Self-Help Means Helping Others

There is a simple concept that separates those who experience great success from those who do not. I am going to tell you all about this concept in a second, but first I want to talk a little bit about self-help. I have read countless books that discuss various methods of improving one’s life and career. I have always found it interesting that these books are almost always classified as self-help. The first self-help book ever written is generally considered to be Samuel Smiles’ Self Help, originally published in 1859. The book begins with the sentence “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” The principle that self-help seems to be founded on and seems to revolve around, is that people need to take charge of themselves in order to improve their lives. Most books that fall within this classification generally offer the same prescription for improving any area of life:

• Discover what you want!
• Have a positive attitude!
• Create big goals!
• Have discipline!

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See Your Job and the World from the Bright Side and Not The Dark Side

For about as long as I can remember, I have been taking one course or another about different subjects every several months. I take courses in just about every topic you can imagine and love taking these courses.  Typically, the courses I take are three or four-day affairs, and executives from one company or another are always flown in for these events by their companies to attend.  I am at one of these things today that is about to start within the next couple of hours.  Incredibly, for the next several days I am going to be listening to Tony Robbins, of self-improvement [Read more]

Depression, Health, Boredom, Interesting People, and Self-Esteem

I remember my first encounters with the self-improvement industry when I was younger. In many areas of the United States, people look at self-improvement as something that is absolutely crazy. That is how the people around me viewed it when I was growing up. When I think about self-improvement, however, I think about people doing things like:

• …trying to improve their mood and level of happiness
• …trying to improve their health
• …trying to become interested in new things
• …trying to meet other interesting people
• …trying to improve their self-esteem

This is for the most part what self-improvement is all about–these five things mentioned above. It takes on different forms (and some people [Read more]

The Importance of Asking the Right Questions, Self Improvement, and Perception

There is a famous story that comes from Buddhism, about a mother who loses her child. The Buddha was known not only as an enlightened individual but also as someone with the ability to bring the dead back to life. One day a woman approaches the Buddha, begging that he bring back her child from the dead. “I hear you are compassionate,” she says. “Please bring my child back to life.” Seeing the woman’s despair, the Buddha says, “Please go and find me a mustard seed from a household where no one has died; [Read more]