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.”

Day 1 - REASON

A reason to change, something to shoot for, goal.

“There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.” - Mary Kay Ash

Before anything can change, there needs to be a reason for change. Nothing in this universe is unmotivated, if only by the need for entertainment or distraction from boredom.

I take it that you picked up this book to get something out of it. There must then be something in your life that you would like to improve upon.

Do you always have enough spending money? Are you successful in life in every direction you attempt? Are you happy constantly, making friends easily and forming many deep, trusting relationships as a result?

Maybe you'd simply like to kick a bad habit, or get over a loss, or lose a few pounds.

All these things are possible to you, providing you want to change.

Right now, write down in the margin of this book – or one of the back pages or a separate page – exactly what it is that you want to change. You can always modify this later or change it to something entirely different if you want to. That is the premise of self-help: you can change something about your life if you want to.

Maybe, as a result of this book, you'll have such success with improving that item that you want to go ahead and change something else. With this book, or the books referenced in the back, you'll certainly be able to.

But it starts with deciding that something needs to be improved and exactly what that is. Now, if you haven't written that something down somewhere, do it now.

There's one caveat to know before starting this journey of self-improvement:

You can't get without giving.

Just as there is truly no free lunch or free beer, so any idea that just by reading a book you are going to get better without doing something yourself is a false one. Life itself has the lesson that you get out what you put in. The more you want to work at something, the better you will get at it. Musicians practice daily. Sport stars practice daily. Actors rehearse over and over, even after they have memorized their lines to perfection, even though they've given the show time after time for weeks. Practice makes perfect.

And so it is with any self-help or self-improvement activity. One must take personal responsibility for one's condition. Through this book, we'll go over the theory and reality of why this is so. One could always sue a fast-food chain for one's condition, but practically that will only get you money, not any improved condition. If you want to lose weight, go on a diet and stick to a sensible plan of meals once you are down to the weight you want. If you want to gain weight, there are many programs which will tell you to go to a gym and exercise, plus eat more protein. But these changes only start with you making a conscious decision to do something about your own condition.

You don't have to have a dire condition or take drastic, emergency actions to change it. But you do have to realize that in order to improve a condition, you are personally going to have to take responsibility for handling it, regardless of how you got that way. That is always the first step, which follows from noticing that you have a condition you'd like to change.

Through this book, we'll cover various exercises and techniques you can use to do something about your chosen area to improve. While it will be up to you to make the changes, we will have already done the homework to make sure that the techniques have been uncovered and point out additional resources you can study to find out more if you feel you need to.

But you'll get out what you put into it. That is the only guarantee we can make.

Day 1 Exercises

Try this –

1. Take what you wrote down and put it on a card. Now turn that card over and write that same phrase in the past tense: instead of, “I'd like to have a new car,” write “I have a new car.” Put that card on your nightstand so you see it last thing at night and first thing in the morning. If you can, write another card and take it to where you work so you can keep this in mind in spare moments during the day. (We'll cover why you're doing this later. For now, we need to get the object you are trying to improve out there in front of you so you can study the rest of this book.

2. Select a room where you can be alone and undisturbed. Sit in a comfortable chair, erect – do not lounge. Let your thoughts roam as they will, but be perfectly still from 15 minutes to a half-hour. Practice in this daily will enable you to start controlling your body its physical area.

3.Next, in the same chair, be perfectly still, but allow the muscles in the body to relax, along with every nerve until you feel more quiet and restful. Mastering this will become easier as you practice it, enabling you to apply it while at work or at home, making life easier to appreciate and enjoy.

These exercises form the basis of a regular regimen which can bring about much improved conditions in your life, based entirely on how much you'd like to change your life around. We'll be adding to these drills as we go, so realize that you have plenty of chance to practice at them and get better – you don't have to be perfect the first day.

Many of these exercises come from Charles F. Haanel's work, The Master Key System. See the appendix for this and other books which can help you with the self improvement you are looking for. This book is the merest introduction to a very wide and broad topic. These exercises are culled from many sources, Haanel being a key one.

Have fun!

Day 2 - THINK

You can think for yourself.

“Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.” - Thomas Dewar

Here's the choice in your life: think for yourself or think the way someone else wants you to. News media, advertisers, salespeople – these all want to have you think their way or no way, or at least that's the way they sound and look. This doesn't mean they're right, far from it. By survey, most people don't really trust these people to do their thinking for them.

But who is telling people to think for themselves or teach them how to do it? Certainly not the public schools and colleges, which have their own agenda through the books, teachers and administration. These are far from impartial.

Yet, there comes a time in almost everyone's life where a personal situation shows up and some original thinking is required. Or even in retrospect, one finds out (or has is pointed out to him/her) that a better decision could have been made.

The trick here is to figure out when you are thinking and when you are being made to think. Try this:

Try not to think of a pink elephant.

Now, most people immediately have a pink elephant show up, or some faint impression of one. This is a ploy of advertising and news media, schooling, etc. through their “subliminal advertising” and psychological study groups. Even churches, through their hired PR firms, are advertising this way. They give you opinions and reactions which you are supposed to spout back on cue. If they say buy a new car, you go out and mortgage the house or max out a credit card. If they say vote a certain way or that certain social programs are good or bad, then that is supposed to be your opinion or reaction.

But this isn't anywhere near the truth. Closer to truth is that many, many people give up their power of decision to these sources out of convenience, safety, loyalty, even friendship. People can still be loyal, safe and friends but retain their own power of decision and thought.

You can try this if you want:

Can you get an idea of a cat?

Now, who thought of that cat? That's right – you. You can have your own thoughts on just about anything. Probably you can think your own thoughts on anything. If not, practice will make it possible for you to think about anything that you want to.

As we'll cover later, doing your own thinking is directly related to changing your mind, which can help you improve that condition you wrote down on Day 1. I've meanwhile included some exercises in today's lesson which will help you improve your ability to think for yourself.

Day 2 Exercises

Try this –

1.Get five pieces of paper.

Write numbers or letters on each one (your choice).

Now, turn them all face down.

Decide which one to turn up and turn that one up.

Then decide which one is next and turn that one up.

Do this for all the rest of them.

Here's the punchline: Who decided which one to turn up?

(You can do this as many times as you feel like it.)

2.Earlier we had you practice sitting still and relaxing. Now, while sitting relaxed in a quiet room, just look over the thoughts that are coming through your mind. You don't have to do anything with them, just see the variety of thoughts that are happening

3.Next, try thinking no thoughts. This seems impossible at first – you will only get better with practice at this. Perhaps at first you'll only be able to go seconds without some other thought crowding in; practice will lengthen this. The reason for this is to demonstrate to you that thoughts are controllable, as well as to practice getting them under control. I've found that simply listening to your own breathing or pulse, or the sounds in the room – not thinking anything, just listening – can help you control these thoughts.

Do these for 15 minutes or a half-hour, preferably at the same time and place daily. In our next day's lesson and exercises, we'll add to the skills you've already started developing.

Day 3 - CHANGE

A person can change his own attitudes

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions." - Aristotle

This idea Aristotle refers to shows up preeminently in Dale Carnegie's book, How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking. He mentions here that confidence as a speaker can be achieved by simply changing the actions one does and the emotion will follow. He quotes William James (from his work “The Gospel of Relaxation”):

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.

“So, to feel brave, 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.”

James himself refers to contemporary scientists who had studied this phenomenon. More recently many studies have been reported3 which have verified this to be correct in clinical studies and applied uses. People who before were not even able to experience many emotions were able to start relaxing once they practiced smiling.

Norman Cousins, in his book, “Anatomy of an Illness,” describes using humor as a means to overcome a degenerative disease which had left him all but paralyzed and with only a few months to live. Not only did he live, but recovered full use of his body and returned to work for a major New York magazine.

My own experience with this was in using this datum of smiling daily, whether I felt like it or not, for over a year. This was as part of a test of this datum, as well as finding out that it was a great deal more fun at my job when I smiled and tried to cheer people up regardless of how I or they felt that day or at the time. At the end of that year, I compared notes and found that I was more routinely cheerful and optimistic than I had felt the year before. It had become a habit of mine to be cheerful, optimistic and more outgoing. Where before this test started,I was still a bit shy, reserved and sometimes moody. I had participated in no training or counseling during that period, so the results were simply as a result of my self-enforced and practiced “smiling routine.”

This single point is one of the few key building blocks of any self-help. It is a method where you can prove to yourself that any emotion you are experiencing can be brought under control and changed at will. We'll try it as part of our exercises today, later, so you can prove this to yourself.

The mental state of a person will affect the decisions he/she makes in life. Feelings of hopelessness will result in apathetic decisions to do nothing about it and be a victim. Fear will prompt a person to simply retreat from doing anything, or take the easiest, less painful way out. Anger might make a person decide to attack or criticize, saying things one might regret later on. The interested, even enthusiastic person will decide in terms of the best solution that benefits the majority concerned – he/she might even work out how to make a profit off the deal!

Many people have regretted some major decision in life and have had this worry them from that point on. Norman Vincent Peale, in his best seller The Power of Positive Thinking has many chapters on how to improve one's outlook on life. In his chapter called “How to Break the Worry Habit,” he suggests just before going to sleep at night to envision the mind as a basin and draining all worries by removing the stopper. He recommends going through this process five times at night to improve sleep.

As well, he says to do this several times in the middle of the day. His book is an excellent one in this particular area of positive thinking and I recommend it highly.

Another book which has been found by many to be very effective in this area is by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. While he has many, many points to cover, he begins the book by telling his readers that one of the most effective way to study is by doing, not simply being taught or reading. Doing is the way to really learn something well. In one of his chapters, he relates the value of a smile:

“Charles Schwab told me his smile had been worth a million dollars. And he was probably understating the truth. For Schwab's personality, his charm, his ability to make people like him, were almost wholly responsible for his extraordinary success; and one of the most delightful factors in his personality was his captivating smile.”

Wouldn't you like to have such a financially rewarding smile? People that are friendly toward you certainly are more favorable in signing business deals.

But life in general can be much more delightful if it is actively lead into a pleasant routine of smiling, cheerfulness, and delight in life itself.

If you find that you can change your attitude, you will see that you can change your own mind whichever way you want to. This will become more important later on when we bring in more advanced drills and techniques.

Day 3 Exercises

Try this –

1.Smile. Walk around your home and simply smile at everything. It won't be long before you start noticing nice things about everything and everyone you smile at. Probably you'll quickly find yourself having a more cheerful attitude towards everything around you, that the problems you may have don't seem so pressing. Perhaps you might find better solutions than those you have thought up so far. Practice smiling first thing in the morning and after every meal. See how it makes you feel.

2.In your that room with the chair you've been using, sit and relax physically as you did in Day one. Now just as you let go physically, let go mentally of adverse mental conditions such as hatred, anger, worry, jealousy, envy, sorrow, trouble or disappointment. You can use Peale's solution above. Imagine that your mind is a big basin with a rubber stopper at the bottom. In your imagination, remove the stopper and see the thoughts, worries and troubles drain down until the basin is empty. Then start is all over and repeat this four more times.

3.During the following day, find a quiet moment at work or during the lunch hour where you can do the above exercise. Practice will make this easier and quicker to do. Try to do this several times each day, until it becomes a simple habit of choice to rid troublesome thoughts from your attitudes and to control your attitude to a more positive outlook.