Advice, Inc. American As Apple Pie - Self-Help Gurus Have Been In Demand For Decades

Everywhere you look today, someone is suggesting ways to overcome personal shortcomings.

There’s even advice about seeking advice, like the Weight Watchers Magazine article titled “Seven Tips for Choosing a Self-Help Book.” (Tip No. 1: “Be a skeptical reader.”)

Annual sales of self-help books are measured in billions of dollars. The paperback edition of M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled” has been on the New York Times’ best-sellers list for 592 weeks.

Are Americans today so severely challenged that we need all this guidance?

Actually, we’re not much different from our ancestors in may ways.

This time last century, for instance, our forefathers and mothers were adjusting to a major shift from one economy (agrarian) to another (industrial). Traditional jobs were disappearing in the wake of new technology. People in the right careers became instant millionaires, while those in the wrong ones found themselves abruptly unemployed. Sound familiar?

No wonder self-help gurus were just as popular then as they are today. In fact, throughout our history, helping others improve themselves has been a popular theme.

“The whole idea of selfimprovement is very American,” University of California sociologist Wade Clark Roof told the New York Times recently. “It says, ‘If I really get my act together, polish myself up enough, cultivate my skills, (then) miracles can happen.”’

From 19th century Samuel “Self Help” Smiles to today’s Steven “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” Covey, authors have prospered by tapping, however sincerely, into our ability to see assorted faults within ourselves and our eagerness to overcome them.

“People are always searching for answers,” says Spokane marital and family therapist Adie GoldbergYates. “Both the blessing and the curse of being human is that we have a level of self-awareness that other species don’t have, and as a result we end up spending our lives trying to figure out who we are and what that means.”

Part of that quest for answers has always meant seeking advice. Generations ago, people turned to village witch doctors and tribal elders for guidance. “But as we get more disconnected from extended families and a sense of community,” says Goldberg-Yates, “we end up paying people to function in that capacity.”

Some self-help books have wonderful things to say, she observes, “and some are useless.”

Books, audiotapes and newsletters can’t solve all your problems, predicts Goldberg-Yates, “but they might tweak some awareness in someone, so that you can go on and work with that.”

People seeking easy solutions should start “by recognizing that life is complex. You don’t have to feel like a failure because you ask for support.

“But each of us also needs to feel mastery in some arena of our lives,” she says. “We need to feel we’re competent somewhere, and that we can share that special talent with people who aren’t as skilled in that area.”

Seattle law-school graduate and single mother Janet Luhrs wants to master the art of living simply.

Luhrs, 45, publishes a quarterly newsletter on the subject, and starting today will share her thoughts in a monthly column for SpokesmanReview readers. Other writers contributing columns to the Choices page will address topics such as time management, health and consumer issues.

“I don’t consider myself a guru or anything,” says Luhrs. “I use the newsletter as a support group for myself, and I learn just as much as everyone else does.”

She says newsletters offer an advantage over other formats.

“If you read a typical self-help book,” Luhrs explains, “you think, ‘Isn’t this great, I love this stuff,’ and then you put it down and that’s the end of that. Or you go to a seminar and get all jazzed up, and then you go home and nothing comes of it.

“But my newsletter shows up in the mailbox on a regular basis, reminding readers that here’s another way to live. By the time they start falling off the wagon, another newsletter arrives and they’re back up again. And I get just as revitalized by interviewing people for the newsletter.”

Another advantage, says Luhrs, is that newsletters help readers gain insight about one subject “without having to wade through all the other information pouring into their house. That’s why there’s a profusion of newsletters today.”

And it’s nice to be reminded that we’re not alone.

“I hear from little towns all across America,” Luhrs says, “people who write in and say, ‘Jeez, I’m so glad to hear that somebody out there feels the way I do.”’