How To Improve Self-Help Products

The self-improvement market is around $9.6 billion in the US alone, books account for $8 billion of the market. If you follow the money you will find out that this industry relies on repeat business. That would imply there is some form of addiction required in order for the business to thrive. It appears to me that what the industry is selling and what we are addicted to is hope, not substance. Real cures don't support repeat business do they? The other 99% of us that didn't get it right last time keep coming back for more.

Now the rage is The Law of Attraction with "The Secret" being the most popular of these. It suggests that by placing your mind on what you want it will somehow manifest in your life; like attracts like, or The Law of Attraction. Amazingly this movie and the book has been hugely successful even though there is not one concrete piece of information in the whole thing as to how you should go about this or what the underlying mechanics of the process is. Basically we are asked to take it on faith that it will work. What drives us to buy these books and programs even though time and time again they come up short on details and results?

I would love to believe that this stuff works. My problem is that I need to understand. I'm not very comfortable with the concept of faith, never have been. I have tried but every time I have invested my faith without an understanding of the major principals involved I have been disappointed. I know this may go against the grain of some of the spiritual seekers (of which I am one by the way) but I think you will find that faith is not necessarily a requirement of being spiritual. Spirituality can be based in understanding of certain principles.

Interestingly much of today's self-help material is based on books written as much as a century ago. "As A Man Thinketh" by James Allen, The Summary of "Science of Getting Rich" by Wallace Wattles, "The Master Key System" by Charles Haanel, and "Thought Vibration - Law of Attraction in the Thought World" by William W. Atkinson. The last one may very well have been the basis for the movie "The Secret" and it was written in 1906! These are all books that I do recommend reading by the way. What you will notice though is these books are far more detailed and offer more process than what you will generally find in today's material.

Too much of what is written today is just a knockoff of what has already been written, and written in more detail 100 years ago, and is designed to pray on our need to cope and believe that there is a solution to our problems and a way to achieve our dreams. We live in a much faster paced society now, competition is fierce, and our attention spans are decreasing. All of this adds up to our desire for a quick fix solution and a flooding of the market with quick fix solution propositions. You could even say that this work is in the same category. I'll let you be the judge of that when you are finished.

Having said all of this I will now say that there are many quality programs and books out there as well. But the terrible completion and success rate still applies albeit perhaps at an improved percentage. Even many of the higher quality programs aren't working. I maintain it is for the same reason; lack of understand of the underlying mechanics. There should be more written that appeals to the intellect's need to understand. This combined with the inspiration that we can truly live the life we want by following a few fundamental principels of self transformation result in far more effective self-help products.