Reading Self-Help books clearly has benefits, but what are they?
Introduction
As you may be aware, Self-Help books had been around town for a long time. Per Wikipedia, Self-Help books (or Self-improvement books) were first introduced around year 1859. This genre of books has been very popular until today due to the benefits they bring to readers. So, what are the actual Self-Help books benefits?
In one of my earlier posts, we have explored together What are Self-Help books and 3 major ways they can help us.
From there, we understood what Self-Help books are, and how these books can help us in general.
In this post, let’s dive deeper at the specific benefits you can have by reading Self-Help books.
* The links for purchasing the books are paid links via Amazon which we may receive commissions from qualifying purchases
Self-Help books benefits
Based on my learning from numerous Self-Help books to-date, the following are 11 Self-Help books benefits I have found.
1. You can understand yourself more
Reading Self-Help books is often a self-reflection journey.
A common theme by many Self-Help books involves understanding yourself more. That includes performing a self-assessment breaking down your strengths and weaknesses, desires and threats.
I have recently read The Success Code by Amanda Dewinter which encourages you to perform a “SWOT” analysis to oneself. Through this exercise, you will conduct an honest conversation with yourself and understand what you are good at and what skills you lacked.
To understand yourself more is crucial as you will know what is your current position in life.
In order to achieve more, be it setting a new goal or trying out a new task, you will be much better off to know where your current skills are going to bring you.
Not to say, understanding your current limitations will also reduce your exposure to losses.
2. You can learn more about acceptance
Throughout understanding yourself often comes along the process of acceptance.
It is human nature to feel concerned about how others look at ourselves. Therefore, most people work hard to cover up their true sides. We often try to act similar to others in order to blend in and avoid unnecessary social conflicts.
By understanding yourself more, you will come into terms with yourself in accepting who you actually are.
Acceptance of yourself is a foundation step in attaining good mental health and building confidence.
3. You can become more confident
By knowing more about yourself and the world, you can become more forward looking and therefore more confident.
Reading Self-Help books often teaches ways to nurture your inner thoughts and acknowledge what you are doing. These can boost self-value and enhance trust towards yourself.
When you trust yourself more, you naturally become more confident. It goes without saying that a confident person can excel much better in all areas of life.
4. You can enhance your emotional intelligence (EQ)
In society nowadays, people performing with high intelligence (IQ) are never always the preferred crowd.
On the contrary, if you can demonstrate high EQ, you would know how to express sympathy and have better management over your emotions. These are valuable leadership traits that our society looks for nowadays.
If you are interested to find out more about this topic, you can check a very popular Self-Help book called “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman.
5. You can communicate and socialize better
Many great Self-Help books teach you how to improve your interpersonal skills. These include advice and tips on how to communicate better with people around you.
By learning and practicing according to Self-Help books, you can improve your communication skills and build better and stronger relationships than before.
A great Self-Help book on this topic would be the bestselling “How to Win Friends & Influence People “by Dale Carnegie.
6. You can form better goals to strive for
Self-Help books typically encourage and show you ways to achieve success in life.
Everyone has different definitions of “success”. But what remains common is that you must first learn to set your goals in order to chase and realize them.
You can learn many good techniques for goal setting from Self-Help books such as setting “SMART” goals.
With a goal post in place, it helps you stay motivated to strive for your goals every day.
A person with clear targets ahead would naturally be more energetic and forward looking.
7. You can form strong and better habits
One big advantage you can enjoy from Self-Help books would be to learn how to form better habits.
A very popular book on this topic would be “Atomic Habits” by James Clear (you may read my book review here).
Follow some easy-to-follow step by step guides, and you would be amazed that you are slowly working out better habits in life.
With better habits in place, you will see actual changes happening in your life.
A good habit example would be setting up routines to do exercise regularly. It is always hard to start, but you will greatly benefit from it in the long term if you are persistent with the habit.
8. You can learn about specific knowledge that interests you
What is awesome about reading Self-Help books is that you can read and learn from the best.
Many authors who write and publish Self-Help books are experts in their particular fields. Self-Help books writers may include psychologists, neuro scientists, successful businessmen, social influencers, academic scholars, etc.
These authors have deep knowledge over certain expertise so you will benefit a great deal through learning from them.
Be careful though, that we should identify which “expert” to trust and learn how to pick a good Self-Help book. I will write another post later covering this.
9. You can learn forming views from different perspectives
Often times when we form impressions on certain matters, we cannot change such easily.
Similarly, once you form an opinion, you find it especially difficult to change it as well.
Self-Help books offer you chances to dive into the thought processes of many other great thinkers out there. Understanding different opinions of authors can help you better reflect and adopt the views of others.
Reading is also great in a way because you do not need to argue with the author to get your points across. You only need to learn how to come into terms with the author by analyzing the book’s content.
A person who is receptive to others’ ideas is a great leader welcomed by most people.
10. You can try something new
In order for us to progress, you need to step out of your “comfort zone”.
Changes are expected only when you are willing to make moves to change it.
Without the willingness to change and try something new, you will always be doing the same things over and over again. When you repeatedly do the same things, you can only expect to end up with the same results.
You will only be willing to move forward to a new goal when your mentality is ready.
Reading Self-Help books can help prepare your mind to changes. They often offer your tips and steps to boost your courage to try new things.
11. You can stay competitive
This is the Information Age and there are rapid changes in our world every day.
If you stop learning, you will get left behind easily.
It becomes especially crucial for us to keep learning and maintain competitive in society. Only by doing this can we have better control over our life and stay happy.
Self-Help books can serve this purpose as one of their core themes is to teach you how to learn.
Conclusion
To sum up, there is a list of advantages that reading Self-Help books can give you.
However, note that you can only turn the desired knowledge learnt from books into your own strengths by taking actions, and practicing them in real life.
By doing this you can continually improve yourself and lead a better life.
I hope you enjoy reading this post and I will you again in the next post!
Just Two More Things…
If you are interested in starting to read some quality Self-Help books, do check out our list of 22 Self-Help books (non-bestsellers) in this post here.
Also, do you agree to the 11 Self-Help books benefits I found above? Feel free to write your views at the comment box below and let us know what you think.
This post is part of a series under the category “Understand Self-Help” at Calm Reading.
The post After Reading Extensively, I Found the Following 11 Self-Help Books Benefits appeared first on Calm Reading.
