When Self-help Books Don’t Help

What happens when you stop working and hustling? Do you feel restless? Do bad sensations start to take over? If so, do you face them head-on, or do you escape from them?

I started my self-help journey about four years ago. I just broke up with someone and I wanted to get her back. So my life changed right there when I watched my first youtube video. There came more videos, then books, then online courses. I have probably watched hundreds of hours of self-help content on Youtube, read about 200+ books, finished a number of online courses that I can’t count on my fingers. Just like a lot of people today, I was trying to improve myself through external knowledge, working hard and hustling because that is what those books said.

But what happens when we stop all those things? When we stop working hard, when we stop hustling or finding our passion? Why does it all just feel the same inside? It feels like we are back at the same feeling where we started, and nothing has really changed. So, what do we do? More hustle, more work, more books, more knowledge? We are doing this with the hope of finding ourselves from the external world. But we don’t realise that we’re also running away from ourselves.I’m currently working with a Life Coach from Germany. He is teaching me all about abundance and scarcity. When we stop what we are doing, and after consuming all those books, courses, videos, we still feel the same feeling inside, it is time to stop looking externally for answers, and for one moment, start looking internally. Only then can we find the root cause of whatever we are trying to run away from. It will hurt. We will have to let go of all our escapes, we will go to a really dark place. But we have to do this. If we don’t, we will keep running away for the rest of our lives with escapes. It doesn’t matter if we work out or read books or improve ourselves — we will end up feeling this same inside if we are using it as an escape.

It is easy to think that we are inspired when we do what feels good, when doing things like working out or focusing on our careers “makes us happy.” Well, doing those things makes us happy, therefore they are good right? Most people settle with living their lives just like that. As long as they are doing whatever makes them happy momentarily, then they are content with it. As long as that activity takes them away from whatever they are running from, then everything is okay, at least externally. The problem arises when all is done, internally, they still feel the same.

Do you really want to run away from yourself your whole life? You can and a lot of people live and die doing that. But think about how you would feel when you are free from the anxiety that is inside of you, think about how it would feel when you don’t have to desperately run away from them, and instead be happy with who you truly are. Then you can finally approach life with inspiration, doing things because you want to do them and being okay with whatever happens.

If abundance has a definition, it can be described with this phrase: “When your state does not depend on anything, then you are abundant”. When what you feel does not depend anymore on what you do or what happens in the external world, then you will be able to fully experience life through the lenses of abundance and not scarcity.

Face yourself, embrace yourself, know yourself, love yourself.