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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:43:02 No.7284519 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284532 >>7284591 >>7284797 >>7287271

Are self-help books really worth your time?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:44:58 No.7284522 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284539

As long as you actually follow their advice, yes.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:49:11 No.7284532 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284554 >>7284558 >>7284660 >>7285658 >>7286342

>>7284519

self help books operate on the principle that there's an objectively superior way to live life. I reject that notion.

For books that aim to guide you to a "happier" life, I reject them too. The search for happiness involves a struggle that is essential. It is something that I value.

Just like playing a difficult video game. Using cheats/hacks makes the game significantly less enjoyable. The struggle however is gratifying.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:51:07 No.7284539 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284565 >>7284568 >>7284579 >>7284648 >>7286342

>>7284522

Aren't 99.999% of the self help books consist of trite and hackneyed bullshit?

Name one that isn't full of platitudes and offers something that will genuinely help one in life.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:55:06 No.7284554 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284532
>I reject that notion
I read that in Andrew Ryan's voice.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:56:38 No.7284558 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284664

>>7284532
>self help books operate on the principle that there's an objectively superior way to live life. I reject that notion.

Uhm, what? Of course there is an objectively better way to live your life if you are living it stupidly.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:58:07 No.7284565 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284539
There are some, I think.
The classic 'How to win friends..." and some meditation books. I haven't read 'Waking Up' but I think it would be cool. Read some Mouni Sadhu.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 09:59:00 No.7284568 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284746

>>7284539
the ones that come to mind at the moment are the richest man in Babylon and 48 laws of power

What you call a good self-help book depends entirely on your worldview and goals though

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:02:46 No.7284579 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284539
They are usually like this:
1. Philosophical bullshit
2. Religious bullshit
3. Miraculous, patented snake oil cure that costs a fortune
4. Actually decent universal advice like exercising and eating well

People will follow all points and feel better because of the fourth and only good point, so they will think that the rest is also right.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:06:44 No.7284591 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284519
No. You'd be better off reading Seneca.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:26:36 No.7284648 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284539
that attitude is why self-help books don't work for you :^)

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:29:39 No.7284660 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284666

>>7284532
No offense but you sound like you own a fedora

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:30:57 No.7284664 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284667

>>7284558
Give an example of a "stupid" lifestyle?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:32:56 No.7284666 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284660

I don't really. Did I come across as pretentious? If so, then which part of my post?
Do you disagree with me? If so, then state your disagreement.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:32:57 No.7284667 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284683

>>7284664
Being a physically unfit wageslave aka 80% of USA

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:35:32 No.7284683 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284713 >>7285819

>>7284667

>physically unfit
>stupid

I tend to live quite a sedentary lifestyle. Not sure why that's stupid. Isn't it just a matter of preference? Those people prefer to indulge in junk food over having a healthy body.

>wageslave
not everyone has a choice in this. Everyone would love to live in the ideal world where they get to afford things without being wageslaves but that isn't always possible.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:43:18 No.7284713 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284738

>>7284683
Being a matter of preference doesn't make it not stupid.
Also it's more of a matter of ignorance when it comes to health.

Being a wageslave really depends on the kind of slavery, if your goal is to climb the corporate ladder then you are stupid because that's just an existential dead end which will never bring happiness, no one should waste the prime time of their lives in a cubicle pushing papers.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:52:06 No.7284738 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284760 >>7284779

>>7284713
>Being a matter of preference doesn't make it not stupid.
>Also it's more of a matter of ignorance when it comes to health.

One can have that preference despite being fully aware of the consequences of it. One might choose to live a hedonistic short lifestyle than a long one. I find sloth and junk food gratifying and hence I choose to indulge in it.

However, at the same time I realize the merits of a healthy lifestyle but choose not to follow them because I find my current one more gratifying.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:53:29 No.7284746 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284568
>the richest man in Babylon and 48 laws of power

Any other recommendations?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:58:18 No.7284760 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284738
You wouldn't think that if you knew what a healthy lifestyle felt like aka you are ignorant. :^)

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:05:31 No.7284779 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284738
No you're just ignorant

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:10:56 No.7284790 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284792 >>7284811 >>7285672

not so much a self help book but I read Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin and it changed the way that I view successful people.

Basically, hard work will surpass natural ability on a long enough timeline.

>tfw didn't train 10 hours a day since age 3 to become next Tiger Woods

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:12:45 No.7284792 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284790
Sounds like "So Good They Can't Ignore you"

Andrew Ng had a few recs in a recent interview, mostly focused around business stuff

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2015/05/13/andrew-ng_n_7267682.html

>The first is "Zero to One" by Peter Thiel, a very good book that gives an overview of entrepreneurship and innovation.

>We often break down entrepreneurship into B2B ("business to business," i.e., businesses whose customers are other businesses) and B2C ("business to consumer"). For B2B, I recommend "Crossing the Chasm." For B2C, one of my favorite books is "The Lean Startup," which takes a narrower view but it gives one specific tactic for innovating quickly. It's a little narrow but it's very good in the area that it covers.

>Then to break B2C down even further, two of my favorites are "Talking to Humans," which is a very short book that teaches you how to develop empathy for users you want to serve by talking to them. Also, "Rocket Surgery Made Easy." If you want to build products that are important, that users care about, this teaches you different tactics for learning about users, either through user studies or by interviews.

>Then finally there is "The Hard Thing about Hard Things." It's a bit dark but it does cover a lot of useful territory on what building an organization is like.

>For people who are trying to figure out career decisions, there's a very interesting one: "So Good They Can't Ignore You." That gives a valuable perspective on how to select a path for one's career.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:14:44 No.7284797 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284519
Victor frankl's mans search for meaning.

Not really a self help book i guess , but it does what a self help book should do, which is create a positive influence in your life.

The power of habit is also a really good one.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:16:54 No.7284804 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Yes, just not ones like the answer or the secret. There are books which are an authors attempts to amalgam the wisdom they've acquired from reading psychology and philosophy into suggestions on how to live. Not nonsense rhetoric like positive vibrations.
Also there are books which are essentially giving yourself Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which, if actually applied all the way through essentially shifts your thought processes from negative biases to more reasonable/realistic thoughts. Very heavily inspired to the point of almost stolen from the core ideas of the socratic method and the stoics

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:19:09 No.7284811 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284817 >>7284824

>>7284790
>Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

Is this good? The suggestions on google if you search for this book seem to yield better books.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:20:16 No.7284817 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284811

Some suggestions:

>Outliers: The Story of Success
>The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:23:01 No.7284824 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284811
I enjoyed it, and it's an easy read. I'd say I'm slightly less lazy now.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:26:55 No.7284838 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284848

Why is Earth the only one to get an illustrated moon in this photo? That bothers me

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:29:07 No.7284848 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284838
Also somehow Mars is bigger than Earth.
There are all kinds of wrong in this pic.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 15:36:13 No.7285658 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284532
I'd like to somewhat refine your point as in there is nothing that will immediately make your life better. Creating a better life requires you to be proactive and actually work towards the things you want.
The people that buy self-help books more often than not believe that reading "this one specific book" will make their life objectively better, despite them not actually doing anything.

It's the same thing with fad diets vs. calorie reduction, people just don't want to work for anything.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 15:39:45 No.7285672 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284790
>Basically, hard work will surpass natural ability on a long enough timeline.
If only we had infinite time, amiright :^)

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 16:13:08 No.7285801 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7286353

yes if you want a good laugh
simple answer, not at all.
My dad writes them and its a vast amount of sophistry. If you want to know how to live your life just live it, jesus fuck. If you really need someone to tell you how to live your life read psych journals and philosophy pre-1950s

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 16:17:26 No.7285817 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Yes it's good to read 300 pages for an idea you already knew and could have come up with something if you actually thought about it for a few minutes.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 16:17:38 No.7285819 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7286054

>>7284683
Of course it's a preference, but you're really telling me the physical and mental condition of a dude who just smokes weed and faps to anime is the same as the alpha business man who hits the gym every morning 5 on the dot? If you disagree then yes there are objectively better ways to live your life

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 16:46:55 No.7285939 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287311

Antifragile is written like a guide to life but for me it was more like a self sabotage book.

The guy insults formal education as being a straightjacket, the same for schedules, routines, appointments. Now I am always self justifying my laziness as a rebellion against the modern world. Even though my laziness involves sitting on the internet and being fucking hypnotised by modern technology! I'm a fucking idiot who defaults to laziness. Also he's old and likes mathematics for fun, so procrastination for him is more productive than my actual work

I'm in the process of creating my.own philosophy where I acknowledge naturalistic tendencies while stressing the importance of selfishness, harmfulness of the modern world, and importance of prime teen pussy. It will just be a set of axioms rather than the pseudo rigour of long drawn out reasoning

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 17:07:32 No.7286054 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7287327

>>7285819

>you're really telling me the physical and mental condition of a dude who just smokes weed and faps to anime is the same as the alpha business man who hits the gym

not necessarily same. But not objectively better either. The person who chose to fap to anime and smoke weed did it because he found it gratifying and that's that. The alpha businessman finds gratification in the gym. Different preferences and sources of gratification. No element of superiority here imo.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:13:33 No.7286342 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284539
>>7284532
Books in general only give what you take from them. If you go in negatively, you won't gain anything. And like the other anon said, you have to find ones specific to your goals.
Is Sun tsu self help? 48 laws of power? Meditations?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:16:06 No.7286353 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7285801
Your dad is a shitty writer.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:20:32 No.7287271 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284519
http://markmanson.net/self-help

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:25:35 No.7287311 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7285939
Antifragile was a bizarre book, and an even more bizarre investment strategy

But can't argue with those returns though

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 21:27:13 No.7287327 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7286054
we're not talking about their gratification, we're talking about the state of their bodies and minds.

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