Over the years I’ve read dozens of books about purpose, habits, happiness, psychology, personal development, and popular philosophy. I really love that shit. This feels like a dirty little secret; shameful but also compelling for me, for some reason.

But why does the self-help genre feel shameful?

Growing up, I heard harsh judgements and shaming heaped upon those who sought help for emotional issues. In our house there was a lot of criticism of those who weren’t ‘doing life right’… according to my parents, that is. I also learned that focussing on your feelings was self-indulgent ‘navel gazing’, it was the sort of thing that only idiots wasted their time on. I was told ‘we deal with our problems privately, we keep our issues within the family’. From where I’m standing now, it seems that this essentially meant not dealing with many emotional and interpersonal conflicts, but instead pretending that they didn’t exist.

Along the way, my child’s mind translated these messages to some negative ideas about self-help. I thought if I wasn’t pathetic, I definitely wouldn’t need or want to read those books. I felt reading books about other ways of being, other ways of doing life, was surely an admission of weakness or defeat.

So I hid them in my underwear drawer. But as my collection of dog-eared self-help books became so voluminous that it began spilling out of the closet, I’ve had to come to terms with my love of the genre.

The truth is, I love ideas – they’re fun toys to play with. Also I love change, I love adventure, and seeing things with new eyes.

I’m tickled by the thought that everything I want to learn (including healthy human behaviours) has been pondered by dozens of authors. It’s in a book, sitting there just waiting for me to dive in. I never know where a new idea might take me, what fire it might ignite.