Are Self Help Books Really Helpful?

For a few years, now I’ve been focused on reading books that will help with my personal development and I have to say that these books have helped me more than I thought. I would only enjoy reading poetry, but once I wanted to further my intellect, I chose to get into reading books that could enhance my personal growth. There is a lot of criticism on self help books and some avid readers may say they’re a bit repetitive and they don’t actually help.

The books i’m going off of include the following:

• How To Win Friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
• The Defining Decade by Meg Jay
• You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero
• Successful Women Think Differently by Valorie Burton

I purchased and read all of these books at separate times so this article is just a slight reflection on whether or not they’ve actually contributed to my personal growth over time. After doing some deep thought about how these books changed my life, I noticed that the ones that stood out to me were Successful Women Think Differently and The Defining Decade. Once I read both of those, I knew I was going to want to read them again. There was a lot of concepts that may have ideas sparked, or new words I attained.

My books have a little bit of character lol

While reading those, I was more motivated throughout my days. Gaining a better understanding of who I am, ways I should be proud of the individual I am, and thoughts that helped me think further. There were some really good thought provoking quotes and affirmations that the everyday person would find motivation in.

From The Defining Decade, Here’s a great quote by a great philosopher named Soren Kierkegaar explaining why we should always practice forward thinking:

“Life can only by understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”

I loved that quote because it is subtle, but also assured the fact that we should always be living forward; building up innovation, being progressive, and consistently yearning for growth. Speaking of growth, in Successful Women Think Differently, I’ve learned the art of a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset. This changed a lot of perspectives for me because I realized I had fixed mindset habits. People with fixed mindsets are obsessed with the idea of APPEARING intelligent because they were born (fixed) that way. Someone with a growth mindset understands that their ability to learn is infinite, they are forever students of life, and sense of self. Pictured below are some notes I wrote down from this learning.

These notes were written on my iPad with my apple pencil (Wow, look at the date).

My journey to having a growth mindset has been moving since. These are just some things I took from the concept as a whole. I really enjoyed learning this about myself and other people at that. This book changed my views on learning and being comfortable with growth and change.

While writing this article I had to keep in mind this genre is not for everyone. However, I feel like there are certain personal development books that can be valuable and motivating to be productive, but you can’t go into it thinking this will be key to saving the world, or being applicable to every single part of your life. I still recommend finding one (or a few if you’re like me) self growth book to cling to and enjoy enough to read multiple times to stay hungry.

Always,

Sunny.