Help Me! One Woman’s Quest to Find Out if Self-Help Really Can Change Her Life
by Marianne Power
For the next two months we will be reading Help Me!: One Woman’s Quest to Find Out if Self-Help Really Can Change Her Life by Marianne Power. In this funny and insightful book the author documents her attempt to have a happier and more fulfilling life by following the advice of one self-help book for a month. What would happen if she followed the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? Really felt The Power of Now? Could she unearth The Secret to making her dreams come true? What begins as a clever experiment becomes an achingly poignant story.
The most remarkable part of the book for me was to watch how Marianne’s attitude gradually shifted from the desire to fix herself to the journey of self-discovery. This is an intimate and revealing portrait of a regular person, who had no interest in deep inner work or spirituality, begin to dig deeper. Overtime the author finds herself peeling off the superficial layers of what she thought was important, and discovering the true meaning of happiness. This book clearly demonstrates many short-comings of the self-help genre, but also gives some great insights for yoga students and yoga teachers on how to support ourselves and our students on the journey of self-transformation. Please give it a try and let me know what you think!
There are so many ideas that popped up for me as I was reading it, and I would love to share them with you, because I think that they are fundamental to yoga.
Hurry, found it in large print at our library – these old eyeballs love the large print and looking forward to taking a vicarious journey
🙂
Greetings again – I read the book and didn’t really get much out of it – seemed like a rambling story to me. However, I never was that good in school when it comes to seeing the underlying story behind the story. And that is why I thank you profusely for your wonderful extrapolation of the lessons for yoga teachers you put on Instagram! That certainly puts Marianne’s information in a whole different and more useful perspective. Thank you for all the wonderful work you do!! I appreciate you very much.
Happy day, Nancy – Yoga 4 Self Care
Thank you Nancy! I am so glad to hear that my 10 Instagram lessons for yoga teachers resonated with you! Originally I was supposed to be a teacher of literature and language, so this type of literary analysis was drilled into me in college 🙂 And the best part of the book for me is the fact that she was a totally ordinary person with a rambling story who didn’t have any tools to deal with her life dilemmas. I know that I personally forget sometimes that people who come to see me for yoga sessions are usually at a… Read more »