Ask Monique: Is Navel-Gazing Bad?
Date Posted: May 8th, 2010
Since in twitter I promised that I’d post an article this morning, here’s a draft of the one I was planning to post. I’ll be revising it a bit in the afternoon, so consider yourself warned. 
Dear Monique,
Whenever I hear people talk about self-help, usually at least one person says they “don’t do self-help” or they “don’t like navel-gazing”. I don’t get it. Is “navel gazing” bad? Why do so many people dislike self-help?
Confused-
-Self-conscious about Self-help
Dear Self-conscious,
To answer your first question, No, I don’t think navel gazing is ever bad as long as you keep the purpose of navel-gazing (or self-help or self-work) at the front of your mind when you’re doing it. The purpose being to get over the mental-block that’s holding you back from doing what you want to do.
When people complain about navel-gazers they’re either complaining about people who perpetually plan to change their lives but never actually do or the people that refuse to accept feedback from their friends or the people that seem to think that their lives will change just by reading a book. In other words, they’re complaining about people that have forgotten why they’re working on their problems. If they hadn’t forgotten, the planners would start taking steps to change their lives, the feedback-ignorers would at least listen to the thoughts of their friends, and the readers would know there’s more to change than reading.
Get in the habit of asking yourself “what have I done today to work on my mental-blocks?” If the only thing you’ve done is read another article or book… that’s not enough. If you’ve written out a plan, that’s not enough. (You need to do at least one thing on your plan.) If you’ve haven’t sought out the advice of your support group, you might want to do that. Etc. When you honestly answer this question, you’ll know you’re not in danger of being the kind of navel-gazer that annoys people.
That said, you can do all this and people will still freak out when you tell them you like self-help. But that’s their problem, not yours.
To answer your second question, “Why do people dislike self help?”, I think it has to do with two misconceptions: Self-help = Narcissism and Self-help products are useless and/or are made by con-artists.
I think the self-help = narcissism idea comes from that fact that self-help has “self” in the name (that’s gotta mean you’re selfish, right?) and that people who read the books, know the theory, but don’t have the courage and humility to practice the theory are really annoying. They feel so good about themselves and yet there isn’t all that much to feel good about. 
Of course, deep down, their LINK heart of hearts knows they’re lying to themselves, but that’s hard for us to see.
The thing is, if you are able to practice the theory then you become more compassionate, more self-less because now that you aren’t dealing with your old problems you have the capacity to care more for others.
The “Self-help books are useless and written by con-artists” misconception is a bit more complicated. There’s no grade level for self-help books. If you pick one up at random there’s a good chance you aren’t in the right place emotionally to make use of them. They’re either so basic you think the content is common sense (Someone’s making a profit from this?!) or their past you. (I could never implement this. I don’t understand how anyone could live like this.)
And even the ones that are at your level may not be the right “vibrational match” for you. For instance, Getting Things Done and First Things First have the same underlying goal, (to get you in a place where you can work on things that are important to you) but the solutions for getting there are very different. Getting things done provides a straightforward, flexible method for getting the garbage out of your head and on paper. First Things First focuses on figuring out what you want in life and letting go of the idea that balance means doing everything important to you every day. Both have good ideas, but one may make a lot more sense to you than the other. If you picked up the wrong one you could get the wrong idea about the genre. You might think that all (or most) self-help books are useless.
Also, there’s no degree program for self-help. The closest you can get is a psychology degree, and I’ve read books by psychologists haven’t been very good. (Predictably Irrational and anything by Wayne Dyer come to mind. ) And a few well-known self-help writers have gotten incredibly rich off of their advice. It makes you wonder what their motives really are.
In any case, I’ve found self-help books to be very useful. You probably have too. They don’t always work. After a while you find a lot of them say the same things. But more often than not I get some insight into my mental-blocks. And it’s not a huge monetary investment either. I get all my books from the library and only buy the ones I’m likely to want to read again. No worries about supporting con-artists.
So Self-Conscious, there’s no need to be self-conscious about your finding value in self-help stuff. You aren’t a bad person for working on yourself; in fact you’re without a doubt a good person for making the effort. If you’re ever unsure of the value of navel-gazing, recall a time when it has helped you get over some mental-block. That always helps me. 
