The Gospel of Self Help
By Richard Eyre

Publishers note: Perhaps the three most pursued and coveted things in our modern world are control, ownership, and independence. In Richard Eyre's mind, they are the three deceiver's — and are ultimately both unobtainable and undesirable. They are, Eyre believes, the "false gods" that separate us from God and rob us of the things of the spirit. This column, exploring the obsessions we have developed with control, ownership and independence, and outlining a better and more spiritual alternative for each, will open you to a new world of thinking that may change how you live.

Thanks for the Feedback

First of all, thanks for all of your responses to last week's opening column. Apparently, the concept of these three subtle deceivers who alter the way we think and lead us in non-spiritual directions, has struck a chord in many of you, and caused you both to think and to worry (just as they do me!).

Something deep inside each of us recognizes control, ownership, and independence for what they are — robbers of our peace and separators of us from God. I will share some of the feedback and comments I am getting from you in a future column, so keep your e mails coming.

Many of you also asked, begged in some cases, and demanded in a few, that I reveal the three alternatives, the three attitudes or concepts that can be substituted for the three produce the opposite effects. And the answer is no, not yet! But I promise they will come, and that, when they do, you will recognize them as truth. But I don't believe they will be fully meaningful to you, or fully useful, until you are completely convinced that control, ownership, and independence are dangerous and deceitful concepts that lead us in directions we don't want to go.

Many readers are a long way from being convinced of that, because much of their lives have been devoted to the pursuit of these three things, and no one wants to admit that they have been aiming in wrong directions. So stay with me through the "negative" part of this series (how the three deceivers harm us and why they are both wrong and false) so that the "positive" part, when it comes, the three alternative attitudes or paradigms I want to suggest, will be fully meaningful.

The Gospel of Self Help

I wrote last week about the possibility that our obsessions with the misguided and overextended concepts of Ownership, Control and Independence are ruining the quality of our lives. And the column suggested that these three pursuits and paradigms have become our idols — to the point that they are the assumed and implied goals of our whole society (and of the whole culture of "self help" that has grown up within our society.)

This column has some big ambitions, not only because it will argue against both the legitimacy and the benefits of these three concepts, but also because it will try to take on this whole world of “self help” ? with its underlying assumptions that control, ownership and independence should be our goals.

What I am going to try to do here is to create something of a revolution against the entrenched idea that they are the things that we all should be seeking. Although my writing and language may not sound revolutionary or look incendiary, the fact is that these columns will challenge the traditional, mainstream ideas of self help as directly and as diametrically as the Colonists took on the British, or the round-worlders took on the flatlanders, or the impressionist painters took on the realists, or the Protestants took on the Catholics.

Without passing judgment on any of the above, the point is that they each happened because some people deeply believed there was a need for a paradigm shift — that the current reality, or belief, or “norm” was wrong and needed correction — needed reversing.

I believe, passionately, that some serious correction and reversing are needed in the field of goal-setting and self help. I think that the three objectives that most self help writers and gurus assume, (and that they try to help us get to) are the wrong goals, and that we undermine our happiness and our peace by subscribing to them and searching for them.

What do I mean by “self help”? And why does it matter? Well, go into a big bookstore and notice that the second largest section (next to fiction) is labeled “self help” or “self improvement.” In a way, self help has become the fastest growing religion in this country when measured by book sales, or by speaking fees, or by what people are talking about when they wax serious or philosophical.

The label sounds great. Self improvement — what could be better than a person trying to improve himself, trying to become better, to find fulfillment and happiness? It’s not the subject of self help that I’m against. There are great self help books, based on consistently true principles (Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits comes to mind). I like books on work/family balance, and on self education. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography was probably the first American book in the self improvement genre, and how can you be against that?

What I am against — and what I want to fight, are the three predominant themes or objectives that permeate and dominate current self help books and ideas. I know what these most common themes are because I recently spent the best part of a day inventorying, by subject, the literally hundreds of books in the self improvement section of a super-sized Barnes and Noble.

As I mentioned, the most prominent themes (or objectives) of current self help literature, directly stated or implied, are these:

1. Control
2. Ownership
3. Independence

You don’t have to go to the bookstore to verify this; just think about it for a minute. We have:

1. books on gaining control — of your time, your relationships, your body, your boss, your employees, your moods, your circumstances, your image, your whole life and everything in it;
2. books on ownership — of wealth, of toys, of whatever money can buy and on how to have more of everything, and
3. books on becoming more independent — financially, emotionally, mentally, and on how to be and do anything you want without help from or reliance on anyone else.

So what’s wrong with these three themes? Simply this: They get carried to their extremes and become direct causes of stress and unhappiness.

Think about the folly of trying to control everything. Life is essentially unpredictable. It happens. Little of it is within our control, and the measure of our success and of our happiness is not how much we control of what happens but how we handle and respond to what does happen. Constantly trying to control what can’t be controlled is a recipe for stress.

Think about the obsession with ownership. What do we really own? We pass through this life and we may obtain deeds and titles, but does anything really belong to us? And doesn’t the illusion of ownership cause jealousy and envy and condescension and lots of other emotions that connect to unhappiness?

Think about the misplaced desire for independence. We are all interconnected and interdependent in so many ways. We need each other and it is these needs that make us human and that allow us to love and that encourage us to make commitments. Too much emphasis on independence leads to isolation. And we are all completely dependent, even for our very breath, on God.

The bottom line is that we can’t really have any of the three, and wouldn’t want them even if we could. Too much control would take the adventure and spontaneity out of life. Too much ownership becomes bondage. And too much independence equals loneliness.