Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Twelve Self-Help Programs, One Whirlwind Year of Improvement by Beth Lisick
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
I think the universe was telling me something when the library system sent me both “The Secret” and this book at the same time. I’m not the skeptic that Beth Lisick is; in fact I had already read four of the self-help gurus she consulted: Steven Covey, Suze Orman, Deepak Chopra and Julia Cameron. I also have my own organization self-help guru, the Flylady. So this was familiar territory to me.
“The Secret” lives on the edge of this book. She keeps hearing about the movie, but never actually gets to see it. This is too bad, as I would have loved to hear what she thought of the whole thing.
The book was funny in parts, but reading it I could sense how indifferent she felt; about some of the self-help gurus or writing the book itself, I’m not sure which. I think that is what kept me from really liking this book, though I did enjoy it.
A fitting quote: “This seems like a linchpin of why so many people get sucked into self-help and empowerment programs. They can’t trust that what they are doing is the “right” way to be doing it.”
The title of this book greatly amuses me…as does the cover. Not a self-help reader (too often) myself, I find it rather interesting! -S