Self Help Fallacy

Posted on December 9, 2009 by venagozar

I had a visitor at my site last week who felt my posts on self help and life changing in general are hollow wasted words. I agree one hundred percent with their thought. In fact there is not one article, lecture, or event one can attend that will make the slightest difference in any ones life.

Self help is a space filler of hollow promises promoted by people chasing a fast profit. Perusing the internet for unhappy self help victims one can find many instances where the promise was not only not filled, but not even partially filled. Of course there are no refunds which further sparks the fire and fans the flames.

Go into the local bookstore and shelves are filled with books claiming they can help you make your life better. If you have read the ‘about’ page of this blog, you read a similar thought there. here is a quote from my about page, “I have a lot of life experience, so I feel I have something to share with you, that you may enjoy or benefit from. “

If you believe that nothing anyone writes, said to you, or tries to sell you, will make your life any different, you are absolutely correct. Nothing you read or hear will likely make any changes in your life. The idea of any self help material, no matter the source helping anyone is an illusion.

It does not matter if you manage to bring Lester Levenson back as your personal advisor, the Roman Catholic Pope moves in next door to be closer to you, Lillith appears because she is going to be your personal mentor, or the Dali Llama agrees to be your life guide. Anything anyone could provide for you is only so many words or ideas.

This is the plain and ugly truth about self help. Nothing you can read or hear will help you. Your life is what it is and that is the end of it. Writing this certainly clears the air. Someone at last admits that every written or produced to improve your life is wasted effort. I am glad I went ahead and made this statement. If you are in agreement there is no need to read any farther. Nothing anyone can say will change your life.

However, I am glad for the person last week who took the time to make those comments. Perhaps this is the moment that needed to be said to me. Was I wrong seeking a way of living which improves my life? Maybe it was a mistake to get beyond anger, blame, and dislike. Maybe living my life would have been more rewarding by not trying to change it.

If I was happy living a life of anger, blame, and dislike, I think I would not have decided there was a better way to live and I was going to find it, or die trying. This beginning was frustrating and difficult. What books I read where written by people who never seemed to have to struggle once in their life, with the exception of the bible and we all know what happened there. What little changes I decided I could make in my own life seemed trivial and petty, and of no consequence.

I did not have a clue on how to make my life better. I started at the very beginning. The first thing I did was I admitted I knew nothing about living a happy contented life. Starting here I made small changes I hoped would make a difference in my life.

When I spoke with people who seemed to live a better life than I did, I listened to what they said about their life. I paid attention to their outlook, and expectations for their life. I especially listened to what they thought about themselves and other people in their daily life.

Life is a struggle from the moment of our conception. We struggle to grow enough to be born, we fight off disease when we have few tools to fight with. We struggle from the moment we drop onto the bed sheet. We struggle to learn how to take our first breath.

Life is a challenge, a struggle, an adventure, or an experience. Wether we are happy and enjoy our life or not, we are the person living it. We have the power to change our life, reshape, and remold it into a life we want.

All anyone has to do, is for a split second seriously ponder if there is a better way to live. That is the seed that starts the process of changing ones life into something we want to live. One second of wondering if there is a better way opens a portal, allowing all the help in universe to offer you a helping hand. Open your mind, reach out your arm, stretch out your hand and grab on, your new life is waiting.

Want More Out Of Your Life?

Posted on April 13, 2009 by venagozar

power I came across two interesting thoughts today I wanted to share, and add too. The first was along the lines of, “If you do and act like everyone else, you are rewarded like everyone else.” The second was a re-quote from Henry David THorough, “All men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Unfortunately these are tried and true, died in wool, written in concrete, branded in steel truths. Everyone is rewarded in the manner of everyone else like themselves. Everyone leads lives of quiet desperation. If you do not believe me, think of the people in your social group.

Everyone dresses the same, has similar tastes, all make about the same income, and they all have about the same expectations for their future. It makes no difference if the group you belong to is in their late teens, thirties, sixties, or somewhere in between. Everyone in your group will more or less progress and achieve at about the same rate.

It does not have to be that way though, unless you prefer it to be that way. Social pressure, a lifetime of listening to others expectations, and your beliefs all contribute to having a live like everyone else. Most people want the house, the car, the job, whatever group you identify with, everyone has about the same value set.

So why does everyone in that group deceive themselves by thinking they are unique and what everyone else will likely accomplish through their lifetime does not apply to themselves? I once read a definition of stupid as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.

Hold up your hand if you suffer from doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. I am holding up my hand as you read this. Unless I am paying attention to what I am doing, I find myself repeating the same pattern over and over and expecting different results.

What is wonderful and important right now, is reading this and wondering if reptition applies to your life. If it does, it is your lucky day, because from this moment onward there is an opportunity to take a new approach to how you manage your life.

If you realize you have been doing the same things and hoping for a different outcome, this moment is the time to know and believe that nothing will change except the calander date. There may be an occasional fluke where something different happens, and your mind will jump on it reinforcing the thought that you are on the right track, but do not take one instance an place it above the other hundred or more instances.

Repeating the same patterns leads to the same results. Starting now, make an effort to change the way you do things. The first time, or the first twenty times may bring about change you do not want, but at least you are making changes, and you know what won’t work. Eventually you will find what works and your life will take off in the direction you really want it to go in. Of course you will have to take personal responsibility to step out from the crowd and dare to be different…and the crowd won’t like that.

Personal Construction Set For Life Building

Posted on March 27, 2009 by venagozar

Wouldn’t it be nice to have our own personal construction set? Think of the possibilities. Anything we wanted, we could make or create. If our car broke, or there was a plumbing problem we could reach into our construction set and pull out the needed tools to fix the problem.

If we needed something done in our life, or wanted to modify someone in our life, it could be the same process. Reach into our construction set box, pull out some tools and off we go. Fixing, modifying, creating, changing someone around us into someone better for our life.

There is some good news about our construction sets. We all have one. Our construction sets are standard equipment given out when we are born into this world. It is always with us, and it is always in use. From the moment we wake, perhaps even in our sleep, we remove and use tools out of our construction set. We are busy shaping our world into something we feel is more like what we want.

Looking around it is obvious that some people are very good at using the tools in their construction set. Their life appears to be perfect, they have everything anyone could want. At least it looks as if they have everything you and I may want. It seems they are master craftsmen and have used their tools with all the skill and finesse becoming a master craftsman.

When we look at our own lives we see a different picture. Some parts of our life are working pretty well, and some other areas need some major work. It could be in how we manage our resources, perhaps our relationships, or maybe even our time. For some it may seem that we lost our construction set somewhere along the way and most things in our life need fixing.

There is something valuable we may have missed about construction sets in general. All the tools we need to create, change, or modify our world are inside our box of tools. For the most part, we are masters in the use of all the tools we have in our constructions too.

Our live consists of a lifetime of repair, modification, change, level, and rebuild. Our construction sets are complete when we were born, but we are not. We have all the tools we need and we know how to use them, but it takes a lifetime, sometimes longer to create the world we envision.

In the meantime, though, we have all the tools we need to keep working on our masterpiece. All it takes is being true to ourselves, knowing what we really want for our lives, and not letting ourselves be distracted from our future. Sounds simple, and perhaps for some it is, but for the rest of us, there is one important tool in our construction kit that we often overlook.

The tool we overlook the most is checking our progress against our plan. We made a plan sometime in our past, and we get so busy we never stop to check our progress against our plan until it is obvious something went wrong somewhere along the line. The great thing is when we do learn to occasionally check our work against our plan, this tool becomes one of the most important and least overlooked tool in our personal construction kits.

Argue less and find more happiness

Posted on February 13, 2009 by venagozar

There was a time if I was in an argument, it was not over until one of us admitted defeat. The argument would go on until there was a clear winner. It would even go on longer if it was a heated debate. After all what was the fun of stopping at just winning if I could really rub the other persons nose in their defeat?

It sure felt good when on the winning end to really punish the other person. Taking it one step further. Adding a few extra hurtful comments because I knew I could was extra frosting on the cake.

Over time, I learned, or maybe unlearned, that I was not doing myself any good going above and beyond when I won an argument. It made me feel good for a few minutes of course. Or maybe I should say it made my ego feel good.

What I found was the price I extracted in collecting my proverbial pound of flesh from the other person would eventually turn out to be very expensive for me. I found out my behavior I was really hurting myself in the long run.

Over time, I find it better not to let arguments become that heated if at all possible. The more battles I took on, even more battles would make their presence known. In the end there are only a few battles worth fighting.

What I learned to do was stop arguing when I won. When losing, I found it is less painful to concede immediately. Stopping at the first opportunity is something practiced in martial arts where the idea is to stop the violence as quickly as possible with the least amount of harm to the opponent.

Fighting battles can be fun. Winning them is fun. Punishing the loser is even more fun. It is a blast in fact, until I needed something that only the person I hurt could do for me. Then suddenly it became obvious that the price they paid was much smaller than the price I would end up paying.

At first it was hard to stop. Hard to make myself stop when I had a lifetime of taking arguments too far, too often. With practice it became easier, and when done long enough, stopping before an argument became heated and something painful was said, became second nature.

So what is the benefit in not taking an argument too far? The most obvious is the other person does not feel like they have an enemy. They know what they were saying was actually heard and understood. In the future they may be may be more likely to help you, or at least not do anything to hamper you because they are not your enemy.

Being perceived as more mature comes in third for me. Not letting a disagreement become personal, and therefore heated, allows me to stay focused on keeping the disagreement respectful.

I find I have more energy. I have more energy because I am not wasting energy and effort on something that is not that important.

Life becomes easier and simpler. Not wasting time and energy on something that when compared to the bigger things in life are not really that important, allows more time and effort for what really matters. Not spending my energy trying to win an argument at any cost, gives me more time to notice those little things that make a big difference in the quality of my life.

When enough time is put into not arguing for the sake of arguing, I now understand other peoples arguments may be valid when they disagree with me.

Because I learned other people are not always wrong, I started seeing the person. When I start seeing the person, I know they are trying to enjoy their life just like I am. They may be going about it differently, but they are not wrong.

Reaching this point, a happier more filling life starts to happen, and life becomes happier and more enjoyable because almost everyone is moving in the same direction I am.

Why change?

Posted on November 30, 2008 by venagozar

The old man told me he did not understand what was going on with young people these days. Right there in his town where he lived all his life, “There are over one-hundred of those queers living as couples, right out in the open! There is something wrong with people now days”, he said, “for this to be going on”. They did not act and carry on that way until recently, and they weren’t around when he was a younger man.

The old man went on to tell me about his antique and collectibles business. If he was living somewhere more mainstream he would be selling a thousand dollars a day of his wares he said. He told me he can not understand why young people do not collect old things anymore. They are still valuable and practical items he has for sale. “My kids will have fun with this stuff after I am gone”, he told me in a reassuring voice. It will keep them busy for a while, sorting and selling all this stuff.

He said he spends every extra dollar he has on buying collectibles and antiques. He is not selling much these days, and he has three buildings full of boxes and shelves of stuff. Some of the items he has have not had the price changed in thirty years, he has been too busy buying more items. He plans to keep on buying things he said, until he gets too old to drive. When he has to stop driving, he does not think his end will be too far away. Once he can longer drive he told me,”…there is not much point to living.”

I politely found an excuse to leave his insightful company and views on life as he knows it. He is a self admitted old man and what he talked of is life as he understands it. He is not able to change, but up until now he has found a way to endure.

I did not provide any meaningful response to his many observations and opinions for obvious reasons. The main reason was not having an argument with an old man. There is no gain in it. Old men have their opinions and they will never change. At least I managed to leave before he turned to politics. He was warming up to it, but never really got rolling on the subject of our new president elect.

He is set in his ways and his ways are right for him. As Ann Anne Rice mentions a few times in her vampire books, we either change or we die. It is not the exclusive realm of vampires to suffer this affliction. Our world no matter where we live is changing fast.

My Grandparents never believed that we put men on the moon. They believed in hard work, and saving for the future. Going on a cross country road trip, or sailing across the Atlantic Ocean was about the extent of possible travel in their world. I am sure each of us will find ourselves dated in our thinking and our ways at some point in our life. Hopefully those areas we find ourselves outdated in will not be not life limiters.

Maybe we will find we hold a timeless message for those coming behind us before we go the way of the old men and vampires that could not accept change.

Life is what you make it

Posted on October 12, 2008 by venagozar

In the movie Forest Gump, the main character Forest was asked many times if he was stupid. Forest always answered the same way. Forest would say, “Stupid is as stupid does”. It worked well for Forest and took him from situations where perhaps he would have found himself out of his element of comfort.

In our personal and working life we are the same way. We have a set of practiced responses that work for us and we use them whenever a problem pops up. Since we were toddlers all we have done is improve responses to situations, rarely do we explore alternative actions.

We tweak them, make them funnier, more cutting, or more defensible. Our repeat responses work for us even today. We have use the same life scripts so many times we rarely think any longer. We just reach into the bag which is is our past experience, filter for the best choice we made in the past, and repeat what we did before in the same situation.

In my life, I have seen many many people do what Forest Gump says many times, “Stupid is as stupid does”. This is not inferring that I live my life surrounded by stupid people. Rather I notice people tend to repeat the cycle and expect different results.

For example, if you can not get out of bed in the morning, and are continuously late for school, or work, buying a louder alarm clock does not fix the problem. Yet people who are always late in the morning repeat a series of scripts they have been using their whole life time to help them get out of bed. None of the changes they make help. but each time they think this time will make a difference.

Obviously if getting out of bed in the morning is a problem, the best solution is to go to bed earlier the night before. More sleep before the alarm goes off is more effective than buying a louder alarm clock. The alarm clock is not the problem.

Other problem areas of life are exactly the same. In family situations where conflict can not be resolved people play out the same scenario time after time. Yet each time at least one of the people involved initiates the conflict thinking this time the outcome will be different. Jeffrey Krames wrote a book, ‘Inside Drucker’s Brain’. I came across one interesting reference to Krames’ book which is: “Results are achieved by exploiting opportunities not solving problems.”

The main trigger words caught my eye when I read the comment about Krames’ book. The first is the word achieved. Achieve means to accomplish or bring about.

The second word is opportunity. Opportunity is a set of circumstances that make it possible to do something. Doing something means having different results than from previous attempts.

The third word is exploiting, meaning to make full use of and derive benefit from. Not repeating the same failed scenario but making use of a situation and getting something out of it.

The fourth word is problems. Problems in this context is a situation regarded as unwelcome, needing to be dealt with and overcome.

It is a lot easier going through life exploiting opportunities than it is to re-enact a situation that always arrives at the same frustrating end. When anyone finds they are in a situation with no good outcome the best choice is to make sure the situation never repeats itself.

Ignore the same old problems. If they could be solved they would be. No one gets stuck in a rut by exploring and exploiting opportunity. They do get stuck in a rut trying to solve old problems. Save your limited energy generally spent on a repeating problem that have no easy solution. Use that extra energy as your opportunity to achieve a better outcome!

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