The Self-Help Community

The self-help community has been around since our mom's nagged us to wash our face and brush our teeth every night. Or, maybe it started with religion and rituals. There is something about being given advice or being told what to do that can equally annoy us and empower us. It all depends on how we are told what to do. My guess is, our Mom's caring-worry wasn't the most effective, but perhaps Tony Robbin's passionate tale about bodily acid motivated us to take action; ironically, one idea is obvious, the other is totally out of left field.

The fact is there is a lot of money in it too. And for good reason. People want an awesome life and don't want to get caught with their pants around their ankles, doing the same tasks for 40 years.

Why didn't the first Self-Help book save the world, much less the 10,000^th? If Tony Robbins wrote the most useful guide to self improvement, why are his competitors so successful too?

I was able to find out a certain small-time self improvement teacher makes bank. I mean, this guy sells a few products, writes out a newsletter once a week almost, and has had minor media exposure, and he has made almost $700,000. Now, I know Tony probably makes over $100M, but I am talking small time.

So imagine, owing a very small hardware store right next to Home Depot and Lowes and still making bank.

My point isn't making money though, my point is the utter importance of self improvement. We all know this; it is the basis for survival. In our primitive days, we needed to continually improve our abilities to keep up with the ever changing environment we lived in. This is true for all animals and you do know it. It's called Survival of the Fittest.

Nowadays, it's Survival of the Smartest, or Knowledgeable, or Able. However, these days, that knowledge isn't as much learning about Medicine or Business (though that is a huge thing to get into), the other things to become smart in are how to deal with stress, how to handle irritable people, how to gain great friends and maintain those relationships, how to find a loving partner.

See, in this day-in-age where you can have a full meal at Dennies for less than $10, or go to HomeTown Buffet and eat anything you want, we don't need to be super rich to survive—life may suck if we lived on Dennies or McDonalds, but you will at least not go hungry.

So, to gain knowledge in maintaining a good life, in handling stresses, many people look into Self-Help. While this sounds mundane and trivial, dealing with lots of stress and not knowing what to do could lead to some major problems and we all kind of know this, deep down.

The other thing is the self-help world is continually improving itself. Although lots of it is filled with fluff and vague mumbo-jumbo, the ideas of NLP, Hypnosis, cognitive psychology, and even medicine are becoming more and more refined. Things are being combined in different ways, ideas are being refined down to their minute parts.

Some examples include Dr. Paul's MindOS which brilliantly combines ideas of NLP, medical psychology into one rather complete system. Then there are guys like Hypnotica who take hypnosis and NLP and come up with very, very creative ways to influence our mind's patterns and habits. Then there is a group like Authentic Man Program which focus's intensely on building a strong frame and personal boundary. AMP seems to use NLP like ideas; in their program they talk about breaking things down into small steps to achieve a goal, but they go about it in a very, very intense way and we almost get branded by their hard core lessons.

My conclusion is that Self-Help is different for everyone. I used to stick to just one program, like Steph's, to improve all aspects of my life and I really didn't get too far; it helped a lot with understanding my spiritual beliefs, understanding love, but I couldn't get it to help with stress when it seeped into my life. But, even MindOS which probably addresses 75% of all my development didn't help so much with certain things, like developing a strong skin. This is really just me, I have friends who were the opposite with MindOS and I know some of Steph's students use his ideas religiously.

Anyway, lately I have been analyzing this self-help community and realizing the amazing effect it has had on my life, even when I was going almost no where. I think it is vital for all people to figure out how their brain works, how their heart works, how they learn, how they improve, how they deal with stress, how they can build a thick skin, how they can live happy.

The answer has to be different for everyone, the journey is to find it. Just as some people love seafood and others hate it. Just as some people love spicy food and others can't handle it for a second. We all must find our special combination.

I have been thinking more and more to help guys find a system that works for them. To find the right combination of tasks to address their issues, custom tailored to them. I have been through a lot of different self-improvement flavors and I feel very able to help others in this.

More on it later.