The Limits of Self-Help: Not Everything Is a Problem
- Jennifer Meyer
- Feb 13
- 3 min read
I was standing in Barnes and Noble the other day, waiting to meet with a friend. It was busy, I was a little early, scanning the Non-fiction section of recently ‘hot items’ waiting for my friend to arrive.
I was thinking about authoring my own book.
Should I write?
Why would I write?
WHAT would I write?
And I was suddenly struck with this desperate feeling. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a desperate internal judgment, like “how could I ever compete with Mel’s book” (though I do think that sometimes).
No, this desperate feeling was swept in by a sea of empathy for all the millions of people who frantically grab these books, and others like them, to “fix” their lives. And with that thought came a huge feeling of compassion.
Most people hit January hard with all the ‘things’ we are going to accomplish in the year. All the goals. All the projects. All the outcomes. And routinely by February, we are usually running on fumes. So I wanted to take a moment and remind everyone that while pushing yourself is fine.
And wanting more is not wrong.
That doesn’t mean that life, specifically your life, is broken if it’s not happening for you the way you think it should.
Remember that all those books, while having tremendous knowledge and experience, can’t help you hack your way out of being human.
Being human is messy and hard, and no amount of reading is going to help you escape that.
I’m sorry.
Most of my work is centered around ideas of psychology. About learning that you get to choose what you like, what you don’t, and then what to do about it. Some of those choices are external, for example, deciding to quit your job or move.
Others are internal, like choosing to believe that you don’t need to have a drink when you’re out with friends.
And whatever method you use, all of them are attempting to get a person to understand that the way they think about something, anything, directly relates to their experience of whatever that thing is.
And most of our thinking centers around the idea that if something is uncomfortable, it is broken, and we have an obligation, a responsibility to fix it. So we desperately search for an answer that will get rid of all the things that make us uncomfortable.
We have equated pain with bad.
Pain with wrong.
And that thinking can fool us into believing we have power and control over things we don’t have.
There is one area of psychology that addresses this in a really beautiful way. It’s called ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
The idea is easy - this sucks, but I can’t change it, so I’m going to do my best to be ok with the process.
As my therapist would say, ‘it isn’t a problem if it’s not a problem.’ And that is what struck me staring at all these books. Books trying to promise relief, solutions, peace, or just better. Anything - but better. Why are we making everything a problem to solve?
When I’m doing workshops and trainings, the toolkit I use to help with this is GET REALTM. Ultimately, GET REAL is a reminder to be real. A reminder that, newsflash, we can’t control everything and perfection isn’t what we think it is. A reminder that sometimes, instead of buying another book to try and fix this thing in our lives that isn’t right, maybe what we really need to do is take a deep breath and remember, not everything is a problem that needs (or even can) be fixed.
I had a spiritual teacher say to me once, “The tornado is perfect, it’s doing exactly what a tornado does.” I hated that answer. But I have learned the wisdom in not seeing everything that I don’t like as a problem to be fixed. And learning to sit with pain and sadness and anxiety as a reminder of what it is to be human and not making more out of it than I need to. There is something silently freeing about being able to look into the storm and not needing to force it to be the sun, but just remembering that the sun comes again all on its own.
It allows you to put your energy into what you can actually influence.
Consider,
Jennifer
If this perspective resonates, this is the kind of work I bring into organizations — helping leaders and teams slow the cycle of urgency, self-blame, and over-fixing so people can stay engaged without burning out.
If you’re curious what that could look like where you work, you’re welcome to reach out or check out my topics at considerjennifer.com. Prefer to listen to the RAW take? Find it below and more on YouTube!
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