#5 – Get Inspired!

Variations:

• Pump yourself up.
• Give yourself pep talks.
• Attend motivational events.

Why this is a fail:

• It only lasts a short while.
• It encourages a boom-or-bust mentality. When you feel low, you think you’ve failed.
• It can trap you in an addictive cycle. You think one more motivational seminar will give you a permanent lift. (Hint: It won’t.)

You can view the entire Self-Help Fails series here: https://stephendiamond.me/category/self-help-fails/.

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Next up in the Self-Help Fails series:

#4 – Boost Your Confidence

Variations:

• High self-esteem is essential for success.
• Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other. (Brian Tracy, motivational speaker)

Why this is a fail:

• Overconfidence can lead to poor decisions.
• Too much optimism can makes you reckless.
• You may double down on a bad choice and make things even worse.
• You may waste time on an impossible dream.
• You may lose people’s trust because you can’t follow through with something you said you could do.

You can view the entire Self-Help Fails series here: https://stephendiamond.me/category/self-help-fails/.

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#3 – Work Hard and You Will Succeed

Variations:

• Work and you’ll get what you need; work harder and you’ll get what you want. (Prabakaran Thirumalai, medical entrepreneur)
• Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get. (Ray Kroc, former McDonald’s CEO)

Why this is a fail:

• Successful people are the only ones who ever say this. They ignore the myriads of hard workers who struggle. What about single parents working three jobs to feed and clothe their families? How many of them get a lucky break? The truth of success is that hard work is often necessary but rarely sufficient.

Dozens of successful people say things like this. I’ve only scratched the surface with these quotes. They should know better. I find it shocking, the disrespect they’re expressing for all the many thousands of hard-working people who haven’t had their advantages.

On the other hand, many successful people acknowledge that hard work doesn’t guarantee success. They manage to emphasize its importance without sneering at those who are less fortunate. Here are some examples:

• People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. (Frederick Douglass, abolitionist writer, orator, statesman)
• For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work. (Jessica Savitch, television news presenter)
• It takes a lot of unspectacular preparation to have spectacular results in both business and football. (Roger Staubach, former NFL quarterback)
• My success was due to good luck, hard work, and support and advice from friends and mentors. But most importantly, it depended on me to keep trying after I had failed. (Mark Warner, US Senator)

You can view the entire Self-Help Fails series here: https://stephendiamond.me/category/self-help-fails/.

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This is the second in my series on Self-Help Fails. You can view the entire series here: https://stephendiamond.me/category/self-help-fails/.

• Never give up.
• Winners never quit and quitters never win.
• Success comes from persistence.

We’ve all seen these. Similar statements abound in self-help books. Is it good advice?

No. More people have ruined their lives by refusing to quit when they were failing than have succeeded by persisting in the face of failure after failure. We hear the inspirational stories of the few who make it. The other stories are rarely heard.

Wisdom is knowing when to stop attempting the impossible. If you’re training to be a concert pianist and discover you have no talent, you should switch paths sooner, not later. Aim high, sure. But if you find out you’re not making it, change targets before repeated failures push you into bankruptcy and divorce.

This is very different from saying don’t do something you love simply for its own sake. If you love playing the piano and recognize you don’t have what it takes for a concert career, then of course you should keep playing for your own enjoyment and for others. Often, the self-help gurus who say “never give up” fail to make this distinction.

The post Self-Help Fails #2 – Never Give Up first appeared on Stephen Diamond.

There’s one common factor in all this bad advice: It creates or intensifies an inner conflict. It puts people at war with themselves. It encourages people to approach themselves with violence instead of love.

This is fail number one, Magical Thinking.

Examples:

• The Secret
• Law of Attraction
• Think and Grow Rich
• As a Man Thinketh
• The Power of Positive Thinking

Why is this a fail?

• It doesn’t work!
• Waste of energy
• Source of frustration
• Makes your mind a battleground

Click for the rest of the self-help fails series.

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I’ve been teaching stress reduction in person and online since 2013, and studying it for a lot longer. I’ve taught one-on-one and in groups. I’ve taught free classes at public libraries and done expensive private coaching.

This book gives you a concise, easy-to-follow program containing what my clients and students have found most helpful. If you follow, I trust that you will find it helpful too.

HOWEVER, I want you to hear this loud and clear:

Don’t believe a word I say!

That’s right. Don’t believe anything I tell you when I’m explaining how things work or how things are. I’m not here to tell you how your mind works. That’s for you to discover. I’m here to provide some tools to help you explore your own immediate experience and make those discoveries for yourself.

I’ll make some suggestions along the way about what you may be finding as you use those tools. Don’t take the suggestions overly seriously. They’re just guideposts. If they help you in your explorations, great. If what I say doesn’t make sense to you, or if what you find within yourself is different than what I say, believe in your own experience and forget what I’m saying. I can’t emphasize this enough.

In other words, do the exercises and draw your own conclusions.

It doesn’t do you a lot of good to hear about or read about your mind. That’s where many self-help books fail. All they do is try to tell you about you. But you’re the ultimate authority on you. So, don’t believe anything I tell you…unless you’ve verified it for yourself.

Adapted from The Relaxation Solution, to be published at Amazon and elsewhere on May 23, 2022. For announcements and special offers, sign up for the newsletter.

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I realized in that moment that there was nothing I could do to influence the outcome. I was entirely powerless.

And in that moment of recognition something wonderful happened. I became entirely calm, entirely still. I knew there was nothing I could do, so I was free from any pressure to do anything. All I had to do was watch and wait.

Time slowed. My perceptions became sharp and vivid. I was curious but not concerned about what was happening, unworried about what the next moment would bring. My mind was clear and open.

Afterward, I thought Why isn’t my experience always like this? What exactly made me feel so free? Is it possible to feel this free all the time? And I set out to find the answer.

You may never have had such a dramatic experience, but I’m willing to bet you’ve had a taste of what I’m talking about.

Have you ever been “in the zone” when playing sports or video games? That same sense of clarity and flow is what I felt.

Have you ever gotten lost in the beauty and wonder of a sunset, a mountain scene, a seascape? That same sense of freedom from care is what I felt.

Have you ever gotten so involved in an intricate bit of craft work or art work that you lost track of everything else, “lost yourself in your work”? That same sense of focused presence is what I felt.

Have you ever been so carried away watching a movie, listening to music, or reading a book, that you feel afterward like you’ve been taken away from yourself on a journey? That’s also what I’m talking about.

All these states of mind are reminders that we are naturally free, that tension and worry are artificial discomforts we impose on ourselves because we’ve never been properly taught how to relax, how to go with the flow, how to be focused without being uptight.

What have I discovered? Those are skills we can learn. That’s why I wrote The Relaxation Solution, so you can discover them too.

Adapted from The Relaxation Solution, available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook on Amazon and elsewhere. See purchasing links here. For announcements and special offers, sign up for the newsletter.

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Another app that I recommend for meditation is Insight Timer. It includes a very flexible session timer that you can configure to sound various gongs and bells at intervals. It also includes some guided meditations by me, which have gotten user ratings of 4.6 out of 5. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

As for coloring books, I plan to release several as part of the Relaxation Solution series. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll get early-bird announcements of upcoming books, plus a free ebook right now.

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Dr Burke posits three possible causes:

1. Denying that we’re feeling stressed
2. Worrying about what others will think
3. Indecision

I think (2) is closest to the truth for most folks. But it’s not exactly that. It’s more about worrying what we’ll think of ourselves. Modern “always on” culture brainwashes us into believing that we always have to be doing something useful. Downtime is equated with laziness.

We’ve internalized this message, and it’s literally making us ill. I go into this in The Relaxation Solution, due to be published May 23. Concise version: We’ve learned to make ourselves feel tense and anxious. We can unlearn it.

Look for The Relaxation Solution, to be published at Amazon and elsewhere on May 23, 2022. For announcements and special offers, sign up for the newsletter.

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