My speech to the School of Life Self-help Summit was over a week ago now, so I’ve had time to reflect. Typical of a High-FF (someone with high fear of failure as described in What’s Stopping You?) I’ve started to focus on the negatives, now the first rush of adrenalin from simply getting through the process has dissipated. I rather fluffed the question on “charlatans”, asked right at the end of the day and directed towards me by the chairman Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian. In fact, I had a neural hijacking, wondering whether Oliver thought me a charlatan – ignoring the fact I’d spent much of my speech criticising the genre for over-promising, hyper-titling, over simplifying complex mental conditions and being generally a bit cheesy (making me the obvious speaker to address the issue).
Yet that’s the key problem with fear of failure – it’s an innate condition. Those reactions are inevitable, making our only hope the ability to generate a better second response. Nonetheless, there I was – a confirmed High-FF making a speech that seemed to go down rather well. At least, I made people laugh, got a round of applause, engendered a good debate and had people saying nice things to me in the break.
Being a High-FF is certainly no barrier to presenting to an audience, although there is no doubt that it is one of those terrifying episodes – a key moment for the monkey on our shoulder to appear and start whispering disabling thoughts into our head along “you can’t do this”, “you’re an idiot and you’re about to be found out” lines. Indeed, my High-FF persona was even capable of scouring the audience for the one person looking less than delighted with my speech and focusing totally on him (who’d probably been chucked by his girlfriend that morning).
So can I offer any advice to the High-FF fearing presentations or speeches (as nearly all will)? These are purely my own thoughts – and purely in retrospect given that it seemed to go OK – but the following seemed to get me through it without the need for beta blockers (which a friend had offered and I’m now glad I refused).
1) Prepare. Powerpoint presentations are actually for the speaker rather than the audience. I used Powerpoint to help me structure the discussion, work out the narrative and order of points, to illustrate what I was saying with images, and to help me remember my lines. In fact the Powerpoint was my beta blocker – just knowing it was there calmed me enormously.
2) Work out the message. I had one point I wanted to make – that self-help cannot cure you of innate conditions but it can help you make progress once you realise no cure is on offer. I thought this a strong message so it ran throughout, repeating it on the last slide to remove any doubt.
3) Practice. My wife heard it twice, a colleague in the office also heard it twice. I practiced it twice alone before work each morning prior to the summit and three times on the day. I learnt to smooth out the sticking points and, in fact, pretty much knew it by heart by the time I stood up. Ultimately, knowing the material inside out was what allowed me a confident delivery.
4) Especially know the opening. This is worth knowing verbatim – those first few lines after “good morning ladies and gentlemen”. Make absolutely sure you are happy with these lines – because it is here you win or lose your audience.
5) Remember they are on your side. In nearly all situations in which you are making a speech the crowd are with you. Unless you are a Tory addressing a Labour rally, the audience is willing you to do well and couldn’t care about the odd verbal clumsiness. So don’t alienate them. My guess that the School of Life crowd was likely to be cerebral, sceptical but open minded was correct (I think). I therefore addressed their sceptical side (winning them over) before appealing to their open-mindedness (with positive messages about self-help).
6) Give it pace. This may be just me but that old advice to slow down doesn’t suit the nervous speaker. With the Powerpoint as an aide mémoire, why not give it some welly? Rattle through the slides making fast but clear points that have your audience’s hearts racing. Certainly, it’s a great way to cover up any signs of nervousness.
7) Be funny. Levity is certainly appreciated. Because they are on your side, jokes tend to work, even if not that funny. I used visual gags – showing them the cover of my last book (with “me” standing in Union Jack boxer shorts) and the "surgically-enhanced" grin of Anthony Robbins on the jacket of Awaken the Giant Within to illustrate the cheesy aspects to self-help. They loved it!
8) Never slag the other speakers. Try and repeat their message (as long as you agree with it). This is a collegiate endeavour, after all. In fact, Philippa Perry, the previous speaker, said that psychotherapy could help build new neural pathways (challenging my claim that our insecurities were hard-wired). Actually, we were saying the same thing – differently. Try and find the common ground.
9) Be careful in the Q&A. The “charlatans” question threw me so I ended up just repeating my message about “the afflicted desperate for a cure” (though with much less clarity). In fact, this isn’t a bad strategy – repeat the message. Otherwise anecdotes that support the message may work. A trick I use when presenting at work is to answer the question by repeating the message but then asking the questioner if my answer satisfied. If not, that's fine as, by then, I’ve usually had a chance to think up a strong answer to the actual question.
10) Thank your hosts. And compliment them.
Showing posts with label School of Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label School of Life. Show all posts
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
On “nudge” – is it OK to agree with both sides?
Buoyed from my contribution to the School of Life’s Self-help Summit I had intended writing a blog about overcoming nerves when presenting to an audience. I may yet, but something happened at the event that created a more urgent need for me to articulate my thoughts: a major clash between two of the participants.
With my piece said and the Q&A navigated (in fact I was probably a bit full of myself by then and the chairman – Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian – had trouble wrestling back the microphone) I sat back to listen to Frank Furedi: a professor of sociology at the University of Kent. His big thing is scaremongering, and how competing groups in the modern world have fostered a culture of fear and paranoia.
Of course, the self-help industry is a small part of this but, for Furedi, the worst offender is government. Nearly all governments of whatever stripe indulge in behavioural management to try and manipulate their citizens, he said (going as far as to use the word “brainwashing”). Governments have assumed the role of suggesting what is and isn’t appropriate for the rest of us with respect to acceptable behaviour and have even shaped policy accordingly (witness this week’s minimum alcohol price imposition in England). Yet, according to Furedi, this has become so ingrained, he feels we are heading towards a form of “soft totalitarianism”.
Furedi was immediately followed by Nic Marks – who walked down to the speaking area loudly berating Furedi for his criticisms of what Marks called the “well-being agenda”. Indeed, Marks is founder of the Centre for Well-Being, part of the New Economics Foundation, although his ire appeared to have been particularly tweaked by the criticisms of the current government’s “nudge” initiative.
For Furedi, Downing Street’s “nudge unit” is the government “elbowing into our private lives”. It is “telling citizens how to think”. Meanwhile, for Marks, not only does he support the idea of government taking up the cause of well-being amongst the citizenry (a stated aim of the nudge unit), he saw it as a vital factor in community cohesion and even sustainability. In fact, Marks’s main problem wasn’t government intervention into the private realm but the fact the well-being initiative was being championed by the Tory-led coalition (giving rise to such verbal contortions such as “libertarian paternalism”).
For me, the clash was a coincidence because I’d been reading the book behind the controversy (and the inspiration for the creation of the nudge unit within Downing Street) – Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.
So what is “nudge”?
“A nudge...is any aspect of choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding options or significantly changing their economic incentives,” write Thaler and Sunstein.
The book states that every choice presentation is weighted and shaped by the way it is presented. So we can frame choices consciously and ethically in order to “help” people make better decisions regarding their lives. Of course, they remain free but have been nudged in the right direction.
Much of the concern here is focused on the lower orders – helping people choose work rather than benefits-dependence, for instance, or contraception over unprotected sex, or social responsibility over unsociable behaviour.
Yet it can extend to moral concerns further up the social scale. One example is organ donation. Currently, most jurisdictions require “explicit consent” from donors but if a democratic society decided organ donations are a social positive they could switch to “presumed consent”, or perhaps “mandated choice” in which, say, driving licence holders must specify a preference. Such a change – from an “opt in” to an “opt out” – maintains freedom of choice but makes the commonly-perceived social benefit clear and nudges society forward.
The environment provides other examples. For instance, with recycling, simply labelling litter bins “for landfill” and “for recycling” allows people to make an informed choice while being encouraged towards the socially beneficial action – or at least informed of the true consequences of taking a certain path.
So what could be wrong with this? Plenty, according to Furedi. He stated four clear objections:
1) The devaluation of moral independence – basically the notion that others not only know what is or isn’t in our interest, but morally engineer us towards their will.
2) Nudge and other such initiatives erode our capacity to develop a capacity for judgement, he states. We end up simply outsourcing our judgement to the government.
3) It also erodes the separation between the public and private sphere, and devalues the private sphere while doing so.
4) Having the government dictate our well-being will disorient us and even increase our anxieties.
The trouble is I agree with Furedi on every point – yet I still support the “nudge” initiative. Apart from being morally and intellectually confused, can I explain myself? Well, yes. Furedi is morally and intellectually right – his four objections are all valid in my view. Yet this isn’t about morals and intellect, despite being presented that way. In reality – given the stresses and strains on the tiny piece of real estate called the UK – “nudge” is a very practical way of trying to rub along without having to get too authoritarian about it.
Here’s my take on a very practical defence:
1) Given the growing population and growing competition for resources (especially in crowded cities such as London) waiting for others to develop judgement – and meanwhile suffering the consequences of their behaviour – is unfair on those with judgement. Most people agree that personal freedom only extends to the point it impacts others. Yet increasingly, (and with respect to noise, light, rubbish, parking, resources, education and just about anything else you can think of) someone else’s behaviour has an impact sooner rather than later.
2) It is ridiculous to assume there is no such thing as a vulnerable person. Judgement, like intelligence, is not a given – it varies wildly. Just as some people need help with their reading, others will make poor decisions without guidance. Especially given the decline of the nuclear family, someone has to offer (unforced) guidance – if not a government agency, who would you suggest?
3) Indeed, who should be the arbiter of our behaviour? The loudest, the greediest, the most aggressive – even the richest? Seems like a democratically-elected government is the best potential arbiter, although it should perhaps work within a framework of limitations (such as a Bill of Rights).
4) Sure “nudge” can be patronising, but – in many ways (such as the bin-labelling mentioned above) – it is encouraging the liberation of judgement. For instance, who now is against food labelling? Yet left to itself, I think it unlikely the food industry would have willingly adopted a practice that so liberated the judgement of the consumer.
5) Sure, government intervention can increase dependencies, even moral dependencies – if that’s the result you are after – but they can also encourage autonomy. For instance, if people are made aware of the consequences of their behaviour (such as the wayward youth impregnating unemployed teenage women and generating a £1m plus benefits liability) then we have at least sorted the arrogant from the ignorant – and can therefore take a view on how we deal with both.
With my piece said and the Q&A navigated (in fact I was probably a bit full of myself by then and the chairman – Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian – had trouble wrestling back the microphone) I sat back to listen to Frank Furedi: a professor of sociology at the University of Kent. His big thing is scaremongering, and how competing groups in the modern world have fostered a culture of fear and paranoia.
Of course, the self-help industry is a small part of this but, for Furedi, the worst offender is government. Nearly all governments of whatever stripe indulge in behavioural management to try and manipulate their citizens, he said (going as far as to use the word “brainwashing”). Governments have assumed the role of suggesting what is and isn’t appropriate for the rest of us with respect to acceptable behaviour and have even shaped policy accordingly (witness this week’s minimum alcohol price imposition in England). Yet, according to Furedi, this has become so ingrained, he feels we are heading towards a form of “soft totalitarianism”.
Furedi was immediately followed by Nic Marks – who walked down to the speaking area loudly berating Furedi for his criticisms of what Marks called the “well-being agenda”. Indeed, Marks is founder of the Centre for Well-Being, part of the New Economics Foundation, although his ire appeared to have been particularly tweaked by the criticisms of the current government’s “nudge” initiative.
For Furedi, Downing Street’s “nudge unit” is the government “elbowing into our private lives”. It is “telling citizens how to think”. Meanwhile, for Marks, not only does he support the idea of government taking up the cause of well-being amongst the citizenry (a stated aim of the nudge unit), he saw it as a vital factor in community cohesion and even sustainability. In fact, Marks’s main problem wasn’t government intervention into the private realm but the fact the well-being initiative was being championed by the Tory-led coalition (giving rise to such verbal contortions such as “libertarian paternalism”).
For me, the clash was a coincidence because I’d been reading the book behind the controversy (and the inspiration for the creation of the nudge unit within Downing Street) – Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.
So what is “nudge”?
“A nudge...is any aspect of choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding options or significantly changing their economic incentives,” write Thaler and Sunstein.
The book states that every choice presentation is weighted and shaped by the way it is presented. So we can frame choices consciously and ethically in order to “help” people make better decisions regarding their lives. Of course, they remain free but have been nudged in the right direction.
Much of the concern here is focused on the lower orders – helping people choose work rather than benefits-dependence, for instance, or contraception over unprotected sex, or social responsibility over unsociable behaviour.
Yet it can extend to moral concerns further up the social scale. One example is organ donation. Currently, most jurisdictions require “explicit consent” from donors but if a democratic society decided organ donations are a social positive they could switch to “presumed consent”, or perhaps “mandated choice” in which, say, driving licence holders must specify a preference. Such a change – from an “opt in” to an “opt out” – maintains freedom of choice but makes the commonly-perceived social benefit clear and nudges society forward.
The environment provides other examples. For instance, with recycling, simply labelling litter bins “for landfill” and “for recycling” allows people to make an informed choice while being encouraged towards the socially beneficial action – or at least informed of the true consequences of taking a certain path.
So what could be wrong with this? Plenty, according to Furedi. He stated four clear objections:
1) The devaluation of moral independence – basically the notion that others not only know what is or isn’t in our interest, but morally engineer us towards their will.
2) Nudge and other such initiatives erode our capacity to develop a capacity for judgement, he states. We end up simply outsourcing our judgement to the government.
3) It also erodes the separation between the public and private sphere, and devalues the private sphere while doing so.
4) Having the government dictate our well-being will disorient us and even increase our anxieties.
The trouble is I agree with Furedi on every point – yet I still support the “nudge” initiative. Apart from being morally and intellectually confused, can I explain myself? Well, yes. Furedi is morally and intellectually right – his four objections are all valid in my view. Yet this isn’t about morals and intellect, despite being presented that way. In reality – given the stresses and strains on the tiny piece of real estate called the UK – “nudge” is a very practical way of trying to rub along without having to get too authoritarian about it.
Here’s my take on a very practical defence:
1) Given the growing population and growing competition for resources (especially in crowded cities such as London) waiting for others to develop judgement – and meanwhile suffering the consequences of their behaviour – is unfair on those with judgement. Most people agree that personal freedom only extends to the point it impacts others. Yet increasingly, (and with respect to noise, light, rubbish, parking, resources, education and just about anything else you can think of) someone else’s behaviour has an impact sooner rather than later.
2) It is ridiculous to assume there is no such thing as a vulnerable person. Judgement, like intelligence, is not a given – it varies wildly. Just as some people need help with their reading, others will make poor decisions without guidance. Especially given the decline of the nuclear family, someone has to offer (unforced) guidance – if not a government agency, who would you suggest?
3) Indeed, who should be the arbiter of our behaviour? The loudest, the greediest, the most aggressive – even the richest? Seems like a democratically-elected government is the best potential arbiter, although it should perhaps work within a framework of limitations (such as a Bill of Rights).
4) Sure “nudge” can be patronising, but – in many ways (such as the bin-labelling mentioned above) – it is encouraging the liberation of judgement. For instance, who now is against food labelling? Yet left to itself, I think it unlikely the food industry would have willingly adopted a practice that so liberated the judgement of the consumer.
5) Sure, government intervention can increase dependencies, even moral dependencies – if that’s the result you are after – but they can also encourage autonomy. For instance, if people are made aware of the consequences of their behaviour (such as the wayward youth impregnating unemployed teenage women and generating a £1m plus benefits liability) then we have at least sorted the arrogant from the ignorant – and can therefore take a view on how we deal with both.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
HELP! I’m supporting self-help at a summit of cerebral cynics
Yiks – I have my first gig as a self-help writer! It’s at the School of Life in Central London. I’m a speaker at the Self-Help Summit on January 15th – part of the afternoon session entitled “Help Yourself: How Does Self-Help Help?”
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
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