One sized self-help doesn't fit all.

Guest Article - by Dr. Robert C. Worstell

Of course, this is how the self-help industry fits the definition of a scam: (whine) "I didn't get what I expected (or was sold)." And while reputable distributors honor repayments quickly, it still doesn't help that you didn't get what you wanted.

Because self help is supposed to do something for you. Something you can apply yourself to your self and improve in some way.

It doesn't work when you aren't able to change what you had your hopes on - or had all your attention tied up in.

And that is the same problem that enlightenment has. What works for one guru doesn't necessarily work for his followers. So many of these guys keep talking and writing and videoing in the hope that something they say will resonate and strike a chord so that reader or listener can then piece together their own path "up the mountain".

The problem, as usual, lies within ourselves, not external to us.

Most of these self-help authors and guru's only fail not in making themselves rich, but in helping you to do so. And that is why they sometimes get the label scammer. Not because what they say doesn't work - it just doesn't work for everyone.

And the people who never figure this out can fill libraries with the books and CD's or DVD's that they buy on a regular basis looking for the "one way" which will set them free.

Unfortunately, that "one way" is already inside them. And it's as individual and specific as every person out there. For if we were all the same, it would be just too easy for any or all of us to get clear on what we really want and need - and manifest or attract these at will.

But it isn't that easy. Because no one is around to tell you exactly what you should be doing next on your own path to enlightenment.

Many find that unless they continue to attend these various seminars, or plug in their audio CD's, or listen regularly to downloaded MP3's, that they will lose what they already gained and "backslide".

Of course, this is just more hogwash, rubbish, junk, you name it.

Look - the gains you've made are yours forever. Whatever you have found already that works for you will continue to work for you from here on out. Nothing can change that effectiveness except you - by changing your own faith in the tools you found.

And faith, as Napoleon Hill covers, is internally created. No one can take your faith away from you - except you.

The bottom line to all self-help and personal improvement material is that you are invited to restore your own personal faith in your self.

Of course, we've all been taught many different ways to not do this - to simply continue in battering our ways through life, despite all obstacles thrown in our way. And we constantly evaluate for others and defend ourselves from potential attacks...

But that whole scenario I just described is a lie. None of that really exists. All that fiction we've swallowed is really designed to limit our own beliefs in ourselves and those around us so that we won't ever trust any truly workable technique that we encounter. Yes, it's all a conspiracy to keep you down. Feel better now?

Of course, I can say this because I've been studying this stuff most of my life. And most intensively over the past decade. Yes, I've collected a small library and published even more of these so others could find them. And I've spent most of that life being "scammed" by various organizations and individuals when I found that their stuff "didn't work."

The breakthrough I had recently - which is what I'm sharing with you today - is that there is just no "one size fits all" self-help system which works for every individual. Again, it's due to us being "individuals".

So I'll tell you that my own way of getting enlightened went through many self help authors, such as Hill above, Wallace Wattles, Thomas Troward, Charles F. Haanel, Dorothea Brande, Earl Nightingale - and many others. And I got a little (or great) something from each of one. And these lead to Lester Levenson and more recently to Marshall Rosenburg.

Somewhere along the line, I got enlightened. And as Alan Watts described, simply went back to what I was doing before. I just stepped back over that thin line and kept writing and blogging and making videos.

But that was my own route, my own path. It was simple once I found it, but what I did isn't the same thing you will have to do for yourself.

The funny part is, you'll find as you look around (carefully and honestly) that there are a great deal more people who have found and stepped over that thin line of enlightenment than you may have ever considered. And they're there - all in plain sight. Just like most of these self-help "secrets".  You only have to consider that you can find them and either start looking or start listening.

It's my humble opinion that you are going to have to tailor your own traveling suit. You are going to have to cobble your own shoes to do that walking. All the materials and tools are sitting there - just waiting for you to do so.

And that is my gift to you. Enjoy your life and start living it for real. Because just as everything you need to improve your own life is sitting out there right in front of you - it is just as true that only you will be able to pick from that smorgasbord of working philosophies and systems to build your own path that you need to walk.

One size doesn't fit all - but when you make your own, it's tailored just for your own success.

Good Hunting!

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Rev. Dr. Robert C. Worstell, M.Msc, MBA, PhD is an independent researcher and the prolific author of several self-help and self-improvement books. Worstell lives on a working farm in rural Missouri and is continually involved in research to improve the quality of life. He has spent over 35 years researching the human condition through personal studies of counseling, education, and self-improvement. In addition to his continuing research and writing, he also does freelance web design for local farmers and rural businesses. A habitual cartoonist and caricaturist, you can find him most weekends at local festivals drawing the likenesses of local characters.

Dr. Worstell is available for lectures, presentation, or interviews. A recent author interview is found as linked. An extensive (but incomplete) collection of his many blogs and online materials can be found at his Google Profile. Contact him via his blogs - or through his publishing company, Midwest Journal Press.

Recent published works:

The Dreamer Dreamed

released 28 Nov 2010

Additional information and excerpt available here.

Does the dreamer dream? Or is the dreamer dreamed? Some hold that life is a dream and you awake to yet another. In this novel, a young man finds people trying to control his dreams - and his life. However, all are subject to the same rules they seek to break...

This story combines elements of runaway sub-tropic adventure with advanced technology, as well as metaphysical super-realities, all rolled into a fast-paced narrative to keep you riveted in fascinated reading.

Robert C. Worstell is more widely known for his many non-fiction books and publications based on his life-long research into self-help. This New Age novel is his latest work and continues explorations into the human condition.

Available in paperback, PDF, and ebook.

Freedom Is - (period.)

released 21 May 2010

Online course available on these pages.

Here's a new idea for you: All the Freedom, Happiness, and Peace you want can already be found within you. The only things keeping these from showing up are the mental habits you have. And it's just too easy to get rid of these. If you don't have all the wealth, abundance, loving relationships, good health, or anything else you want in your life, you don't have to look further than your own thoughts.

But these are easy to solve. You can simply learn to control and quiet your own mind.

Follow these authors: Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles, Charles Haanel, Earl Nightingale, Max Freedom Long, Lester Levenson - as they show you how simple it is to get all these thoughts quieted. And then everything else you could possibly want simply starts showing up in your life!

For the first time, these teachers' secrets have been assembled for your use. Will you take the offered hand?

Available in paperback.

Go Thunk Yourself, Revisited

released 26 March 2010

Through all the books I've studied and lectures listened to - as well as my own research and tests down this line — it has become very clear to me that we each already have all the Freedom, Happiness, and Peace we could ever want. It's just sitting there waiting for us to recognize its presence in our nature. Just waiting for us to let our own light shine.

That's the secret people have been looking for all this time, the one which the self-help guru's will sell you unlimited books, CD's, video's, and personal consultation to help you find. But I think, like Dorothy with her slippers, you eventually find that you've had the solution all along. And also like Dorothy, you have to make the journey before you’ll believe it’s that simple.

The trick is this one, simple datum: The only things holding you back are just those limits you have accepted. This book contains the extremely simple methods to letting your own Freedom, Peace and Happiness shine out to help your dreams become reality.

Available in paperback.

- - - -

This article is available for free republication as long as the bio section is left intact. Contact the author for additional articles.

Thanks to your help, this book is complete!

Thanks for your help in building this blog-book (blook?).

My latest research will be found at Go Thunk Yourself, S'more and A Modern View.

But you can still help continue to improve this book...

Your comments are welcome - this is the only way we can improve this book and make it better. So please feel free to leave your opinions and suggestions. That's where I'll be able to read all your input and discuss it with you.

So as a blook, this isn't finished - I've published it as a book, but in beta. As this book is published in Print-On-Demand, I can come out with a new edition anytime I want to. So updating the content is incredibly easy. This means I want to know what you think and what you care about in your own self-help.

Yes, I've done quite a bit more research since this was sent to the publisher and posted to this blog. But any research is never final. That's where you come in. As there are no schools that have all the teachers, no single person has all the answers.

And I'd like some of yours. So read, think, comment - today.

Luck to us all...

Participate in a revolution in publishing

Found this great publisher, Lulu.com, which was founded by Bob Young of Red Hat fame. The trick with this is that they have it nailed down to just do the publishing and delivery for you. You do all the marketing - so there isn't any real overhead to pay for. You set the price and Lulu takes 25% of your profit, above what it costs to produce the book. But the neat trick is that I can update a book in minutes, meaning there is no problem with producing special editions for promotional events, much less correcting errors.

That's the nitty gritty of that end.

Now, what I've done is to combine book-blogging with such a fast POD publisher. Now the reader can help write the book. That's the key point. I publish the book in beta via the blog and Lulu simultaneously. My readers are able to give me rapid feedback via the blog comments - which arrive on my e-mail account. I correct the errors and tell that reader again via the blog.

So now we have near complete transparency and real reader input into how a book is written and what goes into it.

Here's your chance. Let me know what you think and how you'd write it better...

Just to help you out, I've put all the public domain references on Lulu so you can download or order your own hardcopy versions and make your own conclusions. Then tell me about them with a comment.

I don't know that anyone else has attempted this, either way this is a true revolution in publishing - bringing the Internet Age to this industry.

The update you deserve...

Where this blog-book is now going.

Thanks for viewing this blog. If this is your first impression, you can see that I've arranged this blog to publish a book currently in beta form. This is version 0.85 for your use. As I get updates to this, I'll perform the needed changes and get them out to you.

Currently, I've been working on the final form and have an available preview for you. The argument I've had is to make this available on only a per-chapter basis or all at once. One side says that you have the chapters available all online right now, so what is the difference. Another argument is that many eyes can see the editing errors in the final proof before I send it to a Print-On-Demand publisher.

As well, differences between the print and online edition need to be scoured for and corrected.

What's next...

There are a couple more books on the way. Along the course of this study, a new and stream-lined method of thinking developed. It's pretty radical, but has personally given me an incredible increase of speed and ability to think outside any box. It creates a human brainstorm, after a fashion. And now it's a book, via Lulu.

Alongside this research has developed an underlying system of personal thought and self-programming. It seems we think all the time and re-program ourselves all the time. What self-help does is take this re-programming and bring it under your personal control. So this third book gains even more steam as it builds on the first two. My problem is making the time (and keeping myself fed, clothed and under a roof...) to get these books out to you.

Blog-books are all works-in-progress, having the capability to take any book from it's beta version through 2.0 and beyond. It's arguable whether a book could have sequels which then are 2.0, 3.0, etc. In this case, I don't know that the second book really follows on the path the first one takes, but is a supplemental to it. The third gives a practical approach to employing what I've outlined here and also the later research since this book was written.

I imagine at this point that the third book would be the last for this area. This is as when you completely enable the person to change and control his own life, the rest of this is over to that person to accomplish. I certainly don't want to build any cult or sect which builds some philosophic silo around what I write or propose - in order to upsell converts and "make money". I would rather enable the opening of philosophy and making this subject relevant to modern life and living. I'd rather be given the tools to build or repair my house than have to stick with what the original builder provided and having to return to him everytime I have to get a new closet, new coat of paint or a new roof.

Many eyes, as Eric Raymond has it, make more solutions possible for a given problem. For my book, I'll be the head cook coordinating all the many cooks in this kitchen. Others can write their own books. Rest assured that your comment will be given due attention and consideration. I don't consider myself any imperial source in this area - rather I consider this just some fresh thinking which needs peer review.

Good hunting to us all!

Robert
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further update 060906:

I posted this book as a blog in order to open the editing process to all readers. While I am responsible for its creation, I consider myself also responsible to you. As you see something you would like to add, or modify, let me know in a comment. I'm alerted via e-mail for every comment and will evaluate them for improved content.

As well, I've already sent this book to press, via Lulu.com. This is a Print-On-Demand outlet. Their organization allows me to update the book at will, making changes as I approach the 1.0 edition and even later.

I'd like to add a larger Resources section with more links. I'm sure you know of other references and examples which illustrate the text presented. As I have time, I hope to expand this text with such additional input.

We have here an experiment in publishing. Including the readership in the writing and editing. Enabling the Long Tail to create their own niche product.

Shortly, I'll also enable these books to be sold via Amazon and other brick-and-mortar stores - of course they take their split before I see a dime of it. (So buy your books as above, or send me a donation directly - see link to the right .)

Let me know. I'm waiting to hear from you.

Introduction

“God helps them who help themselves.” Benjamin Franklin – The Way to Wealth

Nothing is achieved without investment; there are no free rides, free lunches or lottery winnings without something being done or given in advance or in return. Another phrase, time-worn: You get out what you put into it. So this book guarantees nothing. Results will vary from person to person, just as hair, eye and skin color aren't perfectly identical in any two people, even twins. This book only gives you an option to do something about anything you would like to improve in your life, from an extreme of getting outrageously wealthy to simply getting along better with a loved one or an enemy.

People who want to change something in their lives will find some way to do it. This book is nothing but an introduction into the vast field of self-help or self-improvement. It became necessary to write this book after a study was undertaken of several successful self-help books written as far as 6 centuries apart. All of them were successful when first published and are being reprinted and sold today, some of them hundreds of years after their authors died. That was the criterion: they had to be still in circulation or best sellers long after their authors died – showing that people generally still found them useful and workable, not dependent on the personal magnetism of the author. Then some best-selling modern self-help books were reviewed as a cross-check of the accuracy of these points. The common points that each had were summarized and included in this text, modernized and made simpler to remember and use. The book was written in a modern style to make it simpler to read and understand.

I don't have to tell you these will give you success. That the majority of these books have been continual best-sellers for as many as 90 years proves people have found them useful and applicable. There are hundreds of thousands, if not untold millions of people who have improved their lives or gotten prosperous from using these principles, many even before you or I were born. I really bring nothing new to this world with this writing, only putting it all in one spot and giving you a simple system to apply these to your lives. This book's system of distilled principles will work as much as you put yourself behind them and you will get out only in proportion to what you put in to your study, your application and your doggedness in seeing this through.

As I've said before, this book is just a mere introduction to the common system of self-help subject as described by the referenced authors. All the references I've used to boil down these basic points to their system are listed in the appendix at the back of this book. You can and should read these yourself to further your own understanding and ability in the area(s) you've chosen to improve. All are available on the Internet in one form or another and many are still being actively published today.

How to get the most out of this book.

There are three commonly known approaches to study:

1. Study with a purpose in mind – what are you trying to get out of this book? Why are you reading this instead of watching TV, listening to music or doing your homework?

2. Don't go past anything that doesn't make sense. While some things you have to accept on faith for the moment while the author then gets on with explaining it or giving examples, watch out for things like oddball nomenclature or technical terms which look and sound weird to begin with. But also, sometimes the author uses a word which doesn't make sense the way he uses it. He could be wrong, but this would make the whole sentence not makes sense, and maybe the paragraph, section and/or chapter – your loss, not his (since you already paid for the book, spent time at the library checking it out, or downloaded it when you could have been doing something else.) So keep a dictionary handy, and maybe a thesaurus and/or small encyclopedia around, so you can at least figure out what he was trying to say.

3. Make sure you can apply it as you go. While some textbooks (and professors) make their readers swallow a huge amount of theory before they get to (if they ever do) some real use you can put this stuff to, it's often best to work out examples for yourself as you read. This keeps it in the real category, not the “I'll probably never use this anyway” back-burner section of your mind. So if you get to a point where you can't actually put it to any use, go back over the earlier sections to see where it quit making sense, sort that out, and then come forward. You might have to sketch it out or make some notes for yourself to do this sorting. As has been noted by various education and self-help professionals, doing is the best way to learn – in addition to reading or studying.

Dale Carnegie also boiled it down quite simply at the beginning of one of his Public Speaking books¹:

“In order to get the most out of this book and to get it with rapidity and dispatch, do these four things:

“a. Start with a strong and persistent desire. ...

“b. Prepare. ...

“c. Act confident. 'To feel brave,' advises Professor William James, 'act as if we were brave, use all of our will to that end, and a courage fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.'

“d. Practice.”

These apply to learning about self-help in more ways than you can imagine. A great deal of these applications will be explained or pointed out as we go through this book. But the above advice also applies to many different in-life situations, such as learning to drive a car or taking a college course.

The other point is that this book is not just read it and stash it. The best use for this book is to:

1. Read one chapter a day, plus any relevant section of the referenced authors for that day,

2. Do the exercises each day,

3. Finish the book by reading each chapter and summary,

4. Start over, repeating 1-3.

The reason for this is that repetition enables you to be more sure of being able to apply what you've studied and also to see the results as you go along. The exercises are written on a gradual slope of increasing difficulty and improved ability. When you finish off the book and start doing the first exercises again, you now will get much more out of the exercises, since you are coming back to them at a new, higher level of understanding and ability.

While I tell you a bit more about this later, you can get more out of this book by reading the other authors listed while or after you read this book. I'm not published by these book publishers, and most of the referenced authors have been dead for some time (excepting only one) so I don't get a dime from sending anyone their way. Simply, this is an introductory book, a summation of what these other authors researched. It's usually best to get the original data from the original sources. This book is just to tell you who to look up on what subject, so you don't have to burn 20 years of your own life winding your way on false leads trying to get out of the labyrinth.

Self-help is an evolving subject. There have been many changes over the years and more will be coming. Here I hope you get a thorough introduction to the heavy-weights in the field and get well-started on your own journey of self-improvement.

So: Good luck. As the Irish saying goes,

“May the road rise up to meet you on your journey.”