Giving Self Help Books A Chance

Me and one of my best pals Ruth had once agreed that people who read self-help books are losers of some sort, laughing and making fun of her blue-eyed contact lens-wearing former classmate in school  who bragged that his favorite books include overrated self-help book titles. I personally hated the preachy tone some self-help book authors use in their books. I don't wanna be paying money only to be ordered around by some self-righteous know-it-all stranger.

Around nine years have passed since we made fun of the self-help guy, and after a few failed relationships and lessons, I have decided to give self-help books a chance. After all, what's wrong with wanting to improve yourself if it will help you communicate better with others and have better relationships with everyone?

I have found that not all self-help books preach in an irritating know-it-all voice, and I also found that these books operate mainly under one principle (which echoes and confirm what I have been thinking and theorizing about relationships all along) - the more you demand, the more you push your partner away and the less you demand, the happier you will be.

Case in point based on my observation of the people around me is when a girl pushes for marriage to her boyfriend who is not yet ready for it or when a guy pressures his girl friend to convert to his religion when the girl doesn't feel like converting to a different religion. In both cases, the person's desire to get what they want becomes so great that it outgrows their love for their partners and it consumes them so much that it becomes their chief goal in life, without caring anymore for anything less. It's actually sad when I see friends become like these, and it can only be called as what Eckhart Tolle said, "simply using the person you are with as a means to an end". The relationship or the person you are with is no longer of primary importance to you or even of no importance at all because what have become most important to you now is what you can get out of the relationship -be it marriage, sex, money, yielding of one's will or some sort of reinforcement to your ego.

Here are similar words of wisdom from Anthony Robbins:

“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take. ”