How to Tell Good Self-Help From Bad Self-Help
Five takeaways:
- The self-help space has become a multibillion dollar, hugely crowded industry. Naturally, one must be intentional in selecting their sources of self-help information- or risk getting stuck in the loop of getting bad advice and being forced to seek more.
- To avoid bad self-help, make sure your self-help advice is consistent with these proven neurological principals:
- Mental focus amplifies and magnifies: whatever you focus on becomes larger and more important to you than what you don’t.
- Repetition creates default processing in the brain: it can make certain processes happen on “autopilot”
- When the brain experiences something bad it sends a signal of negative emotion before giving way to more rational processes: interpretation and assessment of the bad thing. Good self-help advice encourages you to understand that this initial negative signal (say, anxiety or anger) is not reality, as much as it may seem like reality. The alarm is not the fire.
- Bad self-help advice, however, focuses on validation of the negative mental processes holding an individual back. It wastes time validating an individual’s negative experience rather than giving advice for actually addressing it, causing them to get stuck in a feedback loop that sees them repeat their bad habits… and continue consuming bad self-help advice.
- Good self-help advice actively seeks to be practical, helping individuals to define their goals/actions, and offering specific strategies to address their problems.
From Steven Stosny, Ph.D for Psychology Today
Read the whole story.
Note: At the time of this posting The Atlantic offers five free article views per month.
This site may contain links to articles or other information that may be contained on a third-party website. Advisory Services Network, LLC and MAP Strategic Wealth Advisors are not responsible for and do not control, adopt, or endorse any content contained on any third party website. The information and material contained in linked articles is of a general nature and is intended for educational purposes only. Links to articles do not constitute a recommendation or a solicitation or offer of the purchase or sale of securities.