Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

Are Affirmations Useless?

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Its 150 years since the publication of what is now regarded as the first self help book – Samuel Smiles “Self Help“.  Still on sale today – and apparently a big seller in countries such as Japan and China.  selfhelp1But when first published it sold 20,000 copies in its first year, and by the time of Smiles death in 1902 had sold over 1/4 million copies. In the 19th Century it was only out sold by the Bible!

In a recent radio program it was said Smiles book was published on the same day as “On Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.  I cannot find any other proof of that fact. Either way,  it could be that Smiles message “Heaven helps those who help themselves” was reassuring to a society held together by Christian beliefs.

But the underlying message from Smiles was that success came through dedication and hard work.  He didn’t appear to believe in the concept of “genius”, all those he portrayed in his case studies got there by hard graft and application. Interestingly, this is a central theme of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers.

The End of Self Help?

oprah1I write this as some have been predicting the end of self help, [Read more…]

Being good at what you do

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Samuel SmilesImage via Wikipedia

It may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, whilst everything depends upon how he governs himself from within. The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice.

Samuel Smiles Self-help 1859

I recently came across what must be one of the first ever self improvement books. Self-help by Samuel Smiles was first published in England in 1859, but was widely translated and sold in thousands worldwide.The book largely chronicles the lives of remarkable people, making much of how ordinary they were at birth. They achieved great things through perseverance and dedication, toiling away through hardship and unremitting hard work. [Read more…]