Help yourself to a better career!

Cover of The Secret (Extended Edition)

Take a look at the non-fiction shelves of your local bookshop and you’ll find them groaning under the weight of countless self-help manuals. There are books that claim to help you find your inner anything. All you have to do is part with your hard-earned cash, make the author a smidgen richer, and invest a bit of your valuable time to be smarter, wiser, richer, happier, more attractive, better at your job… or whatever else you want.
Self help books are sweeping the world. Millions are printed every year, claiming to do everything from helping you into that “size zero” to catapulting your career into the stratosphere. The hub of this phenomenon is, of course, the United States, where, according to research company Marketdata the self help industry is set to be worth a staggering US$11 billion by 2008.

The idea of self-help books is nothing new. They’ve been around since the mid to late 1800s, when famous titles included William Maher’s “On the Road to Riches” (1874) and Edwin T Freedley’s “The Secret of Success in Life” (1876). But today they’ve gone stratospheric, and it seems we’re not just buying them, we’re also buying into them.

How effective are Self Help books?

Critics claim that the only thing self-help books are really effective at is making the authors and the publishing houses rich… and looking at the figures for best-selling self-help books, the spin off lecture tours, seminars, DVDs and so on, it’s a view that’s difficult to contradict. Advocates, on the other hand, argue that these books help to empower people, and are the catalyst to decisions that really do change people’s lives.

So who’s right?

There’s little doubt that some of the self-help books on our bookshelves are examples of self-appointed gurus preying on our collective insecurities. The tragedy is that the cynical attitude these books engender clouds our judgement and blinds us to the fact that there are some very worthwhile self-help books out there that make a real difference to the people who read them.

The important thing to remember is that no self help book will make you instantly successful – no matter what the blurb claims. What it might do is help you down the right path towards achieving your goals.

If you’re in the market for a new self-help book, here are a few things to bear in mind:

• Personal recommendations are hard to beat – just remember that what worked for your friend won’t necessarily work for you
• Beware of books that offer “quick fix” solutions to difficult problems. For “Quick fix” read “fast buck”
• Develop a critical eye: ask yourself what the book will really do for you
• Loan it from the library – then if it does turn out to be a waste of time, at least that’s all you’ve wasted

Finally, remember that helping yourself is about much more than reading a book: it’s about realising that every day you have the power to make decisions that can change your life. The right self help books may help you to focus on what’s important to you – but at the end of the day you’re in control.

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