124. The Best Self Help...For You!

How To Weed Through Self Help Overwhelm

Let us know your favorite (or least favorite) self help books in our comments!

Sammie and I are obviously big fans of the self help and self development genre. We talk a lot about different ways to improve yourself and improve your life on the Build A Wealthy Spirit podcast. Not all self help is created equal though. More importantly, not all productivity advice is going to be a good fit for you.

This episode, we took a meta look at self help. How can you weed out the bad and keep the good? We outlined five steps that we like to apply when consuming self help content.

Step 1. Learn and be open to new information. Instead of trying to curate or find the perfect self help book list, it’s better to be open to new ideas and to apply critical thinking to see what works for you.

Step 2. Know your values. We are a fan of the values quiz, but the key thing is knowing your values helps you understand what type of information resonates with you. For Sammie, she likes to eat healthy but for her, the reason is because she likes the discipline involved. Discipline is one of her values.

Step 3. Know your tendency. We are big fans of Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies. Michelle is a Rebel tendency, which means she’s not good at listening to other people or herself. This means things like time blocking don’t work for her, but identity based habits do. It helps her incorporate self help content in a way that fits her learning style.

Step 4. Test it out. Take a month or two to try your new habit or to play with a new idea. It doesn’t hurt to experiment with something new. It’s also good to give yourself some time to see if there is progress and how the change affected you.

Step 5. Reflect how the change makes you feel. Are you happy with it? Listen to your body. Are you getting the benefits promised or do you find it’s not a good fit? Keep what you like and if it’s not serving you, leave it behind. Sammie tried “saying yes” to everything and found it crowded her schedule and left her stressed and unhappy. So she let it go.

Show Notes:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

  by Stephen R. Covey

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

  by Sean Covey

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

• How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport

• Why Self-Help Books Don't Work (And How To Nevertheless Benefit From Them)

• Values Quiz

• When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

• The Four Tendencies Book and Quiz By Gretchen Rubin

  • We also recorded an episode on this topic:

• The 5am Club by Robin S. Sharma

• Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

• Hell Yeah Or No: What's Worth Doing by Derek Sivers

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Community Shout Outs:

• Thank you Julie for letting us know that the sabbatical episode resonated! She specifically mentioned how much she appreciated the reframe to have an abundance mindset. Instead of thinking you need the next bonus or have to stay for more money, it’s helpful to remember that you don’t know what things will happen if you give yourself space during a sabbatical.

• Thank you to Sophie (our mom) who also let us know she enjoyed the episode and mentioned how she likes the idea over a retirement.