Cool. You know a lot about this topic. I didn't connect self-help with philosophy turning super analytical in the early 1900s, that's interesting.
My opinion is more from just my experience with self-help, and others who were also really into it. Self-help, and people engaged in it, have an undercurrent of anxiety. But that's just my experiential knowledge of it (I would say the same for psychology and philosophy majors).
Also I wouldn't place Marcus Aurelius or Aristotle or some of my favorite philosophers under the umbrella of 'self-help'. If you really wanted to take it out there, then self-help is really everything. What is the purpose of anything but to improve the set standard with which you measure the experience of a human being, a society, or a civilization? You could extend the umbrella forever, and include psychology, etc., with diminishing definitiveness.
The main gripes I have with growth-mindset is the rigidity of it. It is hard to think a positive thought while you are 'negative'. But also, it is hard to think a negative thought while you are 'positive'. To the mind, negative and positive sentiments do not matter because they are simply the responses that were generated by one's beliefs.
Now growth mindset proposes that you could magically make negative beliefs positive. This is poor psychological advice. There is a reason why those beliefs are negative. While direct examination of those beliefs (an interrogation of sorts) might not be the best way to re-form those beliefs, just plain forcing positivity on a negative belief is just as harmful as forcing negativity on a positive belief.
Forced hope is just as violent as forced hopelessness. It's one thing to encourage someone, and another to say that 'the reason for your failure is that you are not positive enough'. Or to say 'if you just change your mindset, you can succeed'. It really a) cheapens how difficult it is to change yourself and b) takes the person away from actually understanding themselves on a deeper level.
I really started changing when I stopped trying to change myself so much. Self-help (and basically zero Western philosophy) doesn't understand that.
You could take the route from modern clinical psychology (memory reconsolidation, etc.) and get there, or find a good martial arts master and learn taoism.
Yeah, thinking back on it, self-help sucks.
My opinion is more from just my experience with self-help, and others who were also really into it. Self-help, and people engaged in it, have an undercurrent of anxiety. But that's just my experiential knowledge of it (I would say the same for psychology and philosophy majors).
Also I wouldn't place Marcus Aurelius or Aristotle or some of my favorite philosophers under the umbrella of 'self-help'. If you really wanted to take it out there, then self-help is really everything. What is the purpose of anything but to improve the set standard with which you measure the experience of a human being, a society, or a civilization? You could extend the umbrella forever, and include psychology, etc., with diminishing definitiveness.
The main gripes I have with growth-mindset is the rigidity of it. It is hard to think a positive thought while you are 'negative'. But also, it is hard to think a negative thought while you are 'positive'. To the mind, negative and positive sentiments do not matter because they are simply the responses that were generated by one's beliefs.
Now growth mindset proposes that you could magically make negative beliefs positive. This is poor psychological advice. There is a reason why those beliefs are negative. While direct examination of those beliefs (an interrogation of sorts) might not be the best way to re-form those beliefs, just plain forcing positivity on a negative belief is just as harmful as forcing negativity on a positive belief.
Forced hope is just as violent as forced hopelessness. It's one thing to encourage someone, and another to say that 'the reason for your failure is that you are not positive enough'. Or to say 'if you just change your mindset, you can succeed'. It really a) cheapens how difficult it is to change yourself and b) takes the person away from actually understanding themselves on a deeper level.
I really started changing when I stopped trying to change myself so much. Self-help (and basically zero Western philosophy) doesn't understand that.
You could take the route from modern clinical psychology (memory reconsolidation, etc.) and get there, or find a good martial arts master and learn taoism.
Yeah, thinking back on it, self-help sucks.