When researching What’s Stopping You? I quickly became disenchanted with nearly all of the self-help books I’d read over the years. It wasn’t their recommendations that bothered me – in fact many contained some great tips and methodologies that have been included in my book (TBP February 2011 by John Wiley & Sons). It was more fundamental than that. I had a problem with their premise.
The main issue was what they promised, which was a cure for mental conditions such as fear of failure and low self esteeem. Researching my book meant talking to psychologists and researching both academic and popular psychology texts. And each time the same fundamental truth screamed out at me: our fears and insecurities – including fear of failure, low self-esteem, anxiety and poor confidence – are innate. Once and however inflicted we are hardwired to our inner beliefs. Sure we can treat the symptoms but our core beliefs are here for life. As I say in the book, that monkey on my back (you know the one – he whispers doubts and fears at the very moments we need confidence and resilience) isn’t going to just disappear after a few motivational passages from a self-help guru. So why are so many self-help books promising to “change your life – forever” when it is something they simply cannot deliver?
Of course, there’s a chance many of the authors realise this but know that offering progress (via their techniques) without the all-important promise of wholesale changes to our personality would compromise their marketability. They surmised, probably rightly, that people are looking for a cure for their insecurities – in fact they are looking for a cure that is pretty much instant. And while the books were incapable of delivering on their promises in full, they reasoned that any application of their techniques would deliver some progress, which would justify the over-promising.
Yet this just wasn’t good enough for me, or – I thought – the many intelligent people out there that are hampered by their insecurities. Sure, they want help, but smart people only have to pick up most of these books to see through the over-promising. They are turned off by the smiling face of “Mr Successful” beaming out from the front cover, before making statements such as “it worked for me, it’ll work for you”. Indeed, words like “mastering” “unlimited” “guaranteed” are everywhere. And everywhere they put off intelligent people that, nonetheless, want to navigate their insecurities.
So while I thought there was a market for a book that didn’t treat the reader like a child – that told the truth about our condition but then helped us use self-help methodologies to make strong progress anyway – I did worry whether such a book would have any resonance with a wider audience (than just me, that is). Just maybe those smart people were also too self-conscious – or maybe too British – to ever buy a book written with them in mind.
Luckily I had one, somewhat unusual, example as a potential template: Allen Carr’s the Easy Way to Stop Smoking (1985). Despite helping millions of people give up smoking – and despite the book’s name – Carr offers no miracle cure for the nicotine addict. The first half of the book simply describes the life of a smoker – exploding many myths and delusions about the impact of smoking (for instance, explaining that it causes rather than relieves stress) – and the nature of addiction (explaining that it is no more than a mild feeling of emptiness, that dissipates in a few days).
Crucially, Carr – a former 100-cigarettes a day addict – then tells us that the desire to smoke will not simply disappear. Even after a period of not smoking – even when we think we have finally conquered the addiction – we will occasionally be triggered by situations where we had previously “enjoyed” smoking. Carr states that these are the moments we must guard against and plan for. But, with his help, the smoker can navigate their way such triggerings via self-awareness and clear thinking.
Carr’s trick is to describe, not only the false paradigm that is the world of the smoker, but how we will behave once we quit. First, the “monster inside us” (in fact a similar creature to the monkey on my back) will kick and scream as it copes with nicotine withdrawals. But it will soon realise it has to get clever – suggesting a reward for “having done so well” or claiming that it was so easy “we could quit anytime” – or even going for the “just one puff” honeytrap. Then it will get angry and try anything to trap us: for instance inventing rows with loved ones so we can shout “look what you made me do” as we grab the fags. Yet through self-realisation that this is happening we are no longer fooled and can call the monster’s bluff.
Carr made the smoker mentally ready for the battle ahead – not through any self delusions (except perhaps in the title of his book) – but through self awareness. And that was my aim when writing What’s Stopping You? I’m not promising a cure. The clinical evidence suggests that we will have to accept the news that we are who we are. The fears that dog us now will always be with us. But that doesn’t mean we are helpless. Far from it. It just means that we must take account of our fears and insecurities as we make progress. We need to be aware of our faulty wiring – helping us benchmark judgements that take account of the fact we are likely to be making fear-based, rather than rational, evaluations.
In the writing of What’s Stopping You? therefore, I have to acknowledge my debt to Allen Carr. Oh, and he also helped me stop smoking in 1991 after 10-years as an "addict". By the way, Allen Carr died of lung cancer in 2006 and, despite probably saving thousands from a similar fate, has never been recognised by the UK government for his work. The reason: according to Carr, the government ignored his recommendations because they were a refutation of the nicotine replacement therapy the government (thanks to powerful lobbying) favoured. So much for self-awareness.
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