The Tea Time of the Self

The first step to self-help is buying the book. The second step is reading the bloody thing. These things always seem a good idea at the time: the blurb on the cover speaks of the wonderful benefit people have found through the information and advice inside, while the brief feeling of optimism at the life-changing potential of the words on the pages in your hand reels you in. Even an underwhelming flick-through in the bookshop doesn’t kill much of the appeal: take this home, read it properly and improve thy self.

I have a minor history of buying these books and not reading them. I’ve purchased the odd copy, usually when I’ve been at a fairly low ebb, and admittedly there is something to be said for the initial comfort they bring through their promise alone. However, once a few paragraphs have been navigated, I do tend to get the feeling I’m being pointed out the bleedin’ obvious and not getting provided with some brilliant insight into my own being, or type of being.

I imagine my problem is that of expecting instant miracles and thus upon discovering no effortless enlightenment I'm overtaken by an 'easier-said-than-done' kind of scepticism that encourages my cynical demons to block any willingness to patiently trust and implement any of the subtle changes advised. It seems I'm too pig-headed to learn self-knowledge from anyone but myself through my own way of going through life playing things by ear. I feel the best self-help book I could read would be one that deals with the obstacle of my own stubbornness when it comes to reading self-help books. Of course, I likely wouldn’t read that either.

Anyways, I very recently bought Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It deals with a a world of emotions and problems and how best to face up to them. True to form, I’ve barely taken in a word of it. The author of this book doesn’t know me at all; she doesn’t even have so much as a first impression of me to go on. What help can she be? How can she understand my individual needs? Yet people swear by this book; they rave about it on Amazon; it’s been good for them; probably because they’ve allowed it to be.

Audiobooks may be the thing for me. An eloquent spoken word has more power than an eloquent written word, I find. I've found and am currently downloading a torrented version of the above work in mp3 format. Hopefully any future improvements to my disposition may not be unrelated.