I’m Changing: Receiving Validation from Self Help Media

When was the last time you have announced to yourself you are going to personally change? How did you feel afterwards? Did you feel a need to express those feelings to others via face to face or social network? Perhaps change is not what you are searching for. Maybe you seek positive reinforcement from others to change.

It is easy to confuse wanting to change for you with wanting to change for others. The warm words from friends makes you want to succeed in order to continue to receive those affections. The result is a facade which lasts for six months to a year. No change has occurred and you feel more like a failure.

The need to seek out a quick fix solution to cope with these feelings of inadequacy brews. Then your “change” becomes dependent on quick fix changes in self help media.

Self help media is a TV show, movie, or book which promotes physical, mental, or emotional health. Some people refer to self help media as propaganda due to their popularity with people who lack direction to achieve a goal.

Self help media is an amazing tool when written by professionals in the field. Self help becomes propaganda fodder when any old Joe publishes what they think some one ought to do in order to achieve a particular goal. In spite of that, people seek self help media relieve anxiety which result from failure or a lack of direction.

With the anxiety covered people can take the information from the self help book and interpret it any way they deem. This is where self help media created by people who are not experts gets in hot water.

The movie, “Act Like a Woman, Think Like a Man” was based on a book written by Steve Harvey. Harvey tells women they are “In control of the cookie.”  In addition women have to train a man to behave the way she wants him to.

Steve Harvey is not a relationship expert nor is he a psychologist or sociologist. The statements in his book give women power they did not deserve and gives women permission to be rude to any man who does not follow her behavioral guidelines.

Women who are insecure are being told they do not need self esteem. The men they pick are trying to use them and thus need to be weeded out. If a woman is trying to apply Harvey’s book to their life they will be met with constant rejection.

When self help media does not yield the proper outcome they are traded for other self help media. A woman trying to apply the methods in Harvey’s book may not get the man she wants. Instead of turn to herself and fix the problem inside she will seek out self help media which tells her something else.

Self help media can alter your thinking to believe you can not fix your own problems with out quick tips. A therapist or psychologist will give you long term tools to fix you. Once you have fixed yourself, you can pursue other endeavors.

Self help media is an industry which profits off of the insecure. They understand the fears of people and use that information to reel them in to purchasing a solution. The fact of the matter is we do mot need a self help media to tell us we are screwed up.

If we just sit down for an hour and try to recover our past memories our answers can be found there. For example I have an ENTJ personality type. If you are not into Myers-Briggs a simple Google search can help you out.

A flaw with my personality type is my lav km of consideration for the feelings of others. In order for me to fix this I apply my sociological imagination to situations involving people’s emotions. The result is an intellectual understanding of the feelings of others.

I did not have to purchase a book about ENTJs to find a solution. I discovered my issue and found a way to fix it. I am still overcoming my ENTJ shortcomings. I understand it will take a while but it will be worth it in the end.

The change will happen on its own. You have to be willing to attempt the work and not expect an immediate pay off. I took my sociology course in July and have gotten better with using my sociological imagination here recently. Genuine change is internal before it is external.