How to Help Yourself with Self-Help: A Short Guide on How to Use Self-Help Books to Achieve Your Goals

By: Martin Meadows

Narrated by: John Gagnepain

Are Self-Help Books Good for Anything?

Have you ever bought a self-help book, listened to it, only to find that nothing changed for you? How many hours have you wasted this way, expecting to improve your life by simply being inspired by something you listened to?

The hard truth is that it’s easy to listen to self-help, but difficult to implement it in real life. First you need to figure out what exactly to listen to, and then you need to know what exactly to do with the advice you find inside.

The world of self-help has a lot of traps, and throughout my years as a voracious reader, I’ve fallen into probably all of them. Now, as both a reader and an author of self-help books, I’d like to share with you some advice on how to use self-help books in a way that will actually help you achieve real-world results. Here are some of the topics I cover in my short guide How to Help Yourself With Self-Help:

• The five most common pitfalls of self-help and how to avoid them (you’ve probably fallen victim to most of them).
• Tips on how to identify what specific area of your life you should target first in order to benefit the most from reading/listening to self-help.
• What confirmation bias is, why it’s dangerous, and how to escape it to stay flexible and enjoy consistent personal growth.
• How to interpret the advice you get from a book and tailor it to your life circumstances (cookie-cutter approaches don’t work).
• Why it’s sometimes better to skip self-help books and what to read/listen to instead to help you achieve your goals and become a better person.

Don’t let another self-help title become just another book on your shelf. Learn how to absorb in a more strategic way, and more importantly, act on the advice you get. This short guide can be your first step toward the new you.

©2019 Meadows Publishing (P)2019 Meadows Publishing

An elegant “must” for genre junkies

Short, straightforward, logical primer for self-improvement readers. Narration best for me at 1.3 x.

Less than I expected.

I founded only a few real-life applicable advices. Even though it is how to read other books, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

If you are attracted to self help books

If you are attracted to self-help books like I am, but have not always found them as helpful as you would hope, this book is for you. I received this book free in exchange for an honest review. It gave good advice about how to use self help books and clearly stated things I had already figured out, things I had only sensed and things I hadn’t thought about. I would recommend this short, but helpful read.

Really well written book with a unique angle

Martin has written a lot of self help books himself, but this one is different. It's on how to best use the self-help books that you read/ listen to. I'm assuming that if you're reading this review/ looking at this book, you are probably interested in self-help to begin with. Where this book is different from others is that it gives you guidance on how to use the other books that you are reading.
One quick example, The first chapter lists 5 common self-help pitfalls. #1 is Reading without Taking Action. This is a really great point, and hits at the core of a lot of self-help failures. It's easy to read the books, but much harder to carry out the actions recommended in the books. The other pitfalls are also interesting, as is the rest of the book.
I bought the kindle version of the book when it came out, and the author ran a promo where he offered a free copy of the audiobook in exchange for a review. I was glad to take him up on it. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.
Many of Martin's books are heavily footnoted & on those, I recommend the kindle version over the audiobook as the footnotes don't carry over to audio well. But this book doesn't have extensive footnoting, so I think that the audio & kindle versions are equally good & would recommend either based on your personal preference.

This Self-Help Book is a Breath of Fresh Air

I've lost track of all the self-help books I've bought, read, and since forgotten. Most were stimulating to read at the time, although some I gave up on after a couple chapters. But few left me with solved problems, better habits, or a transformed life. After reading this book, I think I know why. I'd fallen into the typical traps of self-help books. And after listening to this author, I think I know how to avoid them in the future. And change my reading habits for the better.

Of the five traps listed in his first chapter, I fell for at least two for them. One for example was reading without taking action. Sounds stupid, but I figured once I enlightened myself from reading something, there was no real need for me to take action (i.e. do anything) - to change my life. My life would just magically change.

Thanks to this book, I plan to read many more books and I expect to improve myself in many ways, while going about it intelligently and with purpose.

Gary Jones

Now that you have a gazillion self help books it's

Now that you have a gazillion self help books it's time to learn how to really use them. I know it sounds odd, but this one made me revisit other books. There are some useful tips here. Definitely, worth the read. It will revive your self help section at home.

Don't equate reading with personal growth

Martin Meadows presents another no-fluff work, this time addressing his own genre. His opening prologue hits the core issue: Self-help is useless. Self-help is life-changing. His message is well written and well thought out. Essentially - read with a purpose, then act on at least one point. Over and over, he emphasizes that doing something beats reading about something every time. He also provides insight on how to best make the self-improvement/self=help material your own - read, apply, tweak and tailor it to your needs. All in all, a very good perspective on reading and applying changes to your life.

As an aside, I really enjoy the audible clip and bookmark feature - it allows me to mark key passages and save a few comments for later review.

Regardless, great book.

Great Book!

My personal ratings.
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I would rate this book as great Book.
It has great structure as always from an author I like reading so it might be a bit bias, but I always lookup and do background check on the authors I want to spend time on. Base on my own specific criteria’s. So judge on your own based on your needs.
This book in particular well structured, has actionable items, experience based and know how based. Reasons why I follow the guy.
I Personal thank you Very much for a great material that I can use as guide post. Love reading your Books.

Clarity, application, brevity

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

This is a very high value per minute book. Many of the points are things we probably all know intuitively, but personally, I don't act on it. This book helped me take a step back and realize "yeah, that's me."

There were lots of gems in this title, so I won't list them all because you should really just listen to the book. Here are the 20% of takeaways at the top of the list:

• Get clear about what you want out of the book, and choose your book with that goal in mind, based on where you are right now. "Education without application is entertainment" sums up a good part of the book.
• Create a mind map around the problem in your life and filter books based on that map. Don’t move on until you’ve applied what you decided to apply.
• Create a formal experiment and document your results. Be clear about what you plan to do and what changes you’re looking for. Then see, objectively, if you hit that goal by following the plan or not, then figure out why or why not.
• If you have to pump yourself up with motivation to do something, consider your internal motivation rather than seeking external motivation. What’s your why?
• Whenever you accomplish a goal and feel empty, pause and reflect on which direction you want to grow next. Don’t just keep pushing in that area because you’ve already made progress in it.

Great advice and no fluff

This book really made me think about how I go about consuming self-help books. I received this title in exchange for an honest review. I feel like this book should be a prerequisite for anyone that will ever read a self-help book. I definitely feel confident that it will make a huge difference in how much I can really get out of a good book (including this one). Instead of chasing empty promises, I will be making the most of sound advice that fits my interests. In addition to advice about getting the most out of self-help books, it actually has quite a bit of great self-help advice packed into this short book. I really appreciate the author's approach to being straightforward and clear without wasting a lot of time just to add more words. I look forward to reading more books by this author.