The problems I generally have with these books are:
Firstly I don't believe you can change your psychological make up 'just like that'. It's taken your whole life to make YOU and reading a book isn't going to change it.
Secondly, many of the are full of 'feel-good', pseudo-scientific claptrap and downright falsehoods that anyone with any critical capacity or education SHOULD bin them straight after reading (cue Robbins, Rich Dad, One Minute Millionaire, The Secret et al), I've read/seen them all btw. That's not strctly true, some of them I got about a quarter of the way through before binning them 'One minute...' holds the record for that. 'The mastermind' PMSL.
That's right, Alan Sugar and Richard Branson became who they became by sitting in their bedrooms with their eyes closed, visualising, praying to God, walking and breathing, eating 'green foods' that vibrate at certain frequencies (ah the good old vibrating broccoli), making lists of goals: short medium and long term and of course the unrealistic 'plan' of how to achieve them:
Saturday: buy required materials: hypnosis tapes, AR Planner (at the special reduced price of £99.99 for this week only), green drink, lists of trite quotes by successful people which they probably never said anyway.
Sunday Pre week preparation, make list, chunk list, visualise list, listen to self hypnosis tape, go for a walk, breath deeply and visualise the week, now I feel good...YEAH
Monday capitalise business
Tuesday hire staff and build infrastructure
Wednesday get customers and sell stuff to them
Thursday float company and become millionaire
Friday retire
or in the case of Rich Dad
Monday find house
Tuesday buy house for 20% of market value
Wednesday sell house for massive profit
Thursday buy and sell condo
Friday, invest it all in 'the forex' and become billionairre
i.e. THOUSANDS of pages of utter utter drivel basically saying 'buy low, sell high' and some rubbish about being a helicopter pilot.
"How to Win friends..." the classic that started it all. A long time since I read it, also listened the audio version. I seem to remember it was so full of lists of things you need to do/how to behave that to do any of it you'd become totally none functional in any situation trying to remember what step 7 in the list at the end of chapter 10 was and what president Lincoln did in that situation - you know the one where his neighbour kept parking his car opposite his drive and blocking him in and he got so annoyed that he set off a thermonuclear device in the other guys back yard because he was president of the United States and had enough military force to do that? Then nicely said to the frazzled corpse 'Well, sir, I did warn you...well actually I didn't as you might have tried to escape'. He won many friends that day and plenty of influence.
And why is it in these books that only the 'nice guys' are successful in life when in reality we know that, generally speaking, it's the total, utter b@stards who are the one's that really become succesful? Maybe because it's the unsuccesful, nice guys that buy these books? Whereas the b@stards just on with grabbing it all for themselves and laughing at the 'nice guys' expense?
I'm not saying there's nothing of use in them but there are a lot of people out there sucked in to this - serial self-helpers I call them, who are just moving from one load of bulls!t to the next and never getting anywhere. How do I know - I was one of them for 18 months or so until I saw the light. 18 months reading this cr@p instead of getting out there and doing it.
Any of them worth anything? Psycho Cybernetics maybe? About 300 pages of cr@p with a bit of control theory thrown in which basically boils down to 'keep your goal in mind and learn from your mistakes'.
Most of these books you can precis into about 2 sentences at most.
'Time of your life' - have a goal, write your plan and adapt your plan when neccessary.
FFS it's like the people that think they can become bodybuilders by buying some protein powder, buying some nice gym clothes, an ipod, a heart-rate monitor, some videos, some books etc. What should they be doing? Eating proper food and busting their @rse in the gym with heavy weights, but that would require super human resolve, painful, back breaking work and breaking the rules. That can't be 'the secret' can it?? There must be more to it than that surely!
Some may say 'yes but all of these books build confidence, you'll then be able to do it' No No No, you'll spend 20 years reading this cr@p in the endless search for some bl00dy secret that doesn't exist. What will build the confidence and get you to where you want to be? Getting of your backside and DOING IT. Want confidence? DO IT You see? Nike were right all along. The Irish Nike 'Just feckin' do it'.
