I don’t consider myself a self help expert (yet), but I do read a lot of self help books and listen to a lot of self help podcasts. I’ve tried to accumulate all my self help knowledge on this page to send you in the right direction.
How to Approach Self Help
Most self help guidance is centered around changing your outlook on life. You can do this by changing your vocabulary, changing your habits, meditating and improving your relationships.
One of the most important things about self help is doing the work. You can’t just read about self help. You have to journal about yourself and reinforce the work that you do. If you do read self help books, you should go back and reread them to remember all the information.
I would recommend assessing yourself and then help yourself in the areas where you need the most help. I wouldn’t just dive into the bestsellers of self help as you might have issues that are causing you more issues than others.
Self Help Sources
Podcasts – podcasts are a great source of self help information. Self help podcasts provide guidance but they also introduce new self help people as podcasts have to have new guests all the time. I learned about many of my favorite self help gurus through podcasts. Once you start listening to people like Tim Ferriss, James Altucher, and Joe Rogan, your self help network will keep expanding.
Books & Audiobooks – I also recommend reading as many self help books as possible. The best place to start is any book by Tony Robbins or Jen Sincero.
Youtube Videos – There are tons of youtube videos that will help you in any area of your life. I recommend watching the Impact Theory Podcast on Youtube by Tom Bilyeu. Tom can connect with you just about any self help expert available. He is really passionate about self help.
Articles – use feedly to accumulate your favorite self help article sources. This also ranks popularity of articles. The best self help bloggers in my opinion are James Altucher and Tim Ferriss.
Mediation and mindfulness – Mediation and mindfulness is good in slowing down and observing your thoughts. Amazingly enough, your mind doesn’t need to be filled with thoughts all day long. Most people actually think that thinking is a good thing. Thinking is not always good!!!
This is especially true if a lot of your thoughts are negative. Mediation usually consists of focusing on your breath for 10 minutes or more while you have your eyes closed.
Apps and programs that I recommend for meditation:
I would recommend the Calm app. Headspace is also another good program for meditation.I prefer Calm over Headspace though.
Mindfulness:
Mindfulness is just observation of your thoughts. You can do this while you meditate or just throughout your day. There is a concept that you do not need to identify with your thoughts. For example, if you have a bad day, you don’t need to think that nothing will ever get better. You can observe that you have negative thoughts and that they are spiraling down, but you do not need to identify with them. Distance yourself from all negative thoughts. The sooner you can identify that you are spiraling, the sooner you can distance yourself from it.
I would recommend going to mindvalley to learn more about meditation and different meditation styles. On mindvalley they talk about a different style of meditation that isn’t only about distancing from thoughts. They also talk about reaching an alpha wave brain state to generate amazing change in your life. Vishen, the founder, also recommends using creative visualization.
Visualization versus Mindfulness
You can also use visualization in addition to meditation and mindfulness. Meditation and mindfulness is more to quiet your thoughts while visualization is meant to help you achieve your dreams.
Once you come up with your goals in life, you should begin to visualize what achieving those goals look like and do it as often as possible. Your mind is more likely to make something come true if you give it an idea of what it looks like.
Self Hypnosis
In addition to meditation and visualization, there is also self hypnosis. I believe self-hypnosis is going to be the next thing to hit after meditation is widely adopted. This is because meditation quiets the mind while hypnosis speaks to the subconscious thoughts. Many of us have subconscious thoughts that we don’t analyze or improve.
One cool self hypnosis technique is to sit calmly and observe your thoughts and wait until you have a calming thought and just focus on that thought. It’s amazing how you will calm yourself down by doing this.
Make sure to check out my review of Through The Open Door to learn about a great self hypnosis book.
Relationships
You are the average of the five people you hang around with. Almost all self help experts use this. This quote is attributed to Jim Rohn. What this basically means if you hang around positive people you will be positive. If you hang around negative, then you will be negative. You should choose who you hang around with carefully because you will most likely pick up their beliefs and attitude.
Dunbar number – The dunbar number is the number of people that you can have in your social network. The number is 150. This is relevant in the current world because of social media. People try to have as many friends as possible, but it’s not really possible to maintain good relationships with more people above the dunbar number.
A book I recommend on building good relationships is Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards. I would also recommend watching any of her videos on youtube.
Habits
Another common self help topic is habits. Habits are basically who you are on a daily basis. If you don’t like who you are, then you need to change your habits. This means that if you wake up everyday clueless and depressed, then you need to set a schedule for yourself and mentally prime yourself for a good day. Tony Robbins says it best — If you don’t have a plan for your life, then someone else does. Read my article on how to eliminate procrastination and laziness.
Abundance Mindset
Another thing that you will encounter when researching self help is abundance. It is the key to succeeding in life. If you don’t feel abundant, then you won’t have success with money, love, relationships or your career.
The common topics of abundance are connecting to source energy, having great feelings, not focusing on the specifics, and not being selfish.
Sleep
Another thing is that how you sleep can impact your overall health. Sleep has become a huge industry. There are many things that could be impacting your sleep such as the temperature of your room, your mattress, your pillow, your breathing etc.
There are tons of sleep tests to do if you think you have a problem. If you go to a sleep center, they will do an initial assessment and then decide whether or not you need a sleep test. The initial assessment is usually to qualify you for health insurance coverage.
There are also sleep trackers, but you have to be careful which ones you use because they can be unreliable.