Finding yourself, creating yourself

There are a crazy number of books providing a template for life. How to speak to your inner soul, how to speak confidently within thirty seconds, how to become a millionaire overnight, how to deal with stress, and so on. And I, for one, have read a trailer load of the above.

I see nothing wrong with this kind of literature as they do a lot of good for a lot of people. Personally, however, I prefer to view them from a certain angle. Different bookstores will categorise the same books under different criteria. Maybe it’s just my bugbear but you walk into certain bookstores and it will be “Self Help", walk under others and it will be “Personal Development”.

I prefer to see it all from the development rather than the help angle. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of self-valuation. In fact, an unobserved mind and all that can be a little dangerous.

But while some people may see life as being about finding yourself and these books are a tool for doing so, I’d prefer to see life as more about creating yourself, which these books are perfectly positioned to do as well.

There’s probably no right or wrong answer to this. It’s probably more down to how we individually prefer to see the world.