Continuing on my very popular posts about what you can get out of self help and what I consider the pitfalls that you can fall into, today I want to talk about self help language.
Self help language consists of purposefully ambiguous phrases and statements designed to make you feel good about yourself temporarily, or to offer the # 1 KEY to whatever the hell it is you're trying to work on. It can consist of phrases, proverbs, catchy sayings or simply words that don't really mean anything or are open to a variety of interpretations.
Let's take a look at some examples of gobbly gook Self Help Language:
1. Be Authentic. This is one of my favorite examples of self help talk that actually doesn't mean anything. It's often tossed around in the P/U community as well as on The Real Housewives of Orange County and New York. Authenticity is defined as a way of dealing with the outside world by being faithful to internal rather than external ideas. So the idea is that you want to stick to the things you believe in. That's good, but let's look at how a completely authentic pickup would look like
" Hey, I noticed you have really big boobs and I wanted to come over here and try to convince you to sleep with me so that you can be the second girl in my rotation of 7 girls. You'll luckily be able to hang out with me on Tuesdays. And there will never be any sort of monogamous relationship. My name is Jon. PS I also smoke a lot of Pot, and teach men how to get women into bed quickly.
Authentic Bitches! Also extremely ineffective.
2. Be Confident. Ah yes if only it was so easy. It would be great if you could just change the fundamental nature of your psychological makeup with just a few words. "Be confident?" Why didn't I ever think about that? You mean I could just be confident?" The idea of confidence in general is murky. Confidence is defined as an unwavering belief in yourself. Yet, it is difficult to learn to believe in yourself, and to regard confidence as something that you can just acquire, rather than something that is earned over time is flat out wrong.
3. Live Every Day Like It's Your Last. Again, I get what you're going for here, but if you're going to die tomorrow, why pay your bills? Or Keep Money in a savings account? Or Use Condoms? Or Not run from the Police when you get pulled over? You see where I'm going here. It's a good idea to take risks and chances which is what i think self helpers are going for when they say things like this, but it's a little bit hyperbolic.
4. The Law Of Attraction. It's a law? Really? Like Murder? Or Gravity? So let me get this straight, if I just believe that Tess Taylor is going to show up at my door wanting to be my sex slave enough, it will happen. And If it doesn't then I just didn't believe it enough. Shit I better wrap up this blog so that I can start believing.
And with that in mind, I'm gonna go start attracting :)
JS- The King of Content
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
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2. Be Confident - you did give us an alternate to that one. I pretty much found out that on only definable aspect of confidence is being self-absorbed..ignoring people, not looking around, being unaffected by other things (incl. gusts of wind , flashing lights l, amogs and sirens). throw in some active behavior (so your not looking like a shallow brick) and your confident in no time.
ReplyDelete"Hey, I noticed you have really big boobs and I wanted to come over here and try to convince you to sleep with me so that you can be the second girl in my rotation of 7 girls. You'll luckily be able to hang out with me on Tuesdays. And there will never be any sort of monogamous relationship. My name is Jon. "
ReplyDeleteLet's field test this.
Thing with self-help is it's BAD if coming from the mindset of a magic pill. It's GOOD if coming from the mindset of just frequently dialing into a positive vibe.
ReplyDeleteAlso, some of the self-help out there is bad and cliche, but by the time you've read 3-4 self-help books you can start to tell what is pretty bad and what is good. The No. 1 red flag is if the author is a "motivational speaker" by occupation and they have nothing else going for them. Their own success shoudln't be "motivational speaking".
Regarding number 2:
ReplyDeleteI've been completing a degree in entrepreneurship that last three years (kind of an irony but anyway) and one of our teachers told us something I found profound about confidence.
Confidence is area specific.
For example, you Jon are confident talking about PickUp, but if I asked you to cut open someones head to remove a tumor you would feel less confident. On the other hand, someone else would be the opposite.
Confidence comes as your knowledge and interest in a subject grows. In time it gets easier.
Take an interest in people and over time your confidence will grow. At least, that has been my experience.