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Resisting Temptation By Controlled Indulgence

43Folders has two articles of note that I feel are important to readers of this website. One is about how self-help programs become an addiction for some people. The other is about making a list of items you don’t really want so that you won’t waste money buying them. (My interpretation.) Both articles can be tied the idea of resisting temptation, depending on how you interpret them.

Merlin Mann, writer/ webmaster of the 43 Folders website, mentions in the latter article about a story his mother told him of the early days of his parents’ marriage. “[she] would fill out catalog order forms, ‘buying’ everything she’d ever wanted to have, and then just never mailing the orders in. A kind of Tantric shopping, I suppose.”

His mother had the right of it. I often come across websites with fascinating e-books, newsletters, or just gadgets. I often go through the process of ‘ordering’ something, but do not complete the process. But I satisfy a shopping urge this way. And if it’s something I really need, I can always go back and buy it. Otherwise, it’s a great way to resist temptation by controlled indulgence.

The other article actually refers to an article at Scientific American, and that author is skeptical about the self-help industry and thinks that it feeds an addiction that people develop to such programs. I have to say that I’ve had mixed results with “self-help” books, tapes and classes. There are a lot of hucksters out there, and for the reasons that the SciAm article states, a lot of them get away with it. That is, if you fail, it’s your fault because you didn’t try hard enough.

That said, anyone who has had successes in the area of personal development knows that there is a deep core of truth in self-help, and you do not necessarily need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on packages. Generally speaking, run from programs that make bold claims that just don’t sit right with you. Read the books that seem to be suggesting understated, common sense solutions. Common sense used to be something we’d learn from kin and neighbours, but with busy lives, we just do not interact the way we used to.

My experience over the years has been that I’ve learned something from nearly every self-help book I’ve read, but never gained much from the classes I’ve been to. However, that’s possibly attributable to the fact that I took classes long after I’d read several dozen books. It doesn’t mean that (some) classes will not help you. Still, there are a few hucksters I’ve had the displeasure to take classes and buy poorly produced tapes from, and who are still operating today. They regurgitate concepts with no sincerity, and no unique perspective. When you ask them difficult questions, they either ignore you or provided a convoluted answer.  Live and learn, I guess.

So how, then, do you resist the temptation to buy ever more self-help programs and books? I’d say, again, controlled indulgence. The problem is not really with self-help books, per se. Well, not the well-written ones. The problem is that us humans tend to follow the path of least resistance. As such, we might read a book but, not seeing results immediately, may only follow through partway.

This guarantees that we’ll only see partial results. But those partial results improve our state of mind, if only temporarily. It’s easy to assume then that the book wasn’t very good. So when another book or class comes along promising change, we feel we need a “fix”.

Your choices at this point are: (1) spend more money on some new method; (2) do nothing; (3) go back to the last book and re-read it. Which option do you usually choose?

In the past, I’ve vacillated between options (1) and (3). At least when I’m in “self-improvement mode”. When I’m not, option (2) becomes the choice by default. However, re-reading a book that gave me partial results often shows me something I’d either forgotten, hadn’t understood, or just plain missed.

That’s something my father taught me. If you’ve invested the time in the past to read a particular book and generated some good results, it’s worth assessing your time investment again in the future, to see where you might improve on your application. This way, you indulge your need for self-improvement, and focus on techniques you are familiar with. When you are ready to absorb new techniques, you can always move forward to other programs.