The Self-Help Book Paradox

I love self help books. I buy a new one at least once a month, and add more to my Amazon reading list every week. I pour over their passages numerous times, circling and underlining and highlighting and starring all the wisdom and advice contained within their pages. Words cannot describe the euphoria of finding a passage that just so perfectly describes my current situation that it feels as if the self-help book author took it right from my own mind.

I’m drawn to self-help books so much because I love to learn, and I love being my best-self. But if I’m being honest, part of me is addicted to them. I have joked with my therapists and friends that I suffer from my own self-help book paradox: I read self-help books with the goal of improving myself, but before I ever put the book’s suggestions into action, I always find a new self-help book to read. These books give me the feeling that I’m working towards a better self, but in reality, they just allow me to live the illusion of self-improvement. As long as I’m armed with a self-help book, I don’t actually have to self-improve. They allow me to comfortably sit in perpetual self-reflection.

While this love of self-reflection is one of my greatest gifts, I began to use it as a crutch in 2019. I spent a significant part of this year analyzing my thoughts, motives, actions, successes, and failures ad nauseam. I’d claim that it was all to better myself, but in reality, it’s was just my way of putting off the process of letting go.

I tend to avoid letting go for the same reasons I keep an arsenal of self-help books on my dresser: it allows me to live in this limbo of all this self-reflection and self-improvement with none of the action it takes to actually move forward into something better.

For the past few days, I have tried to write a reflection on my 2019. But the harder I tried to write something impactful, the more frustrated I got. My 2019 was one of the best years of my life, but also one of the most challenging, and I wanted to wrap up my year with a thoughtful post that gave all 365 days their justice. But the more I wrote about 2019, the more I realized I had nothing left to say about it. I was trying to give my 2019 the self-help book treatment, and I was stuck spinning my wheels in self-reflection.

It’s time to let go. It’s time to move forward.

So instead of self-reflecting my entire 2019 to death, I’m letting go of all of it–including the pang of guilt I feel for letting it go. No more dissecting it, no more reliving it. I’m honoring my 2019 by promising myself not to say anything more about it. This last post of 2019 is me Marie Kondo‘ing this entire year. This is my vow to stop dwelling, and to put more energy into the work it takes to move into something better.

To my 2019:

Thank you for all the opportunities and lessons you gave me. Thank you for all the growth I had in my relationships with myself and with others. Thank you for this year of life.

And now that I’ve thanked you, I’m letting you go without any guilt. No more analyzing, reanalyzing, obsessing, or regretting. You happened, and now you’re over.

And with that, goodbye 2019.