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.. .. Why Self-help Books Don't Help When I first discovered the literature of personal growth and development, there weren't many titles to choose from. Today there are thousands. I always have a self-help book or two in my current reading pile, because there's so much to learn. However, the self-help movement has spawned plenty of dropouts. Why don't all readers find this genre helpful?  Here are some thoughts on that. * Refuse to abandon skepticism.  Hanging on to cherished beliefs is a guaranteed way to prevent growth.  "I tried that positive thinking stuff once. Didn't work." is the motto of the self-help dropout.

Simply reading a single book (except, perhaps, The War of Art) is not going to produce visible change. It's more a process of chipping away at limiting thoughts and behaviors that have taken hold over years. * The books' exercises are too much trouble. Most of us think of reading as zooming from the beginning to the end of a book.  Self-help books invite us to slow down and take a slower journey.  Exercises are like rest stops along the way, causing us to pause, reflect and apply. * Right book at the wrong time. Personal growth is an evolutionary process and we expand our receptiveness one concept at a time. Sometimes a book arrives ahead of our readiness. When that happens, don't abandon self-help. Try a different book. * Miss the point. As Henry David Thoreau said, "A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." Barbara Winter - from her free newsletter -  see her site BarbaraWinter -  Travel Gear for the Joyfully Jobless Life

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Most people are seduced by the lure of the comfort zone.  This can be likened to going out of a warm house on a cold, windy morning. The average person, when he feels the storm swirling outside his comfort zone, rushes back inside where it's nice and warm.  But not the true leader. The true leader has the courage to step away from the familiar and comfortable and to face the unknown with no guarantees of success. It is this ability to "boldly go where no man has gone before" that distinguishes you as a leader from the average person. > from article : The Indispensable Quality - by Brian Tracy

 

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.. .. excerpt from article : Changing Careers? How to  Get Around the Three Major Mental Roadblocks  to Success - by Valerie Young Unless you come either from money or from a long line of pioneers, you may not get the support you want from your family.  With the best of intentions, you may find your dream of quitting your job to pursue your dream career met with advice to "play it safe," reminders that "you're lucky to have a good job," or a lecture on the seemingly insurmountable odds standing between you and success. No matter how old you are, or how much you deny it, family approval does matter. Which, of course, makes it all the more painful when the people we love fail to give us the emotional green light we so desperately seek. Other people's fear, skepticism, and negativity can be as contagious as the flu. And unless you've built up your immune system, these dream stompers can knock you for a loop -- especially when they are right in your own family.

You have two choices. You can either continue to turn to these naysayers in hopes that they'll respond differently -- or, you can choose the saner path of acceptance. Don't look for support from people whose life experiences have not prepared them to give it fully. Instead, take advantage of the support that really is available. /// Anyone who has ever ventured out of their safe little world will tell you they had doubts.  But when it comes to making a major life change, not only is a certain amount of fear perfectly normal, it's actually helpful.  For example, it's our healthy fears that keep us from jumping off cliffs. And the great thing about fear is that there are ways to get around it. So, try laughing in the face of fear. Am I kidding? No. Ridiculing your fears is actually a very effective technique for banishing them -- because the mind rejects that which it considers absurd. The trick is to turn your fears into a ridiculous event in your mind. That way, you allow your natural human reaction to absurdity to take over and dismiss them. Try it yourself. Take your biggest fear and take it to extremes. Really exaggerate it.  Let's say you're paralyzed by the fear of failure. Try picturing your entire family, all of your friends, your neighbors, everyone you went to high school with, even your boss, standing outside your cardboard-box home holding up signs that read: "We Told You So!" article from Valerie Young site  Changing Course

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.. .. If you choose to change, the guidance that follows will prevent you from wasting time going down blind alleys or aborting a potentially successful change effort. ... * Change is easier when you selectively focus your efforts. Trying to pull off multiple changes simultaneously is the kiss of death....

* To change you must adopt an appropriate long-range perspective... * Change requires that you persist even when your efforts are having no apparent effect other than making you feel disrupted, inconvenienced, and bothered.... * The problem is not, has never been, and never will be, who you are. The problem is always what you choose to do. Certain habitual actions have short-circuited your success. Change begins with noticing your ability to choose new ways to act and then doing it. ....  /etc/ Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit  of Adult Underachievement

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*related pages:....self-limiting.....nurturing talent

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.. .. Back when Melrose Place was big, I couldn't get a part on it if I jumped through fire. Or I'd go up for something like Doogie Howser, MD, and the casting people would say, "In a few years, you're gonna put your stamp on Hollywood." I'd think, "Well, what does that mean?"

I felt like a square peg trying to fit myself into a round hole. One casting director used to say, "I know you think you're crazy right now. But all these little girls are gonna fall away, and you'll be one of the few women standing." Some actors would think, "If I can't get a job on Melrose, then I'm sunk." And they'd get stuck there. But I was lucky -- I'd come across books that helped me push through moments like that. A lot of people I know read self-help books, though they don't admit it. I'm happy to recommend them because they've influenced the steps I've made in my own life and career and the process of becoming the person I want to be. Kathryn Morris April 2004 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine photo: as homicide detective Lilly Rush  in CBS series Cold Case [site] > see Kathryn Morris' book list from April 2004 O, The Oprah Magazine on page: change / growth resources :  books  articles

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.. .. A Radical Leap When you look at the spiritual path in an evolutionary context, you are not interested in gradual development.  You are interested in taking a leap -- a leap that's not gradual but radical; a leap that's not relative but absolute.  As long as development is seen as a gradual process, the ego can remain in control and you will feel secure about who you are and where you are going.

But when you take a leap, the self that you discover yourself to be is ever more unknown to you and the territory is always less familiar. When you take that leap, suddenly you no longer see your own human experience as a small personal event.  You realize that you are part of a vast, impersonal continuum of human development that is manifesting itself through you.  And this changes everything. It's a non-relative, absolute shift of perspective -- a leap from the personal to the impersonal.  Andrew Cohen  - quoted in W-ISDOM list 7/26/04  ....Andrew Cohen, Ken Wilber. Living Enlightenment :   A Call for Evolution Beyond Ego <Amazon.com>

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In all my workshops on creative thinking and creative problem solving, I find that shared enjoyment and laughter really grease the mind-machinery.  [The important thing is] to keep burning, yearning, and learning. Keep adjusting. Anne Robinson  - from article Anne Robinson, Creativity Consultant website

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Your commitment to time out in a keep-hopping, no-stopping, lazy-phobic society will challenge you.  Few of us "follow our bliss" without squirming and waiting for the productivity police to bust us in mid-ease, and haul us away to irresponsibility prison where we will eat gruel and master the rules of austerity. ... But nothing is more important than taking time to know yourself once again, giving yourself the space for self-revelation to take place. Tama J. Kieves  - from her book:*This Time I Dance!

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It's very easy to feel sorry for yourself, but you have to realize  that you're the only one who can boost yourself up and say,  "Just get back in the game." I've found that I have to remind myself that I'm strong. Ashley Judd .. [Lifetime magazine May/June 2003 lifetimemag.com]

   
   
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Some of the most significant advice I've ever read was written more than 2,000 years ago by an ancient teacher named Patanjali.  He instructed his devotees to become inspired. You may recall that the word inspire originates from the words in and spirit.  Patanjali suggested that inspiration involves a mind that transcends all limitations, thoughts that break all their bonds, and a consciousness that expands in every direction.  Here is how you can become inspired.  Place your thoughts on what it is you'd like to have or become - an artist, a musician, a computer programmer, a dentist, or whatever.  In your thoughts, begin to picture yourself having the skills to do these things. No doubts. Only a knowing. Then begin acting as if these things were already your reality.

.. .. As an artist, your vision allows you to draw, to visit art museums, to talk with famous artists, and to immerse yourself in the art world.  In other words, you begin to act as an artist in all aspects of your life. In this way, you're getting out in front of yourself and taking charge of your own destiny at the same time that you're cultivating inspiration. Wayne Dyer - from 10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace

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Pinpoint your passion. Be honest with yourself about it. Really think about what you're interested in. What you enjoy, what captures your imagination and gets your brain going.  What YOU want to do - not what you believe your parents or your teachers or society or your four brothers think you should do.----Maria Shriver **book: Ten Things I Wish I'd Known: Before I Went Out into the Real World

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