Don't Blame Yourself For The Shortcomings of Self-Help Programs

With the start of the New Year and a new millennium, you may consider embarking on a self-help program in a quest to improve the quality of your life.

If you strictly adhere to a "proven" program that has succeeded for others, however, and fail to produce the results you want, you may become discouraged or filled with self-doubt.

There are many reasons to explain why self-help techniques fail, and many steps to take to feel good about yourself regardless of the result. Like every other field, the "experts" in self-help disagree on just about everything.

Always remember this: no matter how smart or "successful" someone is, how much "proof" you're given, how much you trust or respect someone, or how logical something seems, it's just an opinion, just what worked for someone else, just a possible pathway to success.

Having immersed myself in the field of self-help as a participant, trainer, facilitator and program designer for more than two decades, it's clear to me that there are no techniques, approaches or systems that work for everyone. We're all too different. And we came here with different "life purposes" to fulfill.

Most self-help programs claim you have unlimited power and can create anything you consciously want if you use certain techniques. I disagree. If you look closely, that theory cannot be supported by your actual day-to-day experience - no matter how good it sounds or how much you want to believe it.

If you really consciously created your reality, as many of the self-help approaches claim, and all your thoughts, beliefs and feelings showed up in your life (or even just the ones you focused on), your life would be total chaos-especially when you consider how often you change your mind and how quickly the world changes.

You came into this life with something special you wanted to experience. As a result, another part of you, an unconscious part I compare to the director of a movie, was assigned the task of monitoring all the "requests" you make using self-help techniques and only "granting" the ones that can help you fulfill your life purpose. This brings order to the "chaos" and helps you stay on track.

What To Do When Self-Help Fails TonProduce The Results You Want

1) Give yourself a break, be gentle with yourself, and know that you didn't do anything "wrong."

2) Recognize that your conscious mind is not running the show, so what you think you want and what you really want can be worlds apart.

3) Rather than pushing yourself to follow someone else's path, find comfort in the knowledge that you came here to carve out your own unique path to success.

4) Remember: every self-help approach is just a possible pathway to success. Experiment with an open mind, use what works for you, and discard the rest.