Why Self-Help Junkies Don’t Do That Much Better in Life: Beware to All Women
Posted on April 05, 2015 by Ivana Pejakovic, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Yes it’s true. We found that women who spend a lot of time perusing self-help material don’t necessarily fare much better in life.
Yes it’s true. In our practice, we found that women who spend a lot of time perusing self-help material don’t necessarily fare much better in life.
Why? Because they don’t always know how to transfer the self-development material they learn into everyday behaviour. In fact, they have become very knowledgeable of the self-help content and would Ace an exam based on theory… but these same women quite often end up getting only mediocre results in life! (Not significantly better than other women).
So let me make this distinction clear. Being able to regurgitate self-help material, does not automatically improve the quality of a woman’s life. Life satisfaction only goes up when behaviour is changed to match the knowledge.
Of course some women do better than others. Those who take the time to complete the suggested exercises in the books, do much better because these exercises come with ideas on how to integrate new habits into daily life. In fact, they ‘force’ you to take time out of the day to practice new habits. And with new behaviour come new results.
So what can you do to help you boost your life results after reading self-help material? Here are 4 steps you can follow to enhance the value you are receiving from the self-help work you read.
4. SLOW DOWN WHEN READING NEW SELF-HELP MATERIAL. Don’t move on until you understand it theoretically and understand its purpose.
3. COMPLETE THE EXERCISES IN THE BOOKS YOU READ. Don’t skip them and say you will get back to them. You know you won’t!
2. REFLECT. Take the time to think about how the material applies to your life (not just when you’re reading but long after you’ve put the book down). This will help you connect the dots between what you’ve learned and what you do because you’ll be connecting actual behaviour to what you’ve read.
1. PRACTICE WHAT YOU LEARN. Apply the new knowledge. The reason this is the last step is because you need to grasp it conceptually first. Slowing down, completing the exercises, and reflecting n your behaviour will prepare you for practicing what you learn.
The key is to keep up with what you learn and not give up soon after (keeping up with step #1). Change requires quite a bit of mental and physical energy. We usually do OK in the beginning when we’re hyped up, but as soon as our day gets a little more stressful, we automatically revert back to old habits in order to conserve energy (habits don’t require us to expand a lot of energy).
This is why self-help junkies don’t do that much better in Life… It’s hard to keep it up. Everything gets easier with time, however, and when you practice enough the new behaviour will be like second nature. That’s when you’ll do significantly better in life.