As someone who has benefited a lot from self help, I find it surprising when people suggest that the books and other information streams are useless or harmful. Human beings have a desire to share what they’ve learned with the people they care about, and often with people they don’t even know. After succeeding in a particular area of life, it’s common for them to want to share the secret to success. 

The result is books such as “The Power of Habit,” “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and “How To Win Friends And Influence People.” Self help information mostly comes from people who’ve used the techniques they’re describing, and are certain that those techniques lead them to success. If a person were to learn and apply the information, his life would absolutely change.

In my opinion, that last statement is the reason for the debate on this topic. For the most part, people read and learn from self-help, but they don’t apply the information. It’s a frustrating conclusion shared both by the people that wrote the books and by the people that read them. It seems logical that once you know something useful, it should change your life. It absolutely can, but if someone’s life is going to change, she has to know how to incorporate the information into her daily life. This is the crucial piece of information that is missing from many publications.

Self help books often offer tips as to how to incorporate the information into daily life, but this hasn’t been enough. There’s an important piece of information that should probably precede any self help information. Being armed with this information, a person would be one step closer to actually applying the knowledge from the reading. The information I’m talking about is a seldom talked about fact. 95% of the action a person takes is due to habit patterns. To benefit from self help, a person needs to take action. To take action, a person must believe the learning material. Also, whatever he learned must become a part of his normal habit patterns.

The question of how to change a person’s patterns has been answered. Repetition is key. Repeat a thought long enough and it will absolutely become a belief. Repeat an action long enough and it will absolutely become a habit. 

Here’s an example of self help and how it can become a part of your habit of thought and action. Let’s say you want to be a more confident person. You read an eight chapter book that tells you that each day you should…

• Set and accomplish small goals
• Use the body language of a confident person
• Write a list of things that you like about yourself
• Imagine yourself having more confidence and meeting new people
• Write a list of things that you like about people
• Stop saying negative things about yourself
• Dress nicely
• Keep your environment clean

A lot of people plan to read the book from cover to cover. Most never do. Life gets in the way. It’s understandable. A useful hack would be to just read one chapter and then work to incorporate what you’ve learned. Master what you’ve learned in chapter one before reading chapter two. 

The first suggestion above is to set and accomplish small goals. To make this a habit, you’ll need a reminder. Phone reminders are fantastic. Small notes written in places where you will definitely see them also work well. Once you’ve been reminded, you have to take action right away. With that in mind, the reminder should occur at a time of the day when you can take action. Once you’ve taken action, take a moment to reflect on the fact that you are dong something to better yourself. Repeat this until you start taking action without needing the reminder. After you’ve been taking action, for some time, without the need for a reminder, move on to the next chapter in your book.

This will clearly take time. Personal development takes time. Self help works, but only if the time is taken to incorporate the information into your daily habit of thought and action. For a person to commit this kind of time she needs focus. It has to be something that she really wants to do. She has to be “all in” on making a change. She has to be excited about the journey. 

If this seems like too much to do, if it doesn’t seem like there is time, it’s not the right journey for you. Yes, you would benefit from whatever information the self help book has to offer, but if you aren’t excited about the journey itself, it means that there is another journey that’s better for you at this time. You’ll know it when you find it. You’ll be excited to learn all of the information. You’ll be excited to put what you’ve learned into action. You will enjoy the ride and take pride in what you’ve done. It will put a smile on your face. When you find the self help that makes you feel excited and energetic, that’s the journey that is right for you. That’s the self help that will actually work.

-Mike Humphreys