The trap in self-help books
One of the things that I kept seeing when I started my self-lobe journey was to read self-help books. It makes sense after all, if you want to learn where to start then read about other people's journey to self-love.
Reading self-help books was immensely satisfying. It felt like I was becoming wiser day by day. Each page I pass felt like I was closer to the finish line. The finish line being when I finally love myself.
Reading these books help me feel that I was being productive. After all, I am investing in myself. The time spent reading was for my oqn growth, right?
Well, one thing I started noticing was that no matter how many books I have read about self-help, what I feel about myself remains the same. I still see the same old me who is not good in anything.
This led me in angrily asking myself about why I cannot even do such a simple thing. And then it hit me.
I was so busy reading all kinds of theories and though processes about certain things but I never actually put them into practice.
The time I spent reading which I had thought was productive was actually not doing much for me. Especially since after reading a lot of these self-help books the patterns began showing up. After 10 books, the message for a new self-help book is vastly similar to the ones I already know.
So everytime I spent my day reading these self-help books, I was actually just reviewing the things I already know. And one thing that a student might have realized is that passive learning such as reading and reviewing things are not really effective in learning.
The best thing is putting the theories and ideas into practice or testing them out. This is how knowledge becomes more valuable.
This realization is the thing that I needed to get off my chair and start doing instead of just reading, planning, and wishing.
My self-love journey is mot something that can be done by dedicating hours reading the same kinds of messages over and over again. Sure, it helped on creating a better mindset but it does not have much value after a while.
When I finally acknowledged that I know enough about what self-help books can teach me, that is when my self-love journey started to take off.
No longer do I feel bad about myself all the time nor do I spent my days wishing for the future to come already where I love myself. All of that was on the past. Now I value who I am at the moment even if I know that I still have a lot of room for growth.
No longer do I stumble with my judgemental thoughts, because I practiced how to control my thoughts everyday. I also started being more grateful for everything instead of thinking about being grateful.
I am finally living my life in reality instead of living it in my mind.
Now, when I feel like I might need to learn some new things, I searched for a book's summary first to see just how much new knowledge I can gain. Sometimes, I even found that reading 10 minutes articles can give me the insights I could get from 300+ pages of a book.
This time-saving habit gave me more space to nurture myself in both mind and body instead of just feeding my mind all the time.
Closing words
This is just my personal experience. I am a pretty big bookworm especially in the past where I could read 300-500 pages of book in one day. However, now I am finding more things to spend my time on than just reading. It was nice living in my mind but living in reality is something that I cannot even begin to describe.
Self-love journey is not linear though so I know that this is a never-ending path. Yet I find myself so excited everyday to walk the road I have chosen.
Thank you for reading this article!
If you want to read some more articles of mine, I have monthly summaries here:
December 2021 Articles Summary
November 2021 Articles Summary
I definitely agree with what Davinchysax said. No matter how many books we read, we always end up going in circles if we don't face reality.