Self help or self destruction?

Help Me! - Marianne Power Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway - Susan  Jeffers Money, A Love Story: Untangling Your Finances, Creating the Life You Really Want, and Living Your Purpose - Kate Northrup The Secret - Rhonda Byrne Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way - John C. Parkin Earth Angels - Doreen Virtue The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change - Stephen R. Covey The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment - Eckhart Tolle Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - Brené Brown You Can Heal Your Life - Louise L. Hay

Marianne decides to explore 12 popular self-help books over 12 months at the beginning of one year and discovers that they're not always helpful.

 

If you're like me you've read a lot of self-help books and occasionally taken a few pieces of advice from them before inertia and time spent doing other things moves you away from the book.  I keep meaning to do a Kondo-esque tidy but it would require more of my energy than I'm willing to devote to it.  I do question if it sparks joy of things I'm putting away and I've removed a few things from my house as I'm asking that question.  (I also remind myself that I deserve better than the things that don't work on my skin or in my life etc.).  I also listen to the excellent By the Book Podcast and often agree with a lot of their points about the ones I've read.

 

The Books she chooses are: Feel the Fear and do it anyway; Money a love story; The Secret; F**k it: the ultimate spiritual way; Angels with Doreen Virtue; 7 Habits of Highly effective people; Power of Now; Get the Guy; Daring Greatly and You can heal your life.  She strugles with depression and becoming a bit of a self-centred ass for a while and all the time her very Irish mammy trys to steer her on a good path.

 

Like me she finds things that resonate in books and sometimes she obsesses a bit and I couldn't abandon my life for a year like she did to look inward but by the end she's less broken, mostly by connecting with the people who are real in her life.