Everyday Musings > Help yourself

Most people I know wouldn't be caught dead in the Self-Help section in a bookshop. Let alone sign up for a self-improvement program.

When I did the Landmark forum, I got plenty of 'why', 'what problems do you have', 'it's only for weak people who can't solve their own problems' and 'give me the money, I'll teach you all you need to know in an hour'. 'It's just positive thinking, will work for a week, then it'll fade away'. 'It's mass hypnotism'. I wondered with all this resistance around, why is it that self-help books sell so much or why self-improvement courses have so many people signing up.

One day, out of the blue, we're slapped on our butt and welcomed to the world. Unlike a profession or an education, there is no manual that tells you how to live. You find out along the way. Helping yourself to clues around you. Learning from experience, from parents, grandparents, neighbours, teachers, friends, movies, television. Our understanding of life is such. Assimilated, collected, collated and stored for further use. Self-help. At some point, we feel the need for advice, for direction and begin looking for answers. The options are around us. Peers, relatives, mentors, books, counsellors etc. Each one of us picks the one we have access to or are comfortable with. The end goal being the same. Progress from where we are at that moment, preferably radical progress.

Einstein said 'you can't solve a problem with the same thinking that created it'. I believe that. A change of context changes problems. I felt I was running in loops, that I was sailing through the years without any specific purpose, and it was a fun life, filled with multiple things to do, but I felt that I wasn't tapping my true potential, that my talents needed to be explored, that I was leading a far smaller life than I could.

I chose the Forum to delve more into all this, and found plenty of little things that made way for plenty of big things. I realised that I governed by my 'artistic temperament'. So I'd do things only if I felt like it. One day a dear friend suggested - 'write 500 words every day' - and I turned into a mission. 'Every day' being the operative word. It was something that I would have earlier skipped every time I didn't 'feel' like writing it, which would be every other day. But now I can differentiate a mood from a writer's block, and can find solutions for my writer's block without getting caught up in it. And other things like I make it a point to make chai for my maid Aruna every day regardless of how sleepy I am, I figured that I really love helping people discover their true potential and that I realised that nothing in life was not out of my choice, even the things I'd rather not be part of. Every day I discover something new that I've added to my life. And it's not been a fad, but a way of being.

Mark Twain said, I'm not young enough to know everything. Maybe some of us resist help, personally or professionally, because we believe the answers should lie in us. They do, but sometimes it takes a little nudge or a wake up call for us to see them. Maybe it's the reputation that self-help has garnered over the years, thanks to the people who are the helm of it, or people who have experienced it. And then of course, there's the mirage of positive thinking (translates to whipped cream over cow dung) that kills the actual benefits.

Came across a conversation in a book of 'est', the earlier version of Landmark Forum. It works perfectly for the Forum and anything, be it Art of Living or the wondrous Vipassana, that we see value in.

"What is Landmark Forum?" asked the stranger.

"It's gestalt encounter therapy with the touch-feely left out," said a guest who hadn't done the Forum.

"It's scientology without the hocus-pocus," said a second such guest.

"It's packaged Zen," said a third.

"It's Werner's(founder) way of earning a living," suggested a fourth.

"It's a scientific kick in the balls," said a recent Forum graduate.

"It's two weekends of madness to create saner weekdays," said a second Forum graduate.

"It's a car," said the third graduate.

"A car?" asked the stranger, now totally bewildered.

"Just a car," the graduate went on. "You can use it to get where you're going faster or use it to explore new places."

"I see," said the stranger, frowning.

"Or," said a fourth graduate, "you can just lie down in front of it and let it run over you and then blame the car."