Help! I am addicted to Self Help Books!

My hubby always laughs at my addiction to self-help books. At the heart of it, he does not believe they help at all. They make you feel good and motivated for a brief moment after reading them, and then you continue your old ways.

In a way, he is correct. I have read tonnes of self help books this year: The Happiness Project, The 7 Habits of Effective People, Gravitas, Working with Emotional Intelligence, etc. I do not really feel that I have improved that much.

I have pondered why I feel the need to read self help books. Now that I have read several of them, I am also getting sick of reading such books. But when I have the chance to browse at a bookstore, I still tend to gravitate towards the “Self-Help Books” genre, or at those self help books disguised as management books.

After some reflection, I thought that at the heart of it is my desire to improve.

I would like to become a better person. A person with EQ. A person who is happy. A better leader. That, in itself, is not a wrong desire to have.

So why have I not become a better person?

One of the reasons is because I jump from topic to topic. I jump from the topic of EQ, to happiness, to presentation skills, to leadership, to general personal effectiveness. And of course, I do not actively practice the concepts that I learnt.

To be more accurate, I try to apply the concepts. But after a while, because I have nothing to sustain my actions, I revert to my old ways.

This brings to me to the topic of this blog! I have been trying to find a focus for it. I do not think it is sustainable if I just wake up every Sunday morning and try to squeeze a topic out for my blog. It needs some kind of focus.

Well, for now, I will let myself meander from topic to topic. Perhaps after a while, a theme will emerge by itself?