By Marianne Power.
"Why did I always think that happiness had to be somewhere else, with me being someone else?"
"I had been blocking a lot of things for a long time. It felt safer that way. Better not to dream at all than to dream and be disappointed."
I've recently taken up listening to the podcast By The Book, in which two ladies decide to live by the tenets of a self-help book for two weeks at a time. I haven't listened to all episodes yet, but in general it's a fun, cheerful podcast. This book, in which an English freelance writer decided to live by one self-help book per month for over a year, is Quite A Different Story.
"Don't they all say the same thing?,' asked Sarah. ":Be positive. Get out of your comfort zone? I don't get why they need 200 pages to say something that's summed up in a paragraph on the back."
"Sometimes the message needs to be repeated for it to sink in," I replied.
I was proof of the argument that if self-help really worked you'd just need to read one and you'd be sorted. As it was I was buying at least one a month--and yet here I was, hungover, depressed, neurotic, alone...
So why did I read self-help if it didn't, well, help?
Like eating chocolate cake or watching old episodes of Friends, I read self-help for comfort. These books acknowledged the insecurities and anxieties I felt but was always too ashamed to talk about. They made my personal angst seem like a normal part of being human. Reading them made me feel less alone.
Then there was the fantasy element. Every night I'd devour their rags-to-riches promises and imagine what life would be like if I was more confident and more efficient, if I didn't worry about anything and jumped out of bed to meditate at 5 a.m....There was just one problem. Every morning I'd wake up (not at 5 a.m.) and go back to life as normal. Nothing changed because I didn't do anything the books told me to do. I didn't do the 'journaling,' I didn't say any affirmations...."
This absolutely sums up the entirety of being a self-help reader, doesn't it? It feels good to read, but do you EVER do the journalling? The last time I tried that was at the beginning of the month and I flaked out after two days when enough bad shit happened that made it hard for me to project positivity. Does anyone actually do what the books say?
Marianne's single, her freelancing seems kind of iffy at times, and she's a complete mess financially. Feeling all angsty and unhappy with her life, she decides to live "by the book" herself. Except in this girl's life, there were drastically different consequences than well, any episode of "By The Book" seems to have. She falls in love with certain works and becomes obsessed. She gets so traumatized by finding out what a financial waste she is in February that she immediately takes up reading The Secret so she can feel better and magically get money.
"I once read an article that argued that all self-help books promise to tell you one of three things: how to get laid, how to get rich, or how to lose twenty pounds. A book that could combine all of those--well, it was guaranteed to be a bestseller. Cue The Secret."
I have to say that "The Secret" chapter has a lot of deep thoughts on the nature of the whole thing and why it's a hit, such as "it gives us permission to daydream about our futures in a way most of us don't do after the age of five...It stops us from making excuses and hiding behind so-called "reality." Btw, I cracked up at the paragraph about "I wrote a list of everything I wanted in a man...the guy I'm going out with now is everything I listed except one thing--he doesn't dive! But he can learn.' Why did everyone have a story like this?" Literally me and one friend of mine are the only ones that hasn't worked for as yet. Even MY MOM has had this work for her. (Though in my case...well, someone has potential and is close. So we'll see. But anyway.)
Marianne takes up Rejection Therapy, which actually is an interesting experience, especially when she doesn't get rejected or minds less when she does. Though when a relative of hers dies and she misses auditioning for X-Factor due to the funeral, someone says to her, "Was your life so bad that you had to do all that?" But it leads her to approaching a cute guy she calls "The Greek," and even though due to long-distance the relationship doesn't seem to go beyond friendship, it definitely has an effect on her. "I had been failing by default, rejecting myself by default. And that had to stop."
Marianne really, really gets into "Fuck It," even going on a retreat and meeting a cute guy who doesn't really give much of a toss about her. Fuck It seems to relate to The Secret in the "if you just relax, things will come to you" sort of way. She starts buying into Tony Robbins, who seems to have similar ideas.
"This was why I read self-help books--this was what I wanted. I didn't want an ordinary life; I wanted an extraordinary life!"
Then things don't go so well. She drives away a friend of hers through her new behavior, as Sarah has a hard time buying into what "The Secret" is selling ("Everyone in Syria asked to be in a war zone, did they? Those people in concentration camps just weren't thinking positively enough?") and has other moments like that until Sarah hits her limit, declaring that "it's making you self-obsessed."
She has a drastic comedown and crash after spending tons on a retreat and Tony Robbins and realizes how truly broke she is. She has to get back to work, and gets told, "I think that's what you were meant to learn from all this. That your life was pretty good the way it was." She tries to drag herself back to the self-help project and feels quite disgusted by getting into all of Doreen Virtue's angel stuff--"Sell the same thing forty different ways and you'll find someone to buy it. Including me, which was infuriating me." I about cracked up at the "automatic writing" bit because lord knows I've tried it and had similar "conversations" when I did. Nine months into the project, has anything gotten better for her? It has not.
Marianne has a conversation with a cab driver in which he points out that "What you're doing is kamikaze, love. You've been poking around in your head and that's dangerous stuff." He tells her she's "touching the void" and she needs to step back. And Marianne realizes in turn that she just wanted freedom from feeling bad about herself. Her life has changed...but it doesn't feel like good change.
Finally, Marianne goes to a therapist, who says she's been conducting experiments on herself and "you have been your own guinea pig and you've had no supervision." The therapist recommends a book--"The Power of Now," which Marianne dubs The Book, the one that told her the best of times would come from the worst. She highlights it, she writes in it, she draws stars in there. Tolle talks about the voice in your head that hates you and the only way to find joy is to live in the now. If she can just figure out how to shut up the voice...This does appear to be The Book that she manages to live by, realizing that she is attached to her problems and that her negative thoughts are who she thinks she is..and what are you without them?
Even though after experiencing "The Power Of Now," she still has a few books to go through, such as "Get The Guy." I do agree with the assessment that online dating doesn't work because we find people attractive in person and you can't see that stuff online, though. She takes up reading Brene Brown, which relates to her favorite book and makes her realize she can't do it alone and needs to make up with Sarah.
Just for fun, I'm going to quote Sarah on meeting her husband: "When I met Steve I was scared shitless. Falling in love with him felt like throwing myself off a cliff. I made up all these reasons why he wasn't right for me...he was too short, too skinny, his voice was too high...I was just scared. I could see that he was real and he liked me and I was trying to find a way out. But he kept calling. He wouldn't let me run away." Sarah tells her to give The Greek a chance and "just let it be what it's going to be. It doesn't have to be anything more than it is." I kind of kvelled when I read about Marianne's then going home to message the Greek: "From the first time we met he had been nothing but open and honest. He'd kept in touch with me even when I tried to shake him off. He didn't hide that he liked me or pretend that his life was perfect. He'd shown me his real self all along. I had been the one who was playing games."
In the end, even though nothing's really changed in her life, she's still okay. Her body works, her mom loves her, she has friends, she has joy, she has it all. While she's still broke and single and the year was a disaster, she learned that she's fine as she is.
Four stars. In other news, I will be curious to read the By The Book ladies's book by comparison.