How many of you guys have ever felt like you're stuck like a wedged tampon? It was
like everyone was on this self-discovery journey you know like discovering who you are, aligning
your chakras. Even Lorde has been discovering the transcendental power of the rays absorbing
on the beach living her best life! In "secrets from a girl" she reflects on how fast time
has moved and she reflects on her own growth journey. "Do your best to trust all the rays
of light. Everybody wants the best for you but you gotta want it for yourself " and i was like
is this Kendrick Lamar's fourth studio album because damn! I just felt this really incredible
sense of frustration with who I was and I felt like I didn't have this ability to articulate
these deeper truths about myself. A lot of people have been talking about how they've
become very like introspective reflecting on themselves in the pandemic I felt like i haven't
been doing that... Part of me felt like am i still the same person as i was when i was 18?
I gotta get out of this tumblr depression era. So these books are supposed to change your life
Hi, it's Divya G. What does does the g stands for? The g stands for: Growth! Commercialized! Self-help is
a huge and growing market right now if you literally just look at the topic of self-care
around the beginning of the pandemic, in 2020 you can see this massive spike in interest. I mean,
you can also kinda tell with the slew of BetterHelp ads. BetterHelp BetterHelp BetterHelp
BetterHelp. I feel like more than just apps, you have this growing community sharing their tips on
places like tiktok, you have videos on youtube, or the best place of all if you want to get a mental
health help? Twitter! I feel like nowadays we have this massive swarm of personalities
and self-proclaimed self-help gurus that are like "yeah we we know how to fix you!" and it's always
hidden behind this ridiculous pay wall because it's like okay wanna unlock the secrets to your
life you gotta pay with yours. Okay yeah, you're down- a guy's sitting there right now
watching this and i'm i got my last grand dude i got christmas coming should you spend it on
this? Absolutely. I'll tell you the same thing. So anyway i see self-help books coming in two
big chunky categories this one is entrepreneurial orientated think "rich dad poor dad" and i don't
know if this is just a me experience or something every growing up poor immigrant Asian can relate
to but i have a history with this book! And the other one is more introspective more
lifestyle think more mental health focused. How to win friends and influence people,
12 rules for life, stop worrying and start living, make your bed, the subtle art of not giving an f-
i read this one not that great. Okay so like internet rule number 34 i propose a new rule:
if you have a problem there is a self-help book for it. There's this huge power of promise and
change and that was really alluring to me so i was like okay bet! 101 essays that'll change the
way you think. Okay 101 essays touches on some like really interesting topics
"expectations you must let go of in your 20s, the philosophy of non-resistance, the difference
between going with the flow and becoming a doormat" and the best part of this book is that
it's in a very easily digestible format. Um a lot of these essays are basically a bunch of lists of
very super simple advice. Don't be a dumbass like me because i feel like that title is misleading. I
was expecting 101 essays like either curated from other most influential people who have ever lived
and it's going to be this collection of essays from different fields and different genres...
if you're looking for that then this is not the book for you. So how do i feel about this? Huh
so i don't doubt that this book has helped and will help a bunch of people bring sort of clarity
or perspective on "hey here's how you can reframe a situation". How do we stop this concept of like
living for a future happiness and saving up your happiness and kind of allow yourself to
feel it in the moment? How do we stop detaching and ruminating especially in our 20s when things
are so unclear? But i felt like this book and a lot of the other self-help books that i
read suffered from this problem and i call this "the nike slogan tag syndrome"
where the message boils down to: just do it! Overthinking? Just don't <3
I feel like sometimes we lost a bit of the nuance reading this some of the ideas felt like
me wearing a bralette: unsupported. Sometimes the author makes like statements about psychology
and people and i think where did you get this from?? "Nobody ever got anything from wanting
it badly enough i really don't care how passionate you came to be about something.
People tend to claim being passionate as a qualifying factor when at the end
of the day the person who gets the job is the one who is most technically capable,
the promotion will go to the person who worked the hardest and the apartment to the person with the
best credit score" I get the message is basically saying like just wanting something isn't going to
guarantee that you're going to get it. Some of the statements are a little bit relying on this myth
of meritocracy right that if you work hard enough in life the world is fair! And you will
get rewarded! And you will get where you want to be just by working hard! It assumes fair and
equal opportunities in life or that people are in a position to just travel the world just go and do
things and not everyone has the privilege of doing that. A similar note was on choosing emotions
"if you believe that your fate is yours to choose you will if you don't you'll stay victimized
self-pitying and waiting and begging on your knees until some external circumstance shifts
and it's deemed the random work of a higher power if that's how you want to exist that's your
prerogative but i find that most people don't". "Everything is hard but you choose your hard
you choose what's worth it. You don't choose whether or not you'll suffer but you do choose
what you want to suffer for". I'll come back to this later on in the video. How to stop
overthinking. This also suffers from the another problem "advice i can get on the nhs website".
And sometimes the advice was a little bit general but i feel like that's not my main gripe. Even if
advice is general some people will find value in that and i don't disagree i've personally just
heard it before and this really wasn't the book for me. I had a small issue with how this book
frames procrastination so a few times basically said that procrastination was laziness whilst
in the same breath they would also talk about how important mental health issues were. Okay
so i'm not a doctor but this is just how i view things. I feel like laziness and procrastination
are slightly different laziness kind of comes with this sense of indifference, procrastination
mostly is coupled with this feeling of some sort of negative emotion whether that be shame whether
that be guilt whether that be frustration with yourself... because often times people do want
to complete a certain task. Calling it just yeah you're just lazy just just get up and drink water
is not helpful. Which brings me to another point on the dangers of self-help books:
where are you getting your sources from? This reminds me of something so i was scrolling and the
algorithm fed upon me this really charismatic and motivational speaker and the way that they spoke
was so drawing and alluring to me i was like damn! I was watching the video for ages again
I was sending it to all my friends I was like you gotta watch this this is so yes! And then i looked
them up on line and it turns out that they've been accused of running a cult oops. That's the
thing right a lot of these authors know how to charm you you have to be careful kind of look
them up look at the background. This blanket statement advice without really any scientific
can just make some people feel more shit than when they started reading. The power
of now. This one's a spiritual book and you can really tell! Death is an illusion
just as your identification with form was an illusion.
The end of illusion that's all that death is it is painful only as long as you cling to illusion
there we go. Eckhart's message is really just relax! How do we become present in our life?
How do you use presence to detach yourself from any negative emotion that you might feel? Be able
to gain control and mastery over your body? How do we transform suffering into peace? How do we
use presence to help direct our goals? And I'm not gonna lie the whole book kind of just reads like:
quit don't quit. Noodles don't noodles. You are too concerned with what was and what will be.
Yesterday is history tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift
that is why it is called the present. Okay so like i read half of it and i was like
"yes yes um interesting point" and then upon reflection i had a few issues with it the
firstly is perhaps minor but alot of it was like condescending. If you don't understand something
then sometimes the argument was basically yeah well you're not you're not awake in your
spiritual eye enough! "Are you seriously ill and feeling angry now about what i've just said? Then
that is a clear sign that the illness has become a part of your sense of self and that you are
not protecting your identities". The next point: what is up with all these authors just demonizing
negative emotions! A lot of people will be reading self-help books to kind of get rid of their
negative emotions or thoughts right i don't mean to say we should lament in our emotions and just
suffer forever! Unlike twitter and tumblr would like us to do. But their message seems
to kind of be like all negativity is just the failure at yourself and not being able
to control your emotions. At least, that's how I interpreted was that consciousness and active
choice is the way out of your pain a lot of the books that have echoed similar sentiment.
Some of the techniques are great: identify your emotions, seeing it from a third perspective,
labeling it so that it doesn't overwhelm you but sometimes it also sends this message that
suffering is your own personal choice. "If if i choose not to feel a certain way then i choose not
to be upset" if only you can master emotions then you can master your true self and unlock
this like higher way of being in the world! I mean i could be certainly wrong and emotions might be a
choice. I also feel like it's kind of dismissive to regard all negativity as something wholly a
burden an onus of the self and ignores some of the physical conditions and problems of the world. I
personally feel like teaching how to react to an emotion, how we process about our emotions,
is more helpful and more useful kind of being non-judgmental about it versus this
dogma that like we make up problems for ourselves because quote "there's something fun about making
problems" but i don't know i'm not a psychologist. Atomic habits. This is the only book that i'd
actively recommend. The power of now i think it's interesting as a thought piece but i feel
like atomic habits is like the only one that was like actively useful. The advice might be simple
but that's a great thing: it's actionable. And i feel like James also provides life examples kind
of like how do we remove distractions from our life?Anyone can read this and feel like
"okay even i can do this" right and i read this and i was feeling good i was feeling
euphoric which brings me on to my next issue: i feel a sense of accomplishment
and yeah in this case that's kind of slightly a problem. I felt like
i am the embodiment of dj khaled i was like another one another one another one
another one. Before you know it I'm in this cycle where i'm like 100 videos deep, 10 books added to
my cart, five documentaries and a partridge in a pear tree and that ties into my last problem:
self-help books are all useless unless you actually just do it(!). They are
an amazing tool yeah but that's just it they are a tool. I don't know i don't know if anyone else
does this but when i read i'm just kind of like "yes i'm reading wow look at me go i'm reading!"
and it makes me feel accomplished honestly i feel like i'm better than everyone else in the world.
It's kind of action faking. I do this a lot in my life especially at uni like i usually just watch
tutorials on computer science and and sometimes it is easier to kind of place
the blame on ourselves because it's something that we can actually control most of the time
right? Versus this big idea of like "society". At least at least for the self-help books i read i
felt like they were missing this perspective or acknowledgement that sometimes it's just
social structures that keep people unhappy. Part of me feels like the self-care movement
is kind of fake. The mental health conversation has really been warped into a tool for people
to make money like babes burger king does not care about your well-being. And you might be
thinking what's the point of this video well i guess the point of it is really just like
just take guidance online and self-help books in general with a pinch of salt. I mean i could
be completely wrong. And i also feel like okay- so this is like slight tangent. This could be a
whole other video in itself. Sometimes i feel like this whole self-care thing has been really like
aesthetic sized- aestheticized- to become just this thing that just feels superficial to me. Like
aesthetic setups here and there i go yoga i spend only two hours a day doing work and
it just feels unattainable. Or like it's like oh yeah i meditate for like three hours a day
and i'm totally indifferent to suffering and pain! At least the western forms of self-care
that I've kind of like seen online and i don't know fake is the right word because it's not
fake but it does feel slightly superficial. Like i need this and that and this and
that to be able to have self-care when sometimes self-care is literally just like
eating some vegetables now and then you know? Having a small break or like stuff
like that- i don't know but anyway thank you so much for watching all the way to the end
i can't believe you made it through my crusty ass skin! Thank you so much for supporting me
and supporting my channel with a subscribe or a like or comment or whatever i make book, design
and bookish design content. As always i'd love to hear opinions about what you think
about this whole like self-care movement have you read any self-help books where you think
yeah this is great or any that you think i should stay clear of? Yeah follow me on instagram and
twitter if you want to see me through my own self-help journey and yeah let's have a hug
i don't think i can uh it's too far away but there we go