Best Self Help

Anonymous:

Review by for Self-Defeating Behaviors: Free Yourself from the Habits, Compulsions, Feelings, and Attitudes That Hold You Back
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What is your life like? Is it a relentless procession of empty days, an endless cycle of meaningless, frustrating work and unrelaxing sleep? Do you repeat the same pattern of joyless days and empty nights ad nauseam? Do you bounce out of bed eager to face another exciting day filled with opportunities for enjoyment, human contact and personal growth? Has the memory of the irrepressible you faded into dust? Has your life become an arduous and repetitive ordeal? Do you keep hurting yourself, and does this recognition keep haunting you, day and night? Are you acting on misguided choices, doing and saying things that virtually guarantee dissatisfaction and unhapppiness? If you answered “Yes” (or even “Maybe”) to any of those questions, have I got good news for you!

The best book I have seen that specifically addresses how we can reclaim our mental, emotional and spiritual power from the traps we ourselves have built and continue to nourish is “Self-Defeating Behaviors” by Cudney and Hardy. On second reading, it is a truly phenomenal work. I have already purchased and distributed over two dozen copies. It provides a dynamic model of the way we construct, defend and nurture our self-defeating behaviors, while we simultaneously minimize the real pain heaped upon us and the people around us, and abdicate responsibility for the whole thing!

We are each of us presented with a continuous stream of new moments of life, in which we exercise choices. Each of these choices can lead either to a self-defeating behavior or to a behavior that affirms and honors life. At certain times, we “learn” (i.e. we make an invalid association) that we can avoid work/pain/criticism or other fear by choosing a certain escapist behaviors or thoughts. This choice, expressed through various internal and external techniques, results in various prices that we must pay. In order to continue avoiding our fears, we proceed to minimize the prices (by saying, for example, “It’s not all that bad; I can stand the discomfort”), and finally, to disown the choice we made (“It’s not MY fault; it was my parents/teachers/bullies/social conditions/the government/ghosts/the voices/…”).

That cycle, from our choices of developing internal and external techniques to avoid some (mythical) fear(s), and then refusing to pay the price, results in a full-blown self-defeating cycle, which feeds on itself, getting worse and worse, engulfing more and more areas of our lives. Even when new techniques are learned (such as NLP!!) which appear to offer the promise of positive growth, they quickly and effortlessly become swallowed up in the seething vortex of self-defeating behaviors, making it even bigger than ever! This black hole effect can easily escalate from disappointment to depression, food/alcohol/drug abuse, violence, murder and ultimately, suicide. Unless we recognize and terminate this vicious cycle, ALL of our other efforts can lead to naught, mired in our old habits of thought and action.

Paulo Rios:

Review by Paulo Rios for Self-Defeating Behaviors: Free Yourself from the Habits, Compulsions, Feelings, and Attitudes That Hold You Back
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This book IS different. I came across it when investigating a completely different thing from the computer field: data mining. And, well, this book is not so far from that. It is just like gold.Most people have problems, of one sort or another. Life is never so easy. Many people try the typical self-help books and believe that they found a way out. Only to discover later that things have not changed a lot, apart from the good feelings that these self-help books gave to them (probably the only major benefit and the reason why many are best-sellers!). Yet the problem endures and these people will suffer from it further. These books will tell you that you should need to overcome your problems and get to the magical solution (repeated over and over again in about every self-help book): check your values, decide what you want, from what you want make a list of achievable and measurable goals, and make an action plan on how to achieve each of these goals. Some books will add a little variation and tell you that you should not forget to set your priorities right in your action plan or that you should examine your values well. And that’s about it. Your problems will be solved and you will be successful like the author(s).”The fear of a certain consequence leads to behavior that virtually assures the consequence. This is the way in which self-defeating behaviors are born and nourished.” “At each moment of life, an individual faces a choice between a road that ends in self-defeat and one that brings him or her closer to a breakthrough. We realize that this statement may seem dramatic, but we stand by it nonetheless.”If you have not noted it by now, the language and style of this book is different from the great majority of self-help books. Precise, clear and concise language describes a behavioral problem affecting millions of people and shows how this problem can be solved. Unfortunately solutions to most problems are too often hard to find. To understand yourself, your family, or your friends in trouble, you would better understand this book first. The theory developed and applied by the authors may be wrong or not completely accurate. But if it is just about right, then you may be just a little more than satisfied:”It is extremely unlikely for the results of a single self-defeating behavior or life-enhancing behavior to be alarming, exhilarating, or even noticeable. But a series of life-enhancing behaviors will, over time, lead to the sort of breakthrough that comes when our minds, bodies, attitudes and actions are integrated into the wholeness that is the source of our creativity, insight, usefulness, and contentment. On the other hand, a series of choices in favor of self-defeating behaviors will, if left unchecked, bring on physical illness, nervous collapse – and, in extreme cases, even death.”