I started with Dale Garnegie's "The Leader In You" and it was incredibly addicting.
One of t emore memorable quotes is this:
"You can make more friends in two weeks by being genuinely interested in others than you can in two years by getting others interested in you"
At the ripe age of 13 this was like mana from the heavens--this is it! that's the secret!
I went through a series of other books, not because I had problems in my life, but because I found within self-help books an honest attempt to tinker from the inside out and not the outside in.
Unfortunately, it's not that great of a science to it.
Only recently do we have psychologists, like Martin Seligman, moving away from psychology-as-diagnosing-mental-ilness to what he calls "positive psychology"
(here's a good read on seligman http://slate.msn.com/id/2072079/entry/2072490/)
Every self-help book has its own flavor, but usually they fall under the same basic themes.
1) get off your ass! - these are books like Dr. Phil's "self-matters" which just try to whip you into shape
2) mental techniques - like exercises in creativity, how to keep a journal, how to make better decisions
3) feel good inspirational talk - things like tony robbin which are all about just drowning you in success stories so that infects you
4) get organized - how to make charts, how to narrow down your priorities yada yada
5) finding yourself - bringing out traits in you that you never knew existed
6) hand-me-down wisdom - any biography or stuff from Dale Carnegie
There is hardly any science involved really, so I'm glad Seligman's taking a crack at it.
I'm reading his book, Authentic Happiness for ideas.
But this other interesting idea came to head.
I am in the middle of reading this speech by Larry Wall, the creator of the phenomenal Internet programming language, Perl (http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html) and he gives a pretty good notion of what the word "postmodern" means.
You have to read the first bit to understand it.
But what if self-help books have themes.
Or rather, what if self-help books could have artistic themes.
Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Postmodern.
What if you could using various books to sculpt yourself into a postmodern man.
a Classical or Baroque self-help book would focus on learning etiquette, how to shake hands right, etc.. all about learning technique.
The Romantic would be all about getting in touch with yourself, tapping your creative side etc..
A Modern person would be a Dale Carnegie reader, reading about interpersonal strategies for cultivating a network.
I think I'm crafting, with my approach to self-programming a Postmodern person.
First, I have a totally envelopatorian mentality, and also a nihilistic/atheist one.
dah, it's hard to explain, just like the word postmodern is hard to explain.
But I think this one quote from Nietzsche sums it up best:
I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation! And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer!
END QUOTE
I've also self-programmed like an amateur scientist, trying out different programs, modules, setups, all in an attempt to make myself new.
but not make myself new in the sense of "okay, I'm a slacker now, how do I become successful"
because if you do that, then well that's nothing new.
you are merely following the typical story line: guy starts out as a slacker, eventually gets jaded by it, discovers he needs to get motivated, and goes out and does it.
I'm talking about breaking down traits within you that never seem to go away.
I guess it's not that interesting
well, in the case of the slacker-turned-successful usually some external force precipitates it, he goes bankrupt or his best friend dies of a crack overdose.
I think I'm talking about unprompted at-will change. I mean really there is a LOT that seperates us from other people
and yet after the age of 16 you pretty much stay the same
You become so bogged down by your previous biases, and you even become closed-minded and neurotically scared to change fundamentally who you are.
But anyway, I thought the idea of fashioning oneself could be an art and have art movements assigned to it in of itself was an interesting thought.
