<p>Today, there are at least a couple of self-help books for each issue a person might have. However helpful these try to be, there are still a lot of individuals who criticize them and who divide them into four categories, as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>the books that provide wrong advice - the so-called bad effect self-help books</li>
<li>the books that help people simply because these ones pay more attention to things they had not taken into account before- the placebo effect self-help books</li>
<li>the books that have no effect on people - no effect self-help books.</li>
</ul>

Types of self-help books

<p><strong>The issue with reading self-help books is that not everybody is willing to apply what is written within the pages of those very books.</strong> However, if you are to spend time reading a book, why not trying to understand and follow its advice? </p>
<p><em>One sure way to do this is by the so-called reading technique 'lectio divina' that implies reading really slowly and repeatedly the same text until you actually understand its benefits and why it could change your life for the better. Give it a try and you might just be amazed by the result.</em></p>

Learn to read self-help books

<img src="https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c2f31f48f04d831e9fee772a2b8d2b78?s=400&amp;d=mm&amp;r=g" alt="Jeroen Kraaijenbrink" width="64" height="64"><div><span>I write about leadership and strategy in the age of too much</span></div><img src="https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fdam%2Fimageserve%2F1155712028%2F960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale" alt="uncaptioned" width="351" height="234"><p dir="ltr">Two weeks ago I launched my first so-called self-help book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S3DGZ5S" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S3DGZ5S" aria-label="No More Bananas: How to Keep Your Cool in the Collective Madness" dir="ltr">No More Bananas: How to Keep Your Cool in the Collective Madness</a>. It is a book that offers&nbsp;practical advice&nbsp;for staying calm and confident in today's stressful world of social media and information overload. Even&nbsp;though very well-intended, I realize that its effect may be quite limited. Because, as it turns out, the effectiveness of self-help books is debatable—to say the least. Why is this and what can we do to make them more effective?</p><p dir="ltr">There certainly is no shortage of self-help books. Thousands of them are available and new ones appear every day. And they are popular too. Millions of copies have been sold of Mark Manson's 2018 "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062457713" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062457713" aria-label="The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" dir="ltr">The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck</a>" and Steven R. Covey's 1989 "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451639619" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451639619" aria-label="The 7 habits of Highly Effective People" dir="ltr">The 7 habits of Highly Effective People</a>"—to single out&nbsp;a recent example and a classic.</p><p>Despite their popularity, though, there is a lot of criticism on self-help books. These can be grouped into three categories:</p><OL><LI><strong dir="ltr">Bad effect:</strong> Self-help books give wrong and sometimes harmful advice, they give false hope, they make uncertain people just feel worse about themselves, or they make people refrain from seeking professional support.</LI><LI><strong dir="ltr">Placebo effect:</strong> If they already work, it is not because of the advices&nbsp;given in the self-help books, but because of the fact that&nbsp;people&nbsp;pay attention to something that they didn't pay attention to before.</LI><LI><strong dir="ltr">No effect:&nbsp;</strong>Even though people may find self-help books interesting to read (or just have), they don't work because the advices are just common sense or overly simplistic and people don't do anything with them.</LI><p aria-hidden="true" data-nosnippet="true">PROMOTED</p><div dir="ltr">UNICEF USA&nbsp;<span dir="ltr">BrandVoice</span><span dir="ltr">&nbsp;| Paid Program</span></div><h3> UNICEF’s U-Report Playing Key Role In Global COVID-19 Response </h3><div dir="ltr">Grads of Life&nbsp;<span dir="ltr">BrandVoice</span><span dir="ltr">&nbsp;| Paid Program</span></div><h3> Rapid Innovation For A More Equitable Economy </h3><div dir="ltr">Civic Nation&nbsp;<span dir="ltr">BrandVoice</span><span dir="ltr">&nbsp;| Paid Program</span></div><h3> COVID-19’s Threat To Native Communities </h3></OL><p dir="ltr">Such critiques appear in the news (like <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/5735549/Self-help-books-can-have-the-opposite-effect.html" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/5735549/Self-help-books-can-have-the-opposite-effect.html" aria-label="here" dir="ltr">here</a> and <a href="https://www.nursingtimes.net/can-self-help-books-be-bad-for-you/5003727.article" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.nursingtimes.net/can-self-help-books-be-bad-for-you/5003727.article" aria-label="here" dir="ltr">here</a>), in posts that people write (like <a href="https://medium.com/@crisjeschke/self-help-books-dont-work-here-s-why-7737df3aa6e9" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://medium.com/@crisjeschke/self-help-books-dont-work-here-s-why-7737df3aa6e9" aria-label="here" dir="ltr">here</a> and <a href="https://thoughtcatalog.com/tanner-baze/2017/04/why-you-should-stop-reading-self-help-books/" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://thoughtcatalog.com/tanner-baze/2017/04/why-you-should-stop-reading-self-help-books/" aria-label="here" dir="ltr">here</a>) and also in various books (like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1509514260" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1509514260" aria-label="here" dir="ltr">here</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sham-Self-Help-Movement-America-Helpless-ebook/dp/B000FCK71A/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1561022359&amp;refinements=p_27%3ASteve+Salerno&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;text=Steve+Salerno" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.amazon.com/Sham-Self-Help-Movement-America-Helpless-ebook/dp/B000FCK71A/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1561022359&amp;refinements=p_27%3ASteve+Salerno&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;text=Steve+Salerno" aria-label="here" dir="ltr">here</a>). The sheer volume of the criticisms and the tone of many of them, make it seem that bashing self-help books is as popular as the self-help books themselves.</p><p>I want to zoom in on the third point above: the observation that self-help books often have no&nbsp;effect. The other two points are interesting as well, but depend very much on the kind of self-help book and the specific advice that is offered. The last point, though, is more general. So, why don't self-help books have the effect that is hoped for by the authors?</p><p dir="ltr">The main reason, as <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-006-9041-2" rel="nofollow noopener" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-006-9041-2" aria-label="this article" dir="ltr">this article</a> in the <em dir="ltr">Journal of Happiness Studies</em> suggests, is&nbsp;often the reader him or herself. When reading a self-help book, it is us who decide whether or not to do something with it. And usually we don't. We have glance at the book, read the blurbs or even actually read the book, but then we go on minding our usual business. And we can freely do that. There is no therapist, coach or teacher telling us what to do or keeping us on track.</p><p dir="ltr">While hiring a self-help book coach could be one solution, I have asked myself numerous times while writing <em dir="ltr">No More Bananas,&nbsp;</em>how I can help the reader to actually apply the advice on his or her own—without needing someone&nbsp;to play&nbsp;the self-help police. Of course that started with making the advice very practical. But that is not enough, because many of the self-help books around do contain quite practical advices that can be easily applied.</p><p dir="ltr">Interestingly enough I found an answer when staying a couple of times in a Benedictine monastery.&nbsp;What I learned there is how you should read texts in order to really learn something from them. The "technique" they use is is called <em dir="ltr">lectio divina,</em> which means ‘divine reading’. Originally, this referred to reading God’s word, but it can be applied to other texts as well—including self-help books.</p><p dir="ltr">The core idea of <em dir="ltr">lectio divina&nbsp;</em>is that you read a text very slowly and let sentences sink in one by one. You start reading slowly until there is a paragraph or sentence that appeals to you. Then you stop and read that paragraph or sentence again. And again, and again, and so forth. So, like a cow does with grass, you ruminate the words until you have digested them. While doing so, your mind starts working and connecting the thing you read to the things that you already know.</p><p dir="ltr">By reading in this way, you allow yourself to internalize the text that you read and this significantly increases the chance that you will change your behavior—and thus that you actually benefit from the&nbsp;text that you read. And, as research has shown, a nice side effect is that this whole reading experience itself already makes you feel better. This makes applying the <em dir="ltr">lectio divina</em> technique a double-edged sword.</p><p>So, your favourite self-help book and start reading in this way. I'll bet you notice a difference.</p><div dir="ltr"><span dir="ltr">Follow me on&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.twitter.com/JKraaijenbrink" dir="ltr">Twitter</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroenkraaijenbrink/" dir="ltr">LinkedIn</a>.&nbsp;<span dir="ltr">Check out&nbsp;</span>my&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jeroenkraaijenbrink.com/" dir="ltr">website</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;some of my other work&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jeroen-Kraaijenbrink/e/B072MZC831" dir="ltr">here</a>.&nbsp;</div><img src="https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/c2f31f48f04d831e9fee772a2b8d2b78?s=400&amp;d=mm&amp;r=g" alt="Jeroen Kraaijenbrink" width="44" height="44">

There is a lot of criticism on self-help books, especially that they don't live up their promise. Learn why and, more importantly, how you can make them work by reading them in a different way.

Why Self-Help Books Don't Work (And How To Nevertheless Benefit From Them)

Types of self-help books

Learn to read self-help books

CURATED BY

Related collections

More like this