Is Self-help a scam?

I had a long chat with a friend the other day. We were discussing why our circle of friends seem to be unhappy with their current life. And why there is an explosion of self-help books in the market. Not just self-help books, but self-help seminars, home-working courses, how to change ur life in just 30 days etc. If you frequent the self-help sections in a book store, or if flipping through the papers, you get caught by headlines such as “even you can be happy”, or “how i made my millions on the internet”, or “i quit my day job, so can you”, you will know what i’m talking about. One question pops up ... why is that in this century there is so much of self help options and so many people seeking out "help" from the so called life coaches? Are they are not capable enough to run their own life?

I happened to bump on this book called SHAM in a bookstore recently...the " Self Help And Actualization Movement" as it is called is a big industry in this century!Beleive it or not it is a $8.5-billion-a-year business. But the question is ,"Does it work?"

Steve Salerno ,in his recent book Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless (Crown Publishing Group, 2005), he explains how the talks and tapes offer a momentary boost of inspiration that fades after a few weeks, turning buyers into repeat customers.If what the self help gurus propogates really works for people, one would expect lives to improve. One would not expect people to need further help from them--at least not in that same problem area, and certainly not time and time again.It is a simple logic isn't it?

And another thing, if you need to pay for someone's help, why is it called "self-help"? It is not self help , it has to be termed as "help".

Surrounding SHAM is a bulletproof shield: if your life does not get better, it is your fault--your thoughts were not positive enough. The solution? More of the same self-help--or at least the same message repackaged into new products. Consider the multiple permutations of John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus--Mars and Venus Together Forever, Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, The Mars and Venus Diet and Exercise Solution--not to mention the Mars and Venus board game, Broadway play and Club Med getaway.

SHAM takes advantage by cleverly marketing the dualism of victimization and empowerment. Like a religion that defines people as inherently sinful so that they require forgiveness (provided exclusively by that religion), SHAM gurus insist that we are all victims of our demonic "inner children" who are produced by traumatic pasts that create negative "tapes" that replay over and over in our minds. Redemption comes through empowering yourself with new "life scripts," supplied by the masters themselves, for prices that range from $500 one-day workshops to Tony Robbins's $5,995 "Date with Destiny" seminar. Ha! Are they Gods who can change a person's life by a magic touch?

Do these programs work? No one knows.No scientific evidence indicates that any of the countless SHAM techniques--from fire walking to 12-stepping--works better than doing something else or even doing nothing. The law of large numbers means that given the millions of people who have tried SHAMs, inevitably some will improve. As with trying alternative-medicine , the body naturally heals itself and whatever the patient was doing to help gets the credit.

Of course there is a certain amount of wisdom in the books, sometimes a considerable amount. Accessible sources of information that are available to all have to be a good thing. And everyone uses the books in a different way; sometimes these are empowering ways.

Patient, heal thyself-- is the true meaning of self-help !