13-08-2012, 11:43 AM
50 Self-Help Classics
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Introduction
political reformer, but came to the conclusion that the real revolutions
happened inside people’s heads; he took the greatest idea of his century,
“progress,” and applied it to personal life. Through telling the life stories
of some of the remarkable people of his era, he tried to show that
anything was possible if you had the gall to try.
Abraham Lincoln is sometimes mentioned in self-help writing
because he embodies the idea of “limitless” thinking. Yet his thoughts
were not applied to himself—he considered himself an ungainly depressive—
but to the potential he saw in a situation (saving the Union and
freeing America of slavery). Lincoln’s vision was not vainglorious; he
lived for something larger.
At its best, self-help is not about the fantasies of the ego, but
involves the identification of a project, goal, ideal, or way of being
where you can make a big difference. In so doing, you can transform a
piece of the world—and yourself along with it.
The books
This list of classics is the result of my own reading and research, and
might be quite different if another person were to undertake the same
project. The focus is on twentieth-century self-help books, but much
older works are also included because the self-help ethic has been with
us through the ages. The Bible, The Bhagavad-Gita, Marcus Aurelius’
Meditations, and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography are examples of
works that may not have been thought of as self-help before, but I
hope I can argue the case for their inclusion.
Most of the contemporary writers are American, and while this may
seem like cultural imperialism, in reality self-help values are universal.
There are a number of strands to self-help that offer specific guidance, for
example on relationships, diet, selling, or self-esteem, but the books covered
here relate to the broader personal development aims of self-knowledge
and increasing happiness. Through the selections I try to give a sense
of the huge diversity of the genre. Many of the titles were easily selected
because they are both famous and influential. Others are included because
they fill a niche through their ideas. Every book had to have a level of
readability and “spark” that defies the time and place that it was written.
James Allen
With its theme that “mind is the master weaver,” creating our
inner character and outer circumstances, As a Man Thinketh is
an in-depth exploration of the central idea of self-help writing.
James Allen’s contribution was to take an assumption we all share—
that because we are not robots we therefore control our thoughts—and
reveal its fallacy. Because most of us believe that mind is separate from
matter, we think that thoughts can be hidden and made powerless; this
allows us to think one way and act another. However, Allen believed
that the unconscious mind generates as much action as the conscious
mind, and while we may be able to sustain the illusion of control
through the conscious mind alone, in reality we are continually faced
with a question: “Why cannot I make myself do this or achieve that?”
In noting that desire and will are sabotaged by the presence of thoughts
that do not accord with desire, Allen was led to the startling conclusion:
“We do not attract what we want, but what we are.” Achievement happens
because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don’t
“get” success but become it. There is no gap between mind and matter.
We are the sum of our thoughts
The logic of the book is unassailable: Noble thoughts make a noble person,
negative thoughts hammer out a miserable one. To a person mired in
negativity, the world looks as if it is made of confusion and fear. On the
other hand, Allen noted, when we curtail our negative and destructive
thoughts, “All the world softens towards us, and is ready to help us.”
We attract not only what we love, but also what we fear. His explanation
for why this happens is simple: Those thoughts that receive our
attention, good or bad, go into the unconscious to become the fuel for
later events in the real world. As Emerson commented, “A person is
what he thinks about all day long.”