Regarding self-help books I admit: I am NOT a big fan.
While teaching several ICBM classes, I often have to deliver this disappointing news from the front of a classroom full of young self-help-book enthusiasts.
Before the responses and book-club applications come flooding in, allow me a chance to offer a more-complete answer: While I am not a big fan of self-help books in general, some have admittedly been wonderful, inspirational, and have invoked a course-correction along my developmental path towards greatness. I have read many hundreds of self-help books but very few have moved the needle.
But still, I am not a fan.
Why not? For me and for many, the self-help math just doesn’t add up.
Too many haystacks + Too few needles = Too much wasted time.
Adding to this wasted time: if you are lucky enough to find a needle, chances are it isn’t the one you were searching for and are ill-equipped to maximize its usefulness.
Again, as a Rule, the sum-total of these self-help parts doesn’t add up to enough for the investment required.
But every rule has its exception. For one ICBM alumnus, this self-help-book experience IS that exception. Therein lies the key, while I’m not a fan of self-help books per se, I am occasionally moved by the experience a self-help book may lead to.
Furthermore, while I wasn’t searching for this type of inspiration when I opened the following email, it WAS THE EXACT ONE I NEEDED TO FIND.
Please enjoy this entirely factual and true story:
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The Best Self-Help Book Ever
“When asked to pick my favorite self-help book I could have taken the easy way out and given a humorously sarcastic response like A Needlessly Destructive Guide to Grief or The Eightfold Path to Yo Mama but instead I choose to be open and honest. Now that I’ve opened that door I might as well walk through it and share my entire story of discovery and enlightenment.
It all began just after I had graduated from college. As you may know, before enrolling at ICBM for a Master of Businessing Leadery, I matriculated at an engineering school eventually earning a Bachelors of Science in a relatively obscure field and acquiring all the normal engineering school detritus such as pens, pencils, rulers, obtuse textbooks (and acute angles if you’ll pardon the pun).
Upon graduation I undertook a job search that ranged me far and wide across this great nation of ours: from Annapolis Maryland, through the heartland to the Quad Cities on the mighty Mississippi, up into Montana and out to the gold coast of California. It was a wondrous time, full of adventure, but not the adventure that lead to enlightenment. No, that begins a few years later when I had firmly established a career in information technology right here in Denver Colorado, the Mile High City.
One of my first jobs in the field was with a small firm installing and maintaining accounting software. If possible it was actually less interesting and far less lucrative than it sounds. One day while out in the field installing a yearly tax update for a customer one of my newly hired coworkers asked if I wanted to go to lunch. Seeing as how he was new, and as his team leader I wished to get to know him better, it would have been rude of me not to, so I immediately agreed even offering to buy.
What I didn’t know at the time, but was to soon learn, was that in earlier years he had worked as a “coyote”, someone who smuggles people across the US/Mexico border and as a necessity deals with some very unsavory, and dare I say it, dangerous characters. As a result he had taken to keeping large amounts of cash close at hand in case he needed to “bug out” on a moment’s notice.
At this point I should ask if you are familiar with the CRC Handbook, sometimes called the ‘RubberBook’ or even ‘BouncyBible’ having been originally published by the Chemical Rubber Company. The CRC is a vast treasure trove of scientific information. Contained within it’s pages are mathematical formulas, physical constants, chemical data, nuclear half-lifes and a host of other useful information. The CRC Handbook has been published continuously since 1910; now in it’s 122nd edition, with new information constantly being added. As you can imagine, collecting that much information in one place is no easy task and makes for a rather robust tome. I own a copy of the 74th edition which stretches to more than 3000 pages and weighs in at well over 8 pounds.
Back to my coworker: we had been paid that day and on the way to lunch he asked if we could stop at the bank so he could cash his check, which was certainly acceptable to me. Whereas I would normally deposit my full salary into my checking account, he instead would get cash which he then stashed in a very large book that he had hollowed out (you may see where this is going).
It has been many decades since that fateful day, but I vividly remember he used a textbook on conjugating irregular French verbs. Needless to say, in hollowing out that particular volume nothing of value was lost. During lunch he regaled me with stories of collecting trucks in Mexican border towns, driving them across untold miles of barren Chihuahuan desert only to leave them in random parking lots, walking away, never knowing the stories of his human cargo.
As you might guess someone paranoid enough to not maintain a bank account or credit card, while also carrying significant amounts of cash would be paranoid enough to carry “protection”, which I accidentally discovered when he asked me to hand him the book stashed under the passenger seat. It turns out he had two hollowed out books, the previously mentioned irregular French verbs, which was the book I had expected to find, and not ironically a large print version of “War and Peace” which was the book I mistakenly grabbed.
With rather more heft to it than expected I handed him the tome. Laughing, he accepted the book and opened it to show me “his little friend”, in this case a polished chrome Smith&Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum revolver proudly saying “It’s the same gun Dirty Harry used.” He quickly added that while he thankfully hadn’t needed to fire it in anger, he was more than prepared to if necessary.
I should mention that at that time I was planning on buying a new “used” mountain bike for which I would be paying cash, so when my coworker cashed his entire check, I had only deposited half and was carrying the other half in my pocket. More cash money than I had ever held at one time. As they day went on our routine tax update took much longer than expected and we ended up spending significant additional time at the client’s office.
As we were waiting for the software to install I was regaled to stories of being robbed at gunpoint, detained by Mexican Federales demanding bribes and other hair raising yarns that made keeping both a large quantity of cash, and a weapon, on hand seem like a prudent idea. It was quite late when I finally arrived home that evening, thinking back to the day’s events from the moment of waking, and the stern admonition that I should hide my stack of green backs for safe keeping, I reached for my bookcase and grabbed the largest book I could find and a knife. As I prepared to retire for the evening I had one further task that I now knew how to accomplish.
That morning the light in my bathroom had burned out, being an apartment dweller it’s understandable that I would not own a step ladder and despite being taller than average I was not able to reach the bulb. Placing the 3024 hardbound pages of the RubberBook on the ground added just enough to my height that I was able to pry a stubborn clip off the light fixture with the knife, reach and replace the burned out bulb.
Now fully enlightened, I could find my toothbrush, brush my teeth, oral hygiene being very important to a person’s health and well being, and go to bed grateful that I lived a simple honest life and didn’t need to hide either my life savings or a handgun in a hollowed out book.
And THAT is why the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is my choice for the best self-help book ever.”
With that, we pose the question, what is your favorite self-help book and more importantly why?