Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mashimaro]

I have my own views, but just wanted to throw it out there.

It's easy to make fun of the slightly corny style of the Anthony
Robbins type self help gurus out there, or say it is a bunch of BS.

I think it works if you work it (does that come from AA originally?)

I notice good things seem to happen when I am really concentrating
on certain things I learnt from some of the classic self help books.
Happens too often just to be a coincidence.

[Dude Love]

I agree that it works if you work it. If, you read half the book or if you listen to the CDs and don't do the drills (as I reckon most people do), then of course nothing will happen. If you follow-through and follow-up, good things will happen as long as you don't think the world owes you anything.

[ED209]

Doesn't AA have a no higher success rate than trying to quit on your own?

I think that buying a book on stress or relationships just makes you feel better. A kind of placebo effect. Of course if you stand in room and do random breathing exercises you are going to feel less stressed, you're not working!

[re:cursive]

I think it can work.
I read a book by John C Lilly called "Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer" a few years ago and it worked to some degree. Although it was more about a methodology than a recipe. I think you need to have respect for the person writing the book and the way they write it. For the majority of self help gurus I struggle to find an adequate level of respect.

[Mashimaro]

[jajdude]

I'm still waiting to see a comic strip that shows a "self-help" section in a bookstore, and a bunch of shelves that have no books.

[mindmetoo]

[Mashimaro]

[Smurfette]

You can lead a horse to water.....

[Adventurer]

Self-help can be defined in many ways. Let us take some of the ideas of Zen. Zen encourages you to look within, to meditate, be in peace with others and thousands have followed many of these ideas and they have been from every walk of life. Often, people like Tony Robbins and other people who write self-help books use the ideas from either Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judeo-Christian thinking or a combination of them. I have read some books that I felt helped me get a certain understanding of some questions I was asking myself. I think Zen to a large extent answers them but so do the ideas in the Bible. You can argue that the Bible in many cases is a self-help book. Some people who are religious sometimes ridicule the concept of self-help but all spiritual books are self-help books and I think just as you would read a book on investments to invest, you can invest in books talking about how to look at the world to invest in your psychological capital, so to speak. Tony Robbins was a pioneer and has many good ideas, but I have read and listened to things that resonated with me better than what he said.


The Bible says "As a man thinketh so is he". Thus, the Bible said long before Descartes the words "Ergo Cogito Sum". Thomas Jefferson turned to philosophy to make sense of things.

[ChopChaeJoe]

Can somebody lend me some money?

[Hyeon Een]

Do you think there's any market for an intelligent person's [for that you can read "cynical person's"] self-help book?

I've read a whole bunch. I read them in several places. I worked in a service station on the M25 at night and occasionaly read a self-help book to pass the time. I've lived with a couple of girls (room-mates, not girlfriends) who loved them and I read them because I was bored and too poor to buy books. I've read them in Korea when a Korean person has bought one with a side-by-side English translation and given it to me to read.

Every one I've read has made me want to punch the author in the face. I feel like I'm trapped in kindergarten with the mind of an adult. I feel like the author is talking to me in such a way that he knows all and I'm an ignorant fool. I just can't stand the writing style. I especially can't stand it when there is an idiot gushing over it right in front of me as I read the stupid prose.

However I think there are some valuable messages. Sometimes even ones which would be of benefit to me. If they were written in proper sentences instead of short statements, with 'big' words instead of 'little' ones and without the overbearing patronising attitudes I might lose my desire to smack the writer and gain something from them.

I think of the ones I've read the best would be "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama and the shrink who interviewed him. I quite liked the bits Mr. Lama was saying, but wanted to bitchslap the shrink whenever his bits came into the book. It was kind of like the dumb-intellectual's self-help book. It was better than the regular dumb people's self-help books which are out there but still patronising enough to make the cynic in me angry, thus cancelling out the nice buddhist calmness I was almost getting every now and then.

You know every now and then I get an adult class. And very occasionaly someone says something other than "I likeuh climbuh mountain" in response to "What do you like to do in your free time?" and they say "I like to read". When I ask them what they like to read they respond 50% of the time with either "Scripture" or "Self-Help books". Grrr.

I suspect that in the next few years there may well be a very well written self-help book which may start a pseudo-religion because a few intelligent people will actually respect its messages. The book will draw from Christianity, Buddhism and a few other sources but place them in a modern context. It will be written intelligently, in proper sentences and chapters, and 'convert' intelligent people. There will also be an "Idiot's Guide" to accompany it for the regular self-help crew. And it will conquer the world.

[tomato]

Here is a book which helped me:

[mindmetoo]

[merlot]