this is going to be good rant on self help books and i am in good mood!
self help books only help the author to make more money by promising to help other people, other than that everything else promised or shown is cutiyapa(i like this word)
in most peoples life there will be one stage where they get this idea of reading books can change their entire world planted in their brain by some friend who also got planted from someone else or this beautiful hopium influencer.
reading books can change your worldview, how you think, what you think, how you perceive world, and what you can think, but as answer to any question in the world is “it depends”, here also comes the same problem!
these days reading books or put in better words pretending to reading books has become new social status of being intellectual or sounding intellectual among the peers or in front of people, you fools there is no point, as papa thiel says, “You want to always put substance over status”, many people don’t understand, but it is subjective and personal choice whether you care about social status or not, but chasing shallow things will only make you more shallow from inner,
we are getting little off track so let get back to self help books,
i am done with this type of conversation where one asks do you read books, and other says yes, i am very booky worm(reality may differ), and when they start talk about books they read, it is always the same ones, some of the title includes:
- Atomic habits
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
- Ikigai
- Think and Grow Rich
- How to win friends and influence people
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- The Alchemist
- The Courage to Be Disliked
- …
so am i saying this books are useless, no, but after you read too much self help books, then you start to realise bigger picture, that every self help book is trying to say same thing in different different way.
reality is that, by reading think and grow rich 1000 times no one is going to get rich, or not even by thinking about getting rich, same for influencing people or to improve your communication skills you fucking need to talk to people, do some action, make some efforts, only reading and thinking that i am done, my job is done, it doesn’t work like that, so at the end it alls come to doing, so go do some stuff then reading this shallow shelf help books!
so as much as people say, these are the 7 books that are the ultimate solution to your all the problems in your life, run from those people as fast as you can, there is no ultimate solution, only ultimate answer to ultimate question is 42!
if you want to get real ecstasy of the books and fun which you will never get from those self help books, start reading fiction, any genre of fiction, it opens your mind, your world view, way of thinking, it expands your thought horizon, and there is no specific book which if you ask me to get that fun, go read what you like, if you don’t know, pickup anything in fiction and then see what interest you or not, it is like exploration and journey, enjoy don’t try to get validation or judged from others, read what you want not what other people wants you to read.
other genre or types of which many people think are boring or academic are also great books, reading history books for that matter, gives lot of idea or peak into the future, reading biology books, reading darvin can teach you lot of things, which may feel like useless information that matter, but when dots connects or things start to make more sense is the best feeling ever, so reading academic books may sound boring to other people or don’t get that much validation but they are way way better than self help books!
i have similar thoughts on spiritual books, but will talk about some other day.
and stop asking for books recommendation in hope that it will change your life after reading them or you will become that person who recommends it, explore your self, and enjoy, don’t make it some kind of job or task which needs to be done.