The Book Club: A Selection of Self-Help Books
With Emily Yoffe, a discussion of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff—and It’s All Small Stuff, by Richard Carlson; The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama; One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, by Iyanla Vanzant.
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Slate, July 15, 1999
[Read this article at Slate’s website]
From: Emily Yoffe
Subject: Absolute Positivity
Posted Monday, July 12, 1999, at 12:00 PM ET
Dear Jeff,
What struck me immediately about these three bestsellers is what they are not about. They’re not about some of the recently popular themes of the self-help genre: making money; enhancing your sex life; vanquishing your rivals; getting rid of toxic parents, spouses, or boyfriends. We must really live in contented times if these are the books people are reading to improve their lives. The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, M.D. (but really by Cutler, who says in an interview he’s not sure the Tibetan leader even read the manuscript), is obviously explicitly about Buddhism, even if it is not terribly instructive in the basic tenets of the religion. And both Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … And It’s All Small Stuff, and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up make reference to Eastern philosophy of a watered-down sort.
To varying degrees all three books share some underlying messages. One is, accept your life as it is now (from Don’t Sweat: “We tend to believe that if we were somewhere else—on vacation, with another partner, in a different career, a different home, a different circumstance—somehow we would be happier and more content. We wouldn’t!”). Another is, you’ve got to attend to your inner state before you can help anyone else (from One Day: “Life wants us to be aware of ourselves so we can make the necessary adjustments in order to live more harmoniously”). And finally, we must feel compassion for our enemies (from The Art: “In fact, the enemy is the necessary condition for practicing patience … we can consider our enemy as a great teacher, and revere them for giving us this precious opportunity to practice patience”). I’m curious, Jeff, as to whether you came away with the same set of lessons—and what enemies you are now revering.
The way Cutler dealt with the whole issue of “enemies” was something that bothered me about his book. The Dalai Lama has some real enemies—he has been a refugee his adult life because Chinese occupiers are destroying his people and banishing his religion. Cutler, after listening to the Dalai Lama tell how he has trained himself to feel compassion for the Chinese (and Jeff, I’d like to get your reaction to the implications of Buddhist philosophy in the face of monsters), goes out and tries to apply His Holiness’ teaching. He finds his opportunity on a long airplane ride when he is forced to sit next to a very annoying woman who got the aisle seat that he coveted. Now that’s suffering! And although the book acknowledges tragedy and pain will come into every life, it’s real focus seemed to be on how to radiate Dalai Lama-like equanimity in the face of all of life’s little annoyances.
Don’t Sweat is explicitly about little annoyances—as the subtitle explains (is that why the book itself is little and annoying?). Of course there is plenty of good advice in it about just letting things pass, holding your tongue, etc. But I kept getting riled up about the bland passivity it advocates. Carlson does not seem to recognize that people can be more than nasty or rude, they can be downright dangerous—and then where do his little lessons fit in? In one of the few acknowledgements that it perhaps is not “all small stuff,” he writes, “Can we learn to find the holiness in seemingly ugly circumstances—difficult life lessons, a family tragedy, or a struggle for life?” Well, yes! assures Carlson, and once we do, “a feeling of peace emerges.” Gee, that was easy.
Cutler, the dissatisfied psychiatrist, takes a few jabs at that old Prince of Darkness, Sigmund Freud. He disapprovingly cites one of Freud’s observations, “One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be ‘happy’ is not included in the plan of ‘Creation.’ ” I found that to be one of the most bracing lines in the book. Cutler also disagrees with Freud’s belief that aggression is an instinctive drive. “The tide appears to be turning on this profoundly pessimistic view of humanity, coming closer to the Dalai Lama’s view of our underlying nature as gentle and compassionate,” he observes. Hey, before you know it we may arrive at the End of History.
I’ve run of out space to deal with Iyanla Vanzant, who seems to be less an author than a persona. I found her book to be excruciating to read. But really what she’s selling is her life story. Here’s the daughter of poor unwed parents, who was herself a teen-age unwed mother, then battered wife, and rape victim, a broke, angry woman who transformed herself into a best-selling author and friend of Oprah. I can understand people buying her book and not so much learning from it as using her as a touchstone for what someone can do with her life.
I look forward to hearing from what I’m sure is a happier, more soulful, and definitely less sweaty you, Jeff.
Emily
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Be Here Now. Or Later. Or Whenever.
Posted Monday, July 12, 1999, at 5:01 PM ET
Dear Emily,
First, let me say that I honor and revere you for your contribution to this dialogue. And not only that—I honor and revere you just for you being you. As Iyanla Vanzant—who is not, as I previously thought, Khrushchev’s daughter—might say, I honor the divine, ever-evolving “is” that is you. Three cheers for Yoffe.
There—I have now fulfilled Item No. 20 on Richard Carlson’s to-do list: “Once a week, write a heartfelt letter.”
I must admit that, in the spirit of Carlson, who is described in his biography as a “consultant” on “happiness”—I think he worked for McKinsey and Co. at one point—I almost bagged out of this week’s “Book Club.” As the happiness consultant writes in “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … “, “remember that nothing is more important than your own sense of happiness and inner peace and that of your loved ones. If you’re obsessed with getting everything done, you’ll never have a sense of well-being. In reality, almost everything can wait.” How true! If the Book Club doesn’t come out this week, it’ll come out next week! Or not! Whatever! For further instruction in this area, Emily, please buy my new book (and audiotape), The Procrastinator’s Guide to Simplicity, Better Sex, and Online Investing, which Hyperion is publishing in the spring of 2001, or the fall of 2007, or whenever.
You are probably asking yourself, O revered Yoffe, “Why, then, did my dear friend Goldberg not bag out of the ‘Book Club’ when the maintenance of his spiritual health is obviously so important to him, and to me, as one who reveres him?”
Because, dear Yoffe, I promised I would do it. Also, I don’t want to get my ass kicked by a certain New York-based editor of Slate.
Herein lies a problem—one of many—with Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, too. I get the sense reading these books—or trying to read them, because, as you correctly note (so perceptive, that Yoffe!), they are almost impossible to read—that what they advocate is nothing so much as selfishness. You magnanimously summarize one lesson of these books as, “You’ve got to attend to your inner state before you can help anyone else.” But I take away something slightly different: “You’ve got to attend to your inner state, and do whatever you want with the time left over, as long as that includes buying my next book.”
Dr. (!) Carlson writes that “If someone throws you the ball, you don’t have to catch it.” He goes on: “Suppose you’re really busy when a friend calls in a frantic tone and says, ‘My mother is driving me crazy. What should I do?’ Rather than saying, ‘I’m really sorry but I don’t know what to suggest,’ you automatically catch the ball and try to solve the problem. Then later, you feel stressed or resentful that you are behind schedule and that everyone seems to be making demands on you.” Yeesh. They don’t call it “self-help” for nothing.
I could go on, but let me honor your divinity by answering a couple of your questions.
Yes, Dr. Cutler, the purported Boswell to the Dalai Lama’s Dr. Johnson, bothers me. First, he wears a denim jacket in his author’s photo, which suggests to me that he’s not interested in the pursuit of inner peace as much as he is the pursuit of the sort of physical satisfaction sworn off by his spiritual leader. Also, there’s the fact that Dr. Cutler barely knows the Dalai Lama. As for your question re Buddhist philosophy in the face of evil, I need some room to dilate on this subject, but, in short, Tibetan Buddhists have never been as passive in the face of Chinese aggression as the followers of Americanized Buddhism would like—or need—to believe.
It is you, divine Yoffe, who pointed out to me another theme shared by these books: bland passivity. The whole self-help genre sometimes seems to be about passivity in the face of evil. But “evil,” of course, is not a concept New Age gurus even acknowledge. The most egregious assertion Iyanla Vanzant makes, to me, is this: In her “morning nonjudgment affirmation,” she writes: “There is no right or wrong, there is only is,” and, “People do what they do based on their feelings and beliefs, which are not right or wrong.”
Yoffe, you’re a smart one—could you please explain to me what the hell she is talking about? She surely doesn’t mean what I think she means, or does she? Oh, one more thing. In answer to your question about whether reading these books is helping me to revere my enemies, I’m happy to report that I have no enemies, since I am at perfect peace. How ‘bout you?
Non-sweatingly yours,
Jeff
From: Emily Yoffe
Subject: Dale Carnegie, Repackaged
Posted Tuesday, July 13, 1999, at 12:24 PM ET
Dear Jeff,
Much of the self-help genre exhorts the absurd, megalomaniacal belief that so powerful are our thoughts that both our fantasies and fears will become reality. As Iyanla Vanzant writes, “I came to realize and understand myself as a divine and creative being whose every thought is manifested as a tangible physical experience.” But after reading your missive I see that it’s true. My fear was that I would end up being Ed McMahon to your Johnny Carson, and that’s what’s happened.
I, too, was struck by Vanzant’s “Commentary on Nonjudgment,” which is both incoherent and appalling. “When you think of something as wrong, you are actually saying there is something wrong with you,” she approvingly quotes a supposed wise “friend.” (Did you get the same queasy feeling I did that the friend was supposed to be God?) Since you asked me to explain what she means, I guess she means that when that uncle raped her or her ex-husband broke her jaw and she thought that was wrong, it really meant there was something wrong with her.
It would be easy to dismiss this crackpot notion that no one can really judge anyone else’s actions but for the fact that it has become such a strain of popular thinking that it regularly comes up in jury deliberations. (I’m doing it again. I’m taking these books seriously, and letting you do all the shtick!)
Reading these books also made me wonder about what those book editors who get such heartfelt thanks from Vanzant and Carlson actually did. (Despite Dr. Cutler’s posing for his author photo in a denim shirt—you would have preferred a hairshirt?—I am willing to give him credit for his effort to write a real book.) Jeff, did it bother you (I know, I know, you have reached such a state of enlightenment that nothing bothers you, which will be a real problem for your work as Slate’s “Shopping Avenger” ) that not only does Carlson borrow—with acknowledgment—some of his little aphorisms from other self-help writers, but that he copiously plagiarizes his own book as he goes along. For example, Lesson 58 is “Relax,” because being relaxed will help turn “your melodrama into a mellow-drama.” This is followed by lesson number 60 which is “Turn Your Melodrama Into a Mellow-Drama.” I’m afraid I started to get very unrelaxed thinking of all those mean editors who said I couldn’t write the same sentence over and over again and expect to get paid.
Such padding obviously doesn’t matter to Carlson or his readers. Don’t Sweat has been on the bestseller list for two years. That kind of success has to be fueled by word of mouth. Reading these three books made me wonder about the whole self-help genre, about people’s hope that some new book will have a formula for making their lives different. I’m not questioning whether people’s lives can be changed by reading a book (yes, I’ve heard of the Bible). And I thought one of the most successful parts of Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full was how one character was transformed by discovering a book of Stoic philosophy. But I’m genuinely curious as to whether any reader’s life has been improved by any of the books we are discussing.
I also went and looked up the grandfather of self-improvement, Dale Carnegie, on the Web. One site had Carnegie’s own summaries of his two bestsellers, How To Win Friends and Influence People (1936) and How To Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948). You’ll find his advice remarkably familiar, Jeff. Here are two examples: “Don’t fuss about trifles. Don’t permit little things—the mere termites of life—to ruin your happiness” and “Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them.”
Which brings up this question: How do you go about repackaging stuff everyone knows and has been written a million times and make yourself a million bucks?
Emily
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Selfish Help
Posted Tuesday, July 13, 1999, at 2:50 PM ET
Dear Unenlightened One:
Your last e-mail message to me suggests that you are a very confused lady. Thank goodness I am here to help. Your mind, I sense, is filled with conflict. You have dark thoughts. About me, among others. Empty your mind out, Emily. That’s it, empty. Keep emptying. Empty, empty, empty. Good.
I turn your attention now to Richard Carlson Ph.D.’s, 58th and 59th pieces of advice, contained in his masterwork, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … : No. 58: “Relax.”
Excellent advice. Are you relaxed yet? I never even heard of “relaxing” until I read Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … But I guess that’s why he’s a Ph.D. and I’m not.
You have undoubtedly noticed that he does not suggest a method of relaxation. He simply states that relaxation is good. The statement and restatement of the obvious is one of the great weaknesses of the self-help genre (did you already state this?).
Even His Holiness Howard Cutler’s book, The Art of Happiness—sorry, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s book, as told to Howard Cutler—suffers from this. I will cede to you—because I am so gracious, because our families are supposed to get together this weekend and I don’t want to fight in front of our children, and, also, because you are right—that this is more of an actual book than the other two on our reading list, and yet I came away from it with this basic lesson: Strive for happiness, because the alternative isn’t very appealing.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have to spend hard-earned (or even stolen) money to know that. Dr. Cutler doesn’t actually sound like a bad guy—I spoke with his editor yesterday, and she said he’s forking over 50 percent of his profit to the Tibetans. One hundred percent would give him more credibility, but I guess he’s got to eat. Or buy a hot-tub, or whatever gurus do.
Whoa, look at me, getting all negative and cynical here. Me, who is already on Day 11 of Iyanla Vanzant’s 40 Day and Night Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth regimen. Today, I am Honoring Myself With Affirmation. And I quote: “I am a divine instrument of universal power! I am perfection at its best! I am unlimited and abundant! I am a beauty to behold!”
OK, I ain’t a beauty, but, hey, I’m all right. And that’s all right with me.
Which brings me to something I learned by reading these self-help books at the same time as I was skimming the Bruce Springsteen “Songs” retrospective: You can learn a lot more about life from His Holiness the Boss than you can from that dimwit Richard Carlson.
But before I got sidetracked (does the Dalai Lama say anything about A.D.D.?), I was going to refer you to Item No. 59 in Dr. Carlson’s list of helpful advice, which is, “Adopt a Child Through the Mail.”
This should make you feel good about yourself. And it sure beats actually adopting a child, which can be so messy and time-consuming. I hate to repeat myself (actually, I don’t—it’s one of my great joys), but it seems to me that the self-help genre is all about selfishness. People who spend so much time worrying about their own happiness might actually derive happiness from making other people happy—people with genuine problems, such as those who can’t afford to spend money or time on self-help books.
Hey! I think I found it—a nugget of obvious advice that, if we spin it out over 300 pages, will make us millionaires! Let’s do it, Emily! Let’s make a million bucks by writing, Happiness Is for Other People. You do Oprah, I’ll do Montel. Does Montel still have a show? Whatever. Our press people will handle it. We need press people. Can you find some? Maybe Iyanla can lend us hers. God, we’re going to be busy. I guess we’re going to have to disadopt our mail-order orphans. Fame comes with a price tag, what can I say?
By the way, you still haven’t answered my question about your enemies. Are you revering them yet? It’s important for our marketing strategy that you do.
Hap-Hap-Happily Yours,
Jeff
From: Emily Yoffe
Subject: The Best and the Worst
Posted Wednesday, July 14, 1999, at 12:01 PM ET
Dear Jeff,
Never have the 10 or so blocks that separate us seemed so vast. You keep asking me about my enemies and whether I revere them … all right, already, I revere you.
I would like to delve into your last point about the stupefyingly obvious advice most of these books purvey. I have come to the conclusion that obvious advice is a requirement for a self-help best seller. If you are in need of a truly dramatic overhaul, you’re probably going to require actual hands-on assistance (credit repayment schedules, AA sponsor, that sort of thing). These books are for people who just need some work around the edges. You could think of self-help books as PalmPilots for the psyche. They are there to remind you of what you already know.
What new advice for living a happier/kinder/more fulfilled life is there anyway? In the spirit of further self-improvement I reread the counsel in Ecclesiastes. As that writer knew, “And there is nothing new under the sun.” And, perhaps more aptly for our assignment, “[O]f making of many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
So, I decided to look at the specific advice in our many books and rate what I thought was the best and the worst.
Good advice from Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff:
1. Lesson 18, Allow Yourself To Be Bored. Carlson writes: “Now, when either of my two children says to me, ‘Daddy, I’m bored,’ I respond by saying, ‘Great, be bored for a while. It’s good for you.’ Once I say this, they always give up on the idea of me solving their problem.”
2. Lesson 62, Do One Thing at a Time. Carlson is right, does it really improve your life to read your e-mail while talking to a friend, or listen to NPR while reading the newspaper?
Bad advice from Don’t Sweat:
1. Lesson 9, Let Others Have the Glory. Yes, this sounds magnanimous, but I think that in general this is bad for women.
2. Lesson 40, When in Doubt About Whose Turn It Is To Take out the Trash, Go Ahead and Take It Out. Again, bad for women. Since Carlson writes “take out the trash” he is obviously implying that he’s talking to men. But since it’s usually women who notice whether the house has turned into a Superfund site, following Carlson’s advice, they’ll end up doing all the work.
Good advice from The Art of Happiness:
From the chapter “Facing Suffering,” the Dalai Lama advises, “[Y]ou might consider things like old age and death as negative, unwanted, and simply try to forget about them. But eventually these things will come anyway. … [I]f you spend some time thinking about these [and] other unfortunate things, your mind will be much more stable when these things happen.”
I thought this was a refreshing change from the usual self-help drivel that one should only think about good things and then only good things will happen. This advice also appealed to me because I would say it described my mental state about 90 percent of the time.
Bad advice from the Art of Happiness:
The exact same chapter.
Since I spend all my time thinking about the catastrophes to come, it does get in the way of the time I spend not suffering.
Anything Resembling Advice from One Day My Soul Just Opened Up:
Jeff, I think you will agree with me that it’s hard to boil down the advice in Vanzant’s book. This is from the chapter “Honor Your Process With Authenticity.” It reads: “My theory is that most people go to extraordinary means to cover up the fact that they fart.” Jeff, how does one respond? In my case by saying, “Not in my house, they don’t.” Vanzant goes on to advise, “In order to be authentic, you must be willing to acknowledge and accept the natural outgrowths of everything you think, do and say in this life. In other words, you must be willing to fart in public.”
On that note, take it away, Jeff.
Emily
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Ignoring Prozac
Posted Wednesday, July 14, 1999, at 12:48 PM ET
Dear Enemy, or Emily, or whatever your name is,
There’s nothing in my Slate contract that says I have to write about farting, so I’m simply not going there. No sir. Plus—and you know this already—I am a man at perfect peace, spiritually, emotionally, and gastrointestinally, and so I know nothing about farting anyway, except for what I see in the movies.
I noticed that in your last missive you chose not to endorse the book idea that could make us rich. What happened? Are you so spiritual now that the pursuit of a million dollar book advance is beneath you? Or did my idea just bite?
Actually, I got news for you: I spoke again to Howard Cutler’s editor—a very kind woman (she’s some kind of Buddhist, of course) who refrained from jumping all over me for knocking her author—and she told me that my idea, that happiness is best achieved by making other people happy, isn’t actually my idea at all, but the Dalai Lama’s, and the Dalai Lama’s next book will deal with this very same subject.
Which is bad news for us, because ain’t nobody gonna buy a book on happiness and compassion from Goldberg and Yoffe (alright, Yoffe and Goldberg, if you insist) when they could buy the same book from the Dalai Lama.
I couldn’t agree with you more that these self-help books are written for basically untroubled people who need to be reminded to smile, or relax, or write thank-you notes, or get their tires rotated. These books are most definitively not for people with genuine troubles. The problem is, I’m afraid that that’s who’s buying them.
Of the three vexing books on our list, only The Art of Happiness even bothers to address what, to me, is the most remarkable recent development in the cause of mental health, the advent of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the drugs that are marketed under such names as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.
“In the most severe cases of anxiety, medication can be a useful part of the treatment regimen,” Dr. Cutler writes. “But most of us who are troubled by nagging day-to-day worries and anxiety will not need pharmacological intervention.” Am I just being a cynical reporter, or am I onto something when I suspect that Dr. Cutler downplays the fact that millions of people have been aided by drugs that manipulate brain chemistry because he’s not selling drugs, but a self-help book? (It should be noted that at least Cutler brings up the subject; no such luck, best as I can tell, in the collected works of Carlson and Vanzant.)
Obviously, Prozac isn’t for everyone, but I’ve seen too many people helped by these drugs (I used to live on the Upper West Side) to wonder if these books aren’t doing their readers a disservice by not at least stating at the outset, “Hey, maybe you ought to see a shrink instead of buying this book. Or read Emily Yoffe’s 300-word distillation of everything I’ve said over 300 pages, and then go see a shrink.”
One more thing that’s been on my mind—what, precisely, is wrong with sweating the small stuff? I love small stuff. Small stuff is great. And remember—a lot of small stuff, rolled together, makes big stuff.
Your thoughts, please.
Peace out,
Jeff
From: Emily Yoffe
Subject: Get Happy
Posted Thursday, July 15, 1999, at 11:10 AM ET
Dear Jeff,
So now you’ve found out that your idea for a bestseller—how to find happiness by making other people happy—is being written by the Dalai Lama. Just who does His Holiness think he is anyway? I’m sure your editor friend said that the Dalai Lama is just elaborating on this idea, not that he came up with it. A perspicacious Slate reader suggested I look up some of the work of Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). I found this quote, “When you become detached mentally from yourself and concentrate on helping other people with their difficulties, you will be able to cope with your own more effectively.” I’m sure Dr. Peale, if he were alive enough to still be writing self-help books, would say he didn’t come up with the idea, either.
I don’t think anyone is going to do as well with a book on helping other people be happy as one on how to make yourself happy. Anyway, if everyone bought the “make yourself happy” book and it worked, the “make other people happy” book would be unnecessary.
I think you make an excellent point about self-help books’ not mentioning chemical means to happiness as it’s not in their self-interest. But I would bet that many people stalking the “personal growth” aisles of the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble have had their moods tweaked chemically and still feel something is missing. (Speaking of the Upper West Side, I was just in your old home territory yesterday. Do you know people are walking around sans cell phone seemingly having bizarre conversations with themselves such as: “I told you to sell at 52!” and “I am about to go into the personal growth section of Barnes & Noble.” When you get up close you see they are talking into teeny tiny headsets. Contemplating this trend I found comfort in Richard Carlson’s Precept 82: “Remember, one hundred years from now, all new people.”)
Our journey this week into opening one’s soul, finding happiness, and not sweating made me wonder about this compulsion to be happy. Howard Cutler starts his book almost defensively, explaining that achieving happiness is a worthy goal. But isn’t it easier to achieve some more tangible goal—i.e., get your master’s degree; clean out the garage; tutor a kid, and the happiness will follow?
Or maybe the happiness won’t follow. As long as you’re not clinically miserable, so what? These books seem to want you to reach some static state of happiness. But to experience happiness, don’t you need some time hanging out in the Slough of Despond, just for contrast? Perhaps I am sounding un-American, but our country was founded on the pursuit of happiness, not its attainment.
But I do disagree with you about the value of sweating the small stuff. Let’s say you’re the kind of person who spends an inordinate amount of time getting all worked up about trivial matters (which is a good way to not have enough time to achieve those wonderful goals I was just mentioning), and you truly hoped you would be able to apply Dr. Richard Carlson’s lessons even if you find his writing so banal that you keep hoping he gets pickled in his hot tub. And let’s say you’re the kind of person who spent a week engaged in a “Book Club” on the topic, so you really had time to think about it and make some changes in your life. And let’s say you’re the kind of person who asks your husband, “Have you noticed I’m not sweating the small stuff anymore, my beloved?” and your husband says, “Ah, no. You’re as neurotic and negative as ever.” What would you do, then, Jeffrey? Here’s what I would do, I would not buy Dr. Carlson’s forthcoming bestseller, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Love, written with his lovely wife, Kris. (If Kris isn’t blond, there is no justice in this world.) You can read more about it on his Web site. Yes, you guessed right: www.dontsweat.com.
But maybe you’re the kind of person who should say to her friend, Jeff Goldberg, “Should we all get together and take our daughters to Turtle Park this weekend?”
What do you say, Jeff? And since I know you have tried to apply the lessons we learned this week, has your lovely (and brunet) wife Pam noticed any difference in you?
Emily
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Help Wanted for Self-Help Genre
Posted Thursday, July 15, 1999, at 2:29 PM ET
Dear Emily,
Let me start this session with the “morning disappointment affirmation,” courtesy of Iyanla Vanzant: “I now willingly release all negative beliefs about myself, my life and all other people. I now forgive myself for thinking I ever did anything wrong. I am now filled with the love and the Power that I am. For this I am so grateful! And So It Is!”
Boy, I feel better now. It’s such a relief to know that I never did anything wrong. These books sure are great!
Let me handle your last query first, the one concerning my wife. No, she hasn’t noticed any changes in me this week. I am still the same compassionate, flawless, always-right-but-humble-about-it guy I was last week, she says. Actually, she didn’t say this—she’s at a meeting away from her office (some people actually have to go to official-type meetings, unlike you and me, who sit around reading self-help books all day long) and I can’t reach her. But I know this is what she would say.
Before I address your point about the pursuit, rather than the attainment, of happiness, I’d like to give one final shout-out to Richard Carlson, Ph.D. As you noted, one tidbit of Carlson’s wisdom holds that “Remember, one hundred years from now, all new people.” It is on the subject of mortality, I believe, that Carlson is at his stupidest. The “all new people” business is idiotic; here, though, is the single dumbest quote I found, from the chapter entitled, “Imagine the People in Your Life as Tiny Infants and as One-Hundred-Year-Old Adults”: “Know that each of us will be one hundred years old, alive or dead, before too many decades go by.” All I can say is, Qaddafi’s Green Book makes more sense than Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.
But on to the Founding Fathers, who knew enough, even way back then (many of them are 270-years-old now, except that they’re dead), not to promise the people actual happiness, only the right to pursue happiness. Promising actual happiness came much later, shortly after the establishment of Carmel, California, I believe. Now, of course, this false promise is everywhere. And yes, drug makers make this false promise, too. Chemistry can help people live better lives, but Zoloft isn’t a panacea. But for many people, it’s a better investment than buying the books of Iyanla Vanzant and Richard Carlson. As for the Dalai Lama and his friend Howard Cutler, if they can push people to give themselves over to causes larger than themselves—and the Dalai Lama’s next book, I’m told, will advocate just this—then I find it harder to knock them. Not impossible, just harder.
One final note: I still believe that there’s room on the shelves for at least one more self-help book. If you’re game, I am, too. I envision an antidote to Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. We can call it Neurosis for Beginners.
Over and out,
Jeff