Click Here To Purchase From Amazon Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone

Author: Beth Lisick

ISBN: 978-0-06-114396-0

I was amazed to learn that the self-help industry pulls in annually over a billion dollars in revenue. The outgrowth of the industry is quite apparent just by looking over Amazon’s list of self-help books where you will notice that there are over 150, 000 books listed.

Beth Lisick, author of the New York Times bestseller, Everybody unto the Pool, New Year’s resolution for 2006 was to jump on the self-help bandwagon and find twelve aspects of her life that she would like to improve. Her modus operandi was to find an established guru in each field, and devote one month to each. And this is basically what her latest tome, Helping Me Help Myself is all about.

According to Lisick, “the entire idea of self-help was an embarrassing topic, like sex or Hitler. Self-help was meant for the addicted and abused and neurotic.” Lisick further informs us that she has gone through all of her life being okay with okay and before she decided to join the bandwagon, she never read a self-help book.

Lisick begins her humorous journey with a life coach and decides to purchase the latest book by Jack “Chicken Soup for the Soul” Canfield’s latest book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.  Canfield deals with rejection and claims: “when you get rejected you can turn the beat around and expect something better to come of it.”

Lisick next stop is Steven Covey author of the mega-bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Covey lists the following habits, Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First, Think Win-Win, Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood, Synergize and finally Sharpen the Saw.

Not satisfied with only reading Covey’s book, Lisick decides to attend one of his speaking engagements where she plops down $699 and as she states, “that’s the early bird price.” Lisick was a trifle disappointed with Covey in the flesh whom she describes as Robotic.

After the cruise Lisick’s meets up with John Gray, PhD author of the bestseller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus as well as several other household names. Once again Lisick is not exactly enthralled with Gray’s advice and putting it simply is not earth shattering.

The month of April finds Lisick taking a weeklong Richard Simmons “Cruise to Lose.” Lisick gives us a day- by- day account of what transpires and concludes that she doesn’t think she is cut out to be a Richard Simmons lifer.

Next on the self-help shelf are organizational skills and here is where Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing from the Inside Out comes in handy. Morgenstern summarizes her method into three principal elements: analyze, strategize and attack.

We can’t forget about parenting and here Lisick seeks out the sage advice of Thomas W. Phelan, PhD author of 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12.

After personally meeting Dr. Phelan at the Smart Marriages Conference in Atlanta, she was counselled to do just what he has written in his book and it will really work if you do it right.

Lisick doesn’t feel she needs any self-help pertaining to her sex life as she and her husband Eli have identified their problem as not having enough sex.

As for improving one’s creativity, Lisick turns to Julie Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way and as she states:  “there’s no denying that creativity is a huge part of my life, but strange as it sounds, I’d never given it much thought.”

To culminate her journey the last three months finds Lisick exploring the self-help world of money management with Suze Orman, spirituality with her participation at a retreat at the Chopra Center in San Diego and attendance in San Francisco to listen to a world-renowned psychic.

Lisick concludes that despite the fact that her year-long journey in the world of self-help was one of the hardest and most confusing ever, she no longer believes that self-help programs were a bunch of crap.