Read the full transcript of writer Marianne Power’s talk titled “Why Self Help Will Not Change Your Life” at TEDxLeamingtonSpa 2020 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Self-Help Journey Begins
Hi. So a few years ago, my life looked like this, followed by this, resulting in this. And I wanted my life to look like this, and maybe on weekends, this. I thought that the way to get there was with self-help books.
Now, how many people here read self-help? And how many think it’s total rubbish? I’d always read self-help, and friends would tease me because they would say that I was a really bad advert for books with names like “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,” which I’d read three times and continued to worry more than anybody I knew. On paper, my life was really good. I had a great job as a freelance journalist, and I had friends and family and my health, but I was actually quite lost.
By the time I was 36, my friends were moving on and they were getting married and having babies and buying houses. And I felt very stuck. I was often depressed. I was in debt and always single. In short, I was living proof that self-help books don’t help you.
The Self-Help Challenge
But I had this idea that they would if I just did what they told me to do, because until that point, I never did. I would read them and fantasize about how great life would be if I got up at 5 am to meditate or if I could just think more positively. But then I’d close the book and go back to wine and Netflix, and nothing ever changed.
So then one hungover Sunday, I had an idea.
I would spend a year not just reading self-help, but doing it. The plan came that I would read a different self-help book each month and I would do literally everything it told me to do to see if it could change my life.
Facing Fears and Embracing “The Secret”
I started with a book called “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.” The rule in that is really simple. She says to live a full life, you need to be doing at least one scary thing a day. So I went for it. I jumped out of a plane, me and my cheeks jumped out of a plane. And I did stand-up comedy and I did naked modeling. And I even did something that is known to scare most people more than dying: public speaking.
In short, I did more scary things in that month than I’d done in my entire life. When the stand-up comedy and the public speaking went quite well, I learned that I was capable of way more than I thought. I also learned that I got a big rush out of doing the small things I normally put off doing, like parallel parking and opening my bank statement. So the project got off to a really good start.
Then I picked up “The Secret.” Anyone here know “The Secret”? So “The Secret” says you can have absolutely anything you want in life if you just believe. This is down to something called the law of attraction, whereby what you think about, you bring about.
Family Concerns and Rejection Therapy
At this point, my family was beginning to get quite concerned by what I was doing. When I explained positive thinking to my Irish mother, she said, “You mean you delude yourself?” Bad Irish accent there. Sorry, Mom. And my sister worried that I was now going to open my mind so much my brain would fall out.
So I brought myself back down to earth with something called rejection therapy. This is a really brutal self-help game. It says that you need to be rejected by another human being every day. Yeah, it’s horrible. The idea behind that is that we all live in fear of rejection, and it stops us from going after loads of things we want. By actively seeking it out, you become a bit desensitized.
Professional Growth and Financial Struggles
Amazingly, I got a reply, and I now have a weekly slot in an Irish newspaper. It’s the size of a matchbox, but it’s mine. Thank you.
And then when things were going so well, I decided I’d play with fire, or rather walk on it, at a Tony Robbins event. I came away from that weekend on such a high that I felt like I could do anything. I could walk on fire, probably walk on water, and maybe even fly. But what I couldn’t do was pay for my groceries. Three days later, my card got declined at the supermarket, and I had to face the fact that self-help had been really bad for my already terrible finances.
The funeral exercise is in a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The idea is that by imagining all the things you want your loved ones to say about you when you die, you get very clear on what matters to you. You kind of come up with your life purpose. The problem was that by now, my head was so frazzled I didn’t know what I wanted for lunch, let alone what my whole life purpose was. And this made me feel like a failure.
Ten months into my self-improvement challenge, I actually felt like more of a failure than I ever had in my life. By now, I’d hoped that I’d be like a cross between Buddha and Beyoncé. But I wasn’t. I was a mess. And there was no denying it.
The Power of Now and Self-Acceptance
And then a therapist suggested I should read “The Power of Now.” “The Power of Now” is by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle says that when you’re walking down the street and you see people talking to themselves, we think they’re odd, but actually we’re all talking to ourselves all the time. We all have this voice that’s in our head and it’s narrating everything we’re doing. And it’s usually a really mean voice.
My final book also made me realize that I was not alone in this feeling of not being good enough. That book is called “Daring Greatly” by Brené Brown, who’s also done a hugely popular TED Talk. Brené says that we’re living in this time where nobody feels good enough. We don’t feel like we’re rich enough or good looking enough or thin enough or successful enough. We’re not a good enough parent. We’re not doing enough.
Lessons Learned
So did the self-help change my life? It didn’t change it in any of the ways I wanted it to. I never got up at 5 a.m. to meditate. I still take the bus and I definitely didn’t become a perfect person, but I learned an awful lot.
The main thing I learned was that I didn’t need to change myself. I needed to accept myself, warts and all. And that’s what I say to people who maybe like me are reading a lot of self-help books. I still love self-help and I still read it. There’s wisdom in those books and there’s an argument that we’ve always needed guidance on how to live life. It’s why philosophy existed. It’s what the village elder did. It’s what a big part of religion.
So it’s great to get the guidance and the wisdom, but please remember that you’re okay the way you are. If you get up every morning and do your best to be a decent person, that’s really enough. My best friend said she just wanted me to get to the end of all of it and realize that I didn’t need to jump out of a plane or run on fire to be a good person, that people loved me the way I was. And at the time, I genuinely didn’t believe her because all I could see was everything that was wrong with me, this endless list of everything that was wrong with me.
I thought I was broken and that I needed to fix myself. And I now see that I was never broken and I didn’t need to fix myself and neither do you. Thank you.
