yourself. Tips on how to build a NASCAR course in your backyard. Stuff like that. What niche books do YOU read?

Books on writing. That’s definitely a niche category I read. I’m sort of addicted to them. I try to swear off them but then run into a good one like Write Away by Elizabeth George, and, well, I tap my vein  . . .

Other niche categories:

  • Computer books. I’m no techie by any means, but I like to find How To books on blogging, and have been trying to teach myself HTML, etc.
  • Hiking/Backpacking. I started hiking seriously in 2003; I’ve been checking out books, especially for sections on equipment and supplies–how much water or food to carry? or good trails and map reading.
  • Cooking. For years I’ve relied on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cooking to help keep myself fed, sort of. I really would like to learn to cook better.
  • Self-help/Self improvement. I must confess I do like to delve into the self-help section sometimes, and have found some of the books helpful, especially with confidence issues. If any of you out there have a copy of The Art of Confident Living by Bryan Robinson that you want to give away, let me know. That’s one I want to read.
  • Religion/Spirituality. Devout agnostic that I am, I am also infinitely interested in religion. Religious history is interesting, as well as spiritual biography/autobiography. Karen Armstrong is a favorite author in this category. I’m also interested in Zen Buddhism, and would love any recommendations about books on Zen practice, especially meditation.