Which Best Selling SelfHelp Books Are Most Effective?
Before I answer that question, I first want to say: if you’re reading self-help books to be healthier, happier, more successful, more abundant – good for you! Instead of sitting around complaining about your life, you’re doing something about it. Maybe your life is already good, and you’re content, but you want to have more enthusiasm, more fun, more pizzazz – you want to make your life even better. Self-help books can do that for you too.
So, which of the best selling self-help books work best? It’s not any of the ones in pristine condition sitting on the shelf in your living room gathering dust – no matter how many rave reviews they’ve garnered. Nor is it any of the ones on your night table that you read a few pages from before sleeping.
The bestselling ones may be on the coffee table in your living room and have underlining or notes in the margins, but that still doesn’t make them most effective. In fact, the best and most effective one may not even be in your home at all! That’s because you don’t need it anymore. You’ve not only read it thoroughly, you’ve done the practices every day (or at least five times a week) until they’ve become habits. You don’t even have to think about doing your daily practices – it’s automatic – like brushing your teeth and making your morning cup of coffee.
And now you’ve passed along the book to someone else who can benefit. You know the techniques work and you’re grateful for your new life-changing habits and you want to light up someone else life. Maybe the author has included a daily checklist to help you anchor new habits. I do that for my readers and it’s amazing the success those people have who actually use the checklists. I love getting their emails – first they request the checklist and then a few months later report back to tell me how their lives have been transformed. Invariably, their success is markedly superior to those who don’t use a checklist.
And so, the content of the self-help book is not the most important factor in your success – it’s whether you actually do the practices and make them into habits. Keep that in mind the next time you read a really good self-help book but are tempted to skip the practicing part. I send you best wishes for a hugely successful life transformation.