One Women’s Hopeless Plight with Self Development Books

I must have a hundred self help books and journals. However, my joy comes in buying them, not opening them, or reading them or following their advice. Oh no no no!! Buying them and displaying them nicely on my shelves. I have even bought ornaments that will set them off nicely. But I don’t really think that becoming an ornament was the idea those poor authors had when writing these books.

A classic recently was my latest obsession, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. The basic principle of the book is that you wake up an hour earlier and you spent that first hour preparing yourself for the day ahead. It advises the hour should comprise of six elements that you can tailor to suit your needs. Those are:

·         Silent time for something like meditation

·         Affirmations to set the scene for the day ahead

·         Visualising what it is you want to achieve

·         Exercise in some form

·         Reading something on self-development

·         Scribing or journaling your thoughts, feeling, gratitude etc

Sounds perfect! All of those are well known and well researched things to improve wellbeing, plus as someone who gets up early to let the dogs out this couldn’t have been a more perfect thing for me to follow!! This was going to be THE book to improve my life beyond my wildest dreams! So not only did I buy the book, I bought the journal and the app. Nothing was going to get in the way of my perfect life! I was prepared for success!!

I even talked my long-suffering friend (colleague? both!) Richie into doing it with me.

Day 1 came around. Richie called to say he had quite enjoyed it and had managed to fit everything in in a way that made it perfectly doable for him. How did my attempt go? What attempt is more the question. I got up early ready to start but as usual got sidetracked with my phone. Social media and daft games but not one miracle morning!

Why do I do this? Why do I start with great gusto and fizzle out within minutes? Am I the only one? Or is my lack of commitment to anything a reality of others too? Answers on a post card please…..

So anyway, in my head I needed more preparation for the Miracle Morning by doing guess what? Buying another book! So I have. It’s a total classic which is going to improve my life beyond my wildest dreams (heard that one before!). I have finally got a copy of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. The Law of Attraction is DEFINITELY going to be the thing that brings me my perfect life (heard that one too!). Not only did I buy the original book, I bought the accompanying ‘Daily Teachings’ book so that if I didn’t have time to read a chapter of the original text, I could read one page from the Daily Teachings book.

Bingo! I started to read it!! I even got half way through! I KNEW this book would change my life and guess what it attracted? A trip to Waterstones (other good bookshops are available) and THERE was the book that was going to improve my life beyond my widest dreams (this is becoming ridiculous now) - ‘Atomic Habits: An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones’ by James Clear.

Of course I bought it. Of course I didn’t open it. Its on the shelf wedged between Joe Wicks ’30 Day Kick Start Plan’ (obviously I didn’t) and  Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ (bought because I fancy Professor Brian Cox and became convinced a career in quantum physics was mine for the taking…).

So anyway , if anyone has a copy of ‘How to Stop Hoarding Unread Self-Development Books’ please give me a shout. Its definitely not a book I could write!