Self-help. Can it make you happy, develop your power, save your life? Or are it’s advocates peddlers of snake oil? Or again: given the genre is hugely diverse, is it possible to separate the dross from the gold?
These questions and more were tackled at The School of Life’s Self-Help Summit. By way of a report, and in the tradition of self-help itself, here I’ve gathered my ten top insights from the day – in no particular order.
1. The need for quality relationships was a constant theme. It might be a friend, a lover, a therapist, a mother. Connection might well be the single most important ingredient in a life lived well. And yet, relationships come with a warning. As they are so powerful, psychotherapist Phillipa Perry pointed out, they can go horribly wrong as well as gloriously right. But you can work on those risks to nurture the reward.
2. There was some debate as to whether self-help offers genuine cures for life’s ills, or rather, coping strategies. Writer Robert Kelsey is of the latter persuasion. It was self-help that revealed to him that his sense of failure in life was really a fear of failure. He will always carry that fear. But now aware of it, he can manage it well.
3. The dangers of self-help were picked up by Ed Halliwell, a teacher of mindfulness. He turned to self-help following a breakdown. It didn’t work. He came to the conclusion that self-help can be a form of self-aggression. It wasn’t until he stopped struggling with life that his depression lifted, and he learnt to live life more fully.
4. If there’s one word you must remember as you browse the self-help shelves, it’s evidence. Ask yourself whether the solutions on offer are backed up by real evidence. So argued psychologist Richard Wiseman, who believes that much self-helping is really self-harming because what it teaches is simply wrong.
5. If there’s another single word you must remember as you browse the self-help shelves, it’s empowerment. Ask yourself whether the solutions on offer are empowering of your capacity to make moral decisions, to work out what a good life is. So argued sociologist Frank Furedi, who believes that too much emphasis on evidence disempowers us, as it yields decisions about our lives to politicians and experts.
6. Talking of politicians, governments shape the environments in which we live, and those environments directly affect our ability to live well within them. It might be a poorly designed housing estate or an overheating planet. Wellbeing researcher Nic Marks argued that we need a new way of looking at our political economy if we are to flourish in the future.
7. Don’t think of self-help in narrow terms, stressed writer Alain de Botton. Culture itself is a huge resource for musing on matters about how to live. An essay by Virginia Woolf. A short story by John Updike. A tract by Arthur Schopenhauer. Writers often put pen to paper in response to life’s anxieties, and readers can gain much from the insights they so powerfully convey.
8. Remember the insights about what it is to be human that are stressed by psychotherapy, advised writer Robert Rowland Smith – not least that we are divided selves. Typically, there will be one part of us that is, paradoxically, hidden from us. Or there’ll be a bit of us that lives in the now, and another that lives for the past or the future. Harmonise those splits and you will thrive.
9. Remember too the insights that come from ancient philosophy, I myself suggested. For example, if Plato were with us he would want us to talk about how we channel that insatiable energy within us called love. It can be so creative, and so destructive. Test your passions and ask yourself whether they’re lifting you up, or dragging you down.
10. Finally, don’t lose faith with self-help – but do keep your critical faculties close to hand. This is what writer Oliver Burkeman has concluded. Self-help does contain tips on how to be at least slightly happier. It will help you get a bit more done. There are indeed good ideas amidst all the cheesy, inflated and terrible ones.
Mark Vernon’s new book is The Good Life (Hodder). Visit www.theschooloflife.com
The Self-Help Summit took place on 15 January 2011, for more information click here.
Mark's summarised a very well balanced day covering the main threads of the Self-help discourse which I very much enjoyed.
I think for me the two challenges that emerge from the discussion and questions in relation to improving our well-being seem to be: 1) The embarrassment factor, there is a perception that self-help is the last resort for the truly messed up. 2) The confusion that the pursuit of happiness is synonymous with the pursuit of pleasure. There is a fundamental disconnect in our society on the factors that build and sustain our emotional well-being. One thing I did feel emerge quite clearly is that it's less about the 'self' the narcissistic sense and more about the quality of our relationship with each other. Here's my take of the day: http://lovephool.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/self-help-for-the-truly-fcked-up-or-the-vaguely-discontent/
Posted by: Lovephool | January 17, 2011 at 11:10 PM