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Essay on Self Help in 150 words

God helps those who know how to help themselves. One cannot have success in life if he depends on others’ help. He must try hard and work hard to attain his goal. If he does not have confidence in his own ability, others cannot help him attain success in life. If only one is sincere in his labour and determined to attain his goal, he can earn success in life. So the key to success is in our own hands, not in the dependence on others. If we read the stories of success in our world, We can see how the most successful men have helped themselves. They are all self-made men, never depending on others, But that does not mean that they have worked alone in this world and that they have refused to take others’ help. They have accepted help from others but relied on themselves.

Essay on Self Help is the Best Help in 300 words

`Self-help is the best help’ is a popular proverb. This is not only a proverb but also the outcome of human experience. There are two types of help. One is self-help and the other one is the help rendered by others.

The idea of self-help was conceived by man in the very early stages of civilization. The primitive man depended on his own help for securing food and meeting his various needs. Man learned by experience that when he does something on his own he can do it better than when it is done by somebody else for him. As long as a person does his work on his own he is his own master. He derives satisfaction from having done something by his own efforts. When work is done for him by others this satisfaction will not be there. In the beginning, the man depended upon his self-help. But with the progress of civilization, a man began to live on other’s labour. This transformed the innocent primitive man into a cunning civilized man. Man became lazy and corrupt. In course of time, he even tried to enslave others for his selfish ends. Thus came into existence the cruel practice of slavery. Today, though slavery has been abolished we can find a large number of people who depend on others’ labour.

Self-help develops self-reliance and self-dependence. One feels confident of his capacity. He knows what to do and how to do things. He is not a parasite on others. The example set by Japan in this regard is worth mentioning. Japan is a country that is wedded to this principle and used it as a means of her progress. The result is that Japan became an advanced nation. So self-help is the root of all progress.

But this must not make us selfish and narrow-minded. When a man thinks of himself he must also think of others. Man is a social animal. He needs the help of others. He cannot produce each and everything needed by him by his self-efforts. Therefore while a person tries to be as self-reliant as possible he should not be blind to the needs of other people.

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Improving Ourselves to Death

By Alexandra Schwartz

Audio: Listen to this story. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone.

Happy New Year, you! Now that the champagne has gone flat and the Christmas tree is off to be mulched, it’s time to turn your thoughts to the months ahead. 2017 was a pustule of a year, politically and personally; the general anxiety around the degradation of American democracy made it hard to get much done. That’s O.K., though, because you’ve made new resolutions for 2018, and the first one is not to make resolutions. Instead, you’re going to “set goals,” in the terminology of the productivity guru Tim Ferriss—preferably ones that are measurable and have timelines, so you can keep track of your success. Apps like Lifetick or Joe’s Goals will help by keeping you organized and allowing you to share your progress on social media; a little gloating does wonders for self-motivation (unless, of course, one of your goals is to spend less time on social media). Once your goals are in place, it might be smart to design a methodology that will encourage you to accomplish them. Charles Duhigg, the author of “ The Power of Habit ,” recommends a three-step self-conditioning process. You want to get to the gym more? Pick a cue (sneakers by the door); choose a reward that will motivate you to act on it (a piece of chocolate); execute. Bravo! You are now Pavlov and his dog.

But soon enough February will come, mid-winter doldrums will set in, and you’ll start to slide. Not to worry. Jane McGonigal’s “ SuperBetter ” tells you how to gamify your way back from the edge with the help of video-game-inspired techniques like finding “allies” and collecting motivational “power-ups”; and Angela Duckworth’s “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” reminds you that persistence makes all the difference when the going gets rough. Duckworth doesn’t think you need talent in order to become, as another of Duhigg’s books puts it, “Smarter Better Faster, ” and neither do any of these other experts. According to their systems, anyone can learn to be more efficient, more focussed, more effective in the pursuit of happiness and, that most hallowed of modern traits, productivity. And if you can’t, well, that’s on you.

Self-help advice tends to reflect the beliefs and priorities of the era that spawns it. A decade ago, the reigning champion of the genre was “ The Secret ,” published in 2006 by an Australian, Rhonda Byrne. Like Norman Vincent Peale before her, Byrne combined a literal interpretation of select verses from the Christian Bible—notably Matthew 21:22, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, ye shall receive”—with the acquisitive gospel of positive thinking. If you sent a wish out into the universe with enough faith, she told her readers, it could come to pass. Want to find a husband? Clean out a closet for the man of your dreams and imagine him hanging up his ties. Want to get rid of your glasses? Picture yourself acing your next vision exam and kiss those progressive lenses goodbye. In retrospect, “The Secret,” which sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, seems a testament to the predatory optimism that characterized the years leading up to the financial crisis. People dreamed big, and, in a day of easy money, found that their dreams could come true. Then the global economy crashed, and we were shaken violently awake—at least for a time.

In our current era of non-stop technological innovation, fuzzy wishful thinking has yielded to the hard doctrine of personal optimization. Self-help gurus need not be charlatans peddling snake oil. Many are psychologists with impressive academic pedigrees and a commitment to scientific methodologies, or tech entrepreneurs with enviable records of success in life and business. What they’re selling is metrics. It’s no longer enough to imagine our way to a better state of body or mind. We must now chart our progress, count our steps, log our sleep rhythms, tweak our diets, record our negative thoughts—then analyze the data, recalibrate, and repeat.

Carl Cederström and André Spicer, business-school professors in a field called “organization studies,” set out to do all that and more in their recent book, “ Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement: A Year Inside the Optimization Movement ” (OR Books), a comically committed exploration of current life-hacking wisdom in areas ranging from athletic and intellectual prowess to spirituality, creativity, wealth, and pleasure. Cederström, an enthusiastic Swede, and Spicer, a melancholy New Zealander, want to understand the lengths to which people will go to transform themselves into superior beings, and to examine the methods that they use. In their previous book, “ The Wellness Syndrome ,” the authors followed health nuts who were determined to meditate and exercise their way to enlightenment. This time, in the spirit of George Plimpton’s brand of participatory journalism, they’ve become their own test cases, embarking on a yearlong program in which they target a new area of the self to improve each month. They bulk up at Cross Fit, go on the Master Cleanse liquid diet, try mindfulness and yoga, consult therapists and career coaches, sample prostate vibrators, attempt standup comedy, and attend a masculinity-boosting workshop that involves screaming and weeping naked in the woods. Even their book’s format—entries of the diary that each keeps to record and reflect on his endeavors—is relevant to their mission, considering that daily journaling is recommended in Tim Ferriss’s “Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers.”

Many of the tasks that Cederström and Spicer assign themselves have a double-dare quality whose cost-benefit value seems questionable, like memorizing the first thousand digits of pi during Brain Month in order to improve mental acuity. But others inspire the same niggling whisper of self-doubt as Instagram posts of green juice: Should I be doing that, too ? I confess to feeling a pang of jealousy when Cederström produces a complete book manuscript in a euphoric amphetamine rush induced by study drugs during Productivity Month—and a surge of Schadenfreude when it’s rejected by his baffled publisher.

“In a consumerist society, we are not meant to buy one pair of jeans and then be satisfied,” Cederström and Spicer write, and the same, they think, is true of self-improvement. We are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading. (This may explain Yoni eggs, stone vaginal inserts that purport to strengthen women’s pelvic-floor muscles and take away “negative energy.” Gwyneth Paltrow’s Web site, Goop, offers them in both jade and rose quartz.) There is a great deal of money to be made by those who diagnose and treat our fears of inadequacy; Cederström and Spicer estimate that the self-improvement industry takes in ten billion dollars a year. (They report that they each spent more than ten thousand dollars, not to mention thousands of hours, on their own quests.) The good life may have sufficed for Plato and Aristotle, but it is no longer enough. “We are under pressure to show that we know how to lead the perfect life,” Cederström and Spicer write.

Where success can be measured with increasing accuracy, so, too, can failure. On the other side of self-improvement, Cederström and Spicer have discovered, is a sense not simply of inadequacy but of fraudulence. In December, with the end of their project approaching, Spicer reflects that he has spent the year focussing on himself to the exclusion of everything, and everyone, else in his life. His wife is due to give birth to their second child in a few days; their relationship is not at its best. And yet, he writes, “I could not think of another year I spent more of my time doing things that were not me at all.” He doesn’t feel like a better version of himself. He doesn’t even feel like himself. He has been like a man possessed: “If it wasn’t me, who was it then?”

The desire to achieve and to demonstrate perfection is not simply stressful; it can also be fatal, according to the British journalist Will Storr. His forthcoming book, “ Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us ” (Overlook), opens, alarmingly, with a chapter on suicide. Storr is disturbed by the prevalence of suicide in the United States and Britain, and blames the horror and shame of failing to meet the sky-high expectations we set for ourselves. He cites surveys that show that adolescent girls are increasingly unhappy with their bodies, and that a growing number of men are suffering from muscle dysmorphia; he interviews psychologists and professors who describe an epidemic of crippling anxiety among university students yoked to the phenomenon of “perfectionist presentation”—the tendency, especially on social media, to make life look like a string of enviable triumphs. Storr confesses that he, too, is dogged by self-loathing and suicidal thoughts. “We’re living in an age of perfectionism, and perfection is the idea that kills,” he writes. “People are suffering and dying under the torture of the fantasy self they’re failing to become.”

Storr’s explanation for how we got into this predicament has three strands. First, there is nature. “Because of the way our brains function, our sense of ‘me’ naturally runs in narrative mode,” he writes; studies show that we are hardwired to see life as a story in which we star. At the same time, he says, we are tribal creatures, evolved during our hunter-gatherer years to value coöperation and, at the same time, to respect hierarchy and covet status—“to get along and get ahead.”

Next comes culture—a trajectory that wends its way from the ancient Greeks, with their idea that humans are rational creatures who must strive in order to fulfill their highest potential, to Christianity, with its doctrine of a sinful self that requires salvation, to Freud, who’s “just a self-hating, sex-afeared, secular reinvention” of the same, and, finally, to the perilous American pursuit of happiness. Storr has conflicted feelings about the American view that the self is fundamentally good, and thus worthy of comfort and satisfaction. On the one hand, it’s a nice change from Christian guilt. On the other, it has “infected” the rest of the world with aspirational narcissism. Storr has harsh words for positive psychology, and for the self-esteem movement. He reserves special scorn for the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, which pioneered the Human Potential Movement back in the nineteen-sixties and has recently gained popularity with the Silicon Valley crowd.

Finally, there’s the economy. Survival in the hypercompetitive, globalized economy, where workers have fewer protections and are more disposable than ever, requires that we try to become faster, smarter, and more creative. (To this list of marketable qualities I’d add one with a softer edge: niceness, which the gig economy and its five-star rating system have made indispensable to everyone from cabdrivers to plumbers.) Anything less than our best won’t cut it.

After a while, Storr says, this rational response to economic pressures became instinctive habit: “Neoliberalism beams at us from many corners of our culture and we absorb it back into ourselves like radiation.” Like reality television before it, social media frames human relationships as a constant competition for popularity and approval. Donald Trump, with his greed-is-good hucksterism and his obsessive talk of “winners” and “losers,” is in the White House. (“Selfie” was published in England last year; Storr is adding a chapter about the President for the American edition.) Meanwhile, parents continue to feed their children the loving, well-intentioned lie that there are “no limits” and they can “be anything,” which leaves the kids blaming themselves, rather than the market’s brutality, when they inevitably come up short.

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All told, this is a bleak picture. If the ideal of the optimized self isn’t simply a fad, or even a preference, but an economic necessity, how can any of us choose to live otherwise? Storr insists that there is a way. “This isn’t a message of hopelessness,” he writes. “On the contrary, what it actually leads us towards is a better way of finding happiness. Once you realize that it’s all just an act of coercion, that it’s your culture trying to turn you into someone you can’t really be, you can begin to free yourself from your demands.”

This sounds suspiciously like self-help-speak, Storr acknowledges. He is quick to say that he isn’t encouraging anything quite as clichéd as self-acceptance. At the same time, he reports that he has, in fact, come to accept himself. “Since I learned that low agreeableness and high neuroticism are relatively stable facets of my personality, rather than signs of some shameful psychological impurity, I’ve stopped berating myself so frequently,” he writes. Instead, he now apologizes to those whom his disagreeableness and his neuroticism have offended. This seems like good, common sense, but Storr has another, more radical suggestion to make. Since it is our environment that is causing us to feel inferior, it is our environment that we must change: “The things we’re doing with our lives, the people we’re sharing it with, the goals we have. We should find projects to pursue which are not only meaningful to us, but over which we have efficacy.” Storr means to be helpful, but changing every aspect of the world we inhabit is a daunting prospect. No wonder people try to change themselves instead.

Sarah Knight has advice of a more specific kind to offer. Her latest book, “ You Do You: How to Be Who You Are and Use What You’ve Got to Get What You Want ” (Little, Brown), is the third she has published in two years, after “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do” and “Get Your Sh*t Together: How to Stop Worrying About What You Should Do So You Can Finish What You Need to Do and Start Doing What You Want to Do.” Knight’s books belong to what Storr sniffily calls the “this is me, being real, deal with it” school of self-help guides, which tend to share a skepticism toward the usual self-improvement bromides and a taste for cheerful profanity. Other recent titles include “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” by Mark Manson, and “F*ck Feelings,” by Michael I. Bennett, a practicing psychiatrist, and Sarah Bennett, his daughter.

Knight, who favors the shouty, super-caffeinated tone of a spin-class instructor, calls herself a “bestselling anti-guru.” She is particularly proud of the best-selling part, and it’s easy to see why her approach appeals. The phrase THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU takes up two full pages of her first chapter. She agrees with Storr that what is wrong is society, or, rather, the “random, stupid obligations set forth by society—whether to be nice or thin or to act submissive or sane.” Sanity seems not to be an entirely random or stupid social obligation, but never mind. Knight’s point is to encourage her readers to embrace themselves as they are, warts and all, and to help them do so she proposes strategies like “mental redecorating” (recasting one’s weaknesses as strengths), embracing pessimism (to be pragmatic and set realistic expectations), being selfish (advocating for one’s needs), dwelling on the thought of death (to maximize happiness while alive), and “breaking free from the Cult of Nice.” Knight is happy to demonstrate the latter. “You have to stop giving a fuck about what other people think,” she tells us.

Much of the advice in “You Do You” is geared toward helping readers confront the workplace dissatisfactions of the daily grind. Generally, the idea is to be more assertive. “If a boss doesn’t like the way I operate, she can fire me,” Knight writes. “If a client thinks my unconventional ways aren’t for him, he doesn’t have to hire me.” This is curiously cavalier. Where Storr is concerned with the precarity of modern-day work, Knight is preoccupied with the tedium endured by the office-bound class: pointless morning meetings, irritating group projects. She gives her readers permission not to care too much about always doing their best on the job, because, as she reveals, she knows what it is to be a perfectionist. As an adolescent, she suffered from eating disorders. After graduating from Harvard, she made a career as a book editor at a big publishing house. She was successful, but stressed. Knight describes experiencing panic attacks that required medical attention; to stay calm at work, she kept a kitty-litter box full of sand under her desk so that she could plunge her toes into a simulated beach. In 2016, when she was thirty-six, she left her job and her home in Brooklyn and moved with her husband to the Dominican Republic.

“The difference between me and a lot of condescending bozos out there is that I don’t give a Fig Newton whether anyone chooses to do it the same, differently, or wearing a gold lamé unitard,” Knight writes. In other words, she is not advocating that all of us quit our day jobs and “step off the motherfucking ledge,” as she did. Still, it comes as something of a shock to realize that the person who has been advising us to push against the lean-in mores of contemporary office culture leaned so far out that she escaped altogether. Many readers will undoubtedly find this inspiring. Others may feel betrayed. What about those who can’t afford to take the risk of stepping away from their lives, as much as they may want to? While they are stuck in their cubicles, mentally redecorating and meditating on death, Knight is sipping piña coladas and writing her next best-selling “No F*cks Given” guide.

Those for whom the imperative to “do you” feels like an unaffordable luxury may take some solace from Svend Brinkmann’s book “ Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze ” (Polity), first published in his native Denmark, in 2014, and now available in an English translation by Tam McTurk. Before “Stand Firm” came out, the author’s note tells us, Brinkmann lived “the relatively sedate life of a professor of psychology at Aalborg University.” Then the book became a best-selling sensation. Brinkmann now lives the life of a successful European public intellectual, appearing on TV and radio and travelling the world to lecture “on the big questions of modern life.”

The big question that Brinkmann addresses in “Stand Firm” is speed. The pace of life is accelerating, he says. We succumb to fleeting trends in food, fashion, and health. Technology has eroded the boundary between work and private life; we are expected to be constantly on call, to do more, “do it better and do it for longer, with scant regard for the content or the meaning of what we are doing.” Like Storr, Brinkmann condemns self-improvement as both a symptom and a tool of a relentless economy. But where Storr sees a health crisis, Brinkmann sees a spiritual one. His rhetoric is that of a prophet counselling against false idols. “In our secular world, we no longer see eternal paradise as a carrot at the end of the stick of life, but try to cram as much as possible into our relatively short time on the planet instead,” he writes. “If you stand still while everyone else is moving forwards, you fall behind. Doing so these days is tantamount to going backwards.”

Yet, as Brinkmann’s title makes clear, standing still is precisely what he proposes that we do. Enough of our mania to be the best and the most, he says. It’s time to content ourselves with being average. With pride, he tells us that, when he and his colleagues at Aalborg University were asked to propose institutional development goals, he suggested “that we should strive to become a mediocre institute.” (“I thought it was a realistic goal worth pursuing for a small university,” he explains. His colleagues did not agree.) And enough of self-acceptance, too—in fact, enough of the self! “Being yourself has no intrinsic value whatsoever,” Brinkmann tells us. Maybe the Norwegian nationalist Anders Breivik felt that he was being “true to himself” when he went on his murderous rampage; maybe Mother Teresa did not. What difference does it make? If you must engage in soul-searching or self-analysis, Brinkmann advises limiting it to once a year, preferably during summer vacation.

After Knight’s can-do cheerleading, this is like having a glass of ice water poured over your head. It’s harsh, but bracing. In cheeky deference to the self-help genre, Brinkmann has structured “Stand Firm” as a seven-step guide of the type that he abhors. Chapter titles include “Focus on the negative in your life,” “Put on your No hat,” and “Suppress your feelings.” The goal is to accept, with calm resolve, the fact that we are mortal, and irreparably flawed. He is big on the Stoics, with their focus on the transience of worldly things. (So, for that matter, is Tim Ferriss.) And he finds wisdom in other, more surprising sources. “I might not be an expert in Jewish culture (my main source of knowledge is Woody Allen’s films),” he writes, in a section in praise of “kvetching,” “but I get the impression that a general acceptance of griping about things both big and small is actually a cultural conduit that fosters collective happiness and satisfaction.” I can assure Brinkmann that the concepts of collective happiness and satisfaction are all but alien to the Jewish people, but if kvetching works for him he is welcome to it.

The important thing, in any case, is the word “collective.” Brinkmann doesn’t care so much how we feel about ourselves. He cares how we act toward others. His book is concerned with morality, which tends to get short shrift in the self-improvement literature. He likes old-fashioned concepts: integrity, self-control, character, dignity, loyalty, rootedness, obligation, tradition. Above all, he exhorts us to do our duty. By this, I think he means that we are supposed to carry on with life’s unpleasant demands even when we don’t feel particularly well served by them, not run off to the Dominican Republic.

All of this gives “Stand Firm” a somewhat conservative cast. Even the phrase “stand firm” may sound pretty fogyish. Brinkmann can come off like a parent telling his tetchy teen-ager to tough it out, and sometimes, like the teen-ager, you want to talk back. Much of his advice is contradictory. How are we supposed to both suppress our feelings and emphasize the negative? And doesn’t “dwelling on the past,” the corrective that Brinkmann advises, lead to the kind of maudlin nostalgia for the good old days that got us Brexit and Trump? “I would contend that, in a culture where everything else is accelerating, some form of conservatism may actually be the truly progressive approach,” Brinkmann writes. He acknowledges that this is paradoxical. His advice, like all advice, is imperfect, and limited. He, too, is only human. That’s part of his charm.

The biggest paradox of “Stand Firm,” as Brinkmann is well aware, is that it calls for an individual solution to a collective problem. There’s good reason to fear being left behind by an accelerating society, especially a society, like ours, that is not kind to those who don’t, or can’t, keep up. Brinkmann at least has the Danish welfare state to fall back on. Still, you don’t need to agree with everything he says to recognize that there is value in reading his book. Mainly, you come away with the comforting sense that there are other people out there struggling with the same pressures and frustrations, who experience similar dissatisfactions and worry about their own inadequacies. That feeling—solidarity—is another Brinkmann value. We may be blundering forward, but we are not blundering alone.

And Brinkmann does offer some advice that seems immediately worth taking. Go for a walk in the woods, he says, and think about the vastness of the cosmos. Go to a museum and look at art, secure in the knowledge that it will not improve you in any measurable way. Things don’t need to be of concrete use in order to have value. Put away your self-help guides, and read a novel instead. Don’t mind if I do. ♦

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By Sam Knight

Essay on Self Help

Students are often asked to write an essay on Self Help in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Self Help

Understanding self help.

Self Help means relying on one’s own efforts and resources rather than depending on others. It’s about taking responsibility and control of your own life.

Importance of Self Help

Self Help is crucial for personal growth. It helps us become independent, confident, and capable of facing any challenge in life.

Self Help in Daily Life

We can practice self help in daily life by doing our own tasks, solving our own problems, and making our own decisions.

Benefits of Self Help

Self Help builds self-esteem, promotes self-reliance, and encourages self-improvement. It’s the key to success and happiness in life.

250 Words Essay on Self Help

Introduction.

Self-help, often referred to as self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement strategy—usually with substantial psychological basis. It includes activities that improve awareness, identity, develop talents, build human capital, and facilitate employability, besides contributing to the realization of dreams and aspirations.

The Importance of Self-Help

The essence of self-help is the pursuit of knowledge and improvement without reliance on others. It encourages autonomy and self-reliance, fostering a sense of empowerment and control. This concept resonates with the modern world’s emphasis on individualism and personal responsibility.

The Role of Self-Help in Personal Development

Self-help plays a vital role in personal development. It encourages introspection, leading to self-awareness and self-understanding. This introspection can help individuals identify their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to focus on areas that need improvement. Furthermore, self-help strategies often involve setting and working towards personal goals, a process that can improve motivation and self-esteem.

Self-Help and Mental Health

Self-help can also be a powerful tool for managing mental health. Many self-help strategies, such as mindfulness and cognitive behavioral techniques, have been shown to be effective in treating conditions like depression and anxiety. These techniques can be used alongside professional treatment or as a standalone approach.

In conclusion, self-help is a valuable tool for personal growth and mental health management. It fosters independence, self-awareness, and resilience, equipping individuals with the skills and knowledge they need to navigate life’s challenges. As such, self-help should be considered a key component of any comprehensive approach to personal development.

500 Words Essay on Self Help

Introduction to self help.

Self-help, as a concept, is deeply embedded in human nature and the pursuit of personal growth. It is the practice of individuals independently solving their own problems, enhancing their skills, or achieving their goals. This essay aims to discuss the importance and implications of self-help in our lives, emphasizing its role in personal development and societal contribution.

The Essence of Self Help

At its core, self-help is about self-reliance and self-improvement. It is an intrinsic drive to better oneself, to overcome personal obstacles, and to strive for a higher level of functioning. It is the embodiment of the famous proverb, “God helps those who help themselves.” This does not negate the value of external assistance, but rather emphasizes the primary role of personal effort and initiative in achieving one’s goals.

Self Help and Personal Development

The act of self-help is instrumental in personal development. It encourages introspection, which leads to a deeper understanding of oneself. Through self-help, individuals can identify their strengths and weaknesses, set realistic goals, and devise strategies to achieve them. It fosters resilience, as individuals learn to face challenges head-on, and cultivates a sense of self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to succeed.

Self Help in the Digital Age

In the digital age, the concept of self-help has transformed and expanded. The internet has provided a wealth of resources for self-help, from online courses and webinars to self-help books and motivational videos. These resources have made self-help more accessible, enabling individuals to learn new skills, gain knowledge, and improve their lives from the comfort of their homes.

Societal Implications of Self Help

On a broader scale, self-help contributes significantly to societal progress. When individuals improve themselves, they are better equipped to contribute to their communities and society at large. They become more productive, more responsible, and more capable of effecting positive change. Moreover, as more people engage in self-help, it fosters a culture of self-reliance and continuous learning, which can lead to collective growth and development.

Conclusion: The Power of Self Help

In conclusion, self-help is a powerful tool for personal and societal development. It empowers individuals to take charge of their lives, to overcome challenges, and to strive for continuous improvement. While external assistance can be valuable, it is ultimately the individual’s responsibility and initiative that determine their success. As we navigate the complexities of the modern world, the practice of self-help becomes increasingly crucial, embodying the essence of human resilience and the pursuit of growth.

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If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Self Esteem
• Essay on Self Defence
• Essay on Self Control

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After thoughts

10 Self-Help Essays to Read Before Re-entering Society

The author notes that any resemblance to actual self-help is coincidental or born from deep and unrelenting fatigue.

By Kate Baer

1. Boy, This Weather Sure Is Nice! Making Small Talk Again With Someone Other Than Your Rescue Dog Robert

2. Your Friend’s Gray Tooth: Reacquainting With the Bottom Half of Beverly’s Face at Sunday Brunch

3. Oops, My Boss Has Seen My Vibrator! Troubleshooting Your Return to the Office After Multiple Blunders on Zoom

4. This Is No Longer Bananas: Unsubscribing From Early Quarantine Banana Bread Blogs in 12 Easy Steps

5. The Primitive Howl v. The Bloodcurdling Scream: Which Noise Is Right for You After Finally Dropping Your Kid at In-Person School

6. “Sorry, I Need To Water My Houseplants” and Other Excuses to Get Out of All Those Social Engagements You Were So Desperate For

7. These Corduroys Are Trying to Kill Me: Navigating the Return to Real Pants With Dignity and Grace

8. Tears at Table 3: Interacting With Your College-Aged Server, “Jell-O Shot Mike,” Without Bursting Into Heaving Sobs Over Eating at a Restaurant

9. I’ve Made a Huge Mistake : How to Reunite With (and Then Immediately Break Up With) Your Friend Stacy After You Remember She Is the Worst

10. “Aunt Brenda, What’s In This Potato Salad?” Questions and Phrases to Redirect QAnon Relatives at the Family BBQ (A Survivor’s Guide)

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Self Help Is The Best Help (Essay Sample)

Self help is the best help, is an old proverb that means one should help him or herself and not wait for others to come to one’s help. One must at all times try to support oneself and not delay for other people to come and assist when one works hard. One can be relaxed and assured that one’s problems will be certainly resolved through some external forces, or good persons. Instead normally one is lazy and always anticipates for others to comprehend the challenges one has and finally come to aid. One will lose faith in everything and will have no self esteem. One will never conquer obstacles that present themselves in one’s life is if there is no self help. One will also take advantage of laziness and depend much on others and this destroys them. This essay narrates events that explain further the meaning of self help is the best help and how this proverb is significant in these events.

Michael was a final year student of Electrical engineering was remarkably brilliant in studies. He was a scholarship undergraduate student because his parents were tailors and could not provide to pay for his studies. Michael did part time jobs so that he could make and save some cash for his studies and personal needs. His part time job was pizza delivery normally in the evenings. One evening, he was delivering pizza as usual to occupants of a huge bungalow when there was a power malfunction. Confusion occurred and Michael provided to check the fuse because he suspected there was a problem. In a few moments, he reported and had the fuse changed and every occupant was happy and thanked him.  They had a conversation with him and were astonished to find he was an Engineering student. He also informed them that he will be receiving a reward for his school performance at the ceremony the following day.

The next day at the ceremony like Michael said he was called to the platform to earn his reward. The main guest who was an important industrialist approached the mike and had this to say, “I am encouraged by the drive level of this young man. Despite many challenges, he has had the courage to work hard to gain excellence. He is a role model of how young men should be. As a gift of my admiration, I have decided that I will handle all expenses for his higher learning abroad and support him in whatever he desires to pursue in the future.” There was loud applause from the gathering and Michael’s parents were jubilant on hearing the great news of their son. It was then Michael remembered that he had brought pizzas at the industrialist residence last evening.  The industrialist heard Michael’s conversation with his wife and it was good chance that he was the main guest at the ceremony. A good person stepped forward to help Michael since he helped himself in his academics by doing part time job.

In conclusion, self help is the best help and therefore is should be improved by everyone. It will not only make one active and smart but enable many of one’s problems to be solved instantly. Good and great men in history have always advocated self help, since it is the value that makes a person great. Through self help, one can become self made. Parents should teach this to children and must practice it before they teach to children.

Essay On Self-Help

Introduction: ‘Self-Help’ or ‘Self-Improvement’ suggests the supremacy of moral and spiritual strength. It generates self-confidence which leads us to the way of success. It is a self-guided improvement economically, intellectually, or emotionally often with a substantial psychological basis. Many different self-help group programs exist, each with its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders. God helps those who help themselves. The best kind of help comes from within the individual.

Concepts and terms originating in self-help culture and Twelve-Step cultures, such as recovery, dysfunctional families, and codependency have become firmly integrated into mainstream language.

The Virtue of Self-Help: Self-help has virtues. It is the surest way of success. Sell helps leads a man to work for himself without depending on others. It is also self-service. It makes a man active and prompt. A self-help nation can develop in the future. As we are social beings, we have to depend somewhat on others. But we should not always idle away our time awaiting help from others.

We should remember that when we depend on others, we take the risk, because they may stop helping us at any time with or without any warning. Moreover, others can help us once or twice or thrice. We cannot expect help whenever we are in need of it all through our lives.

Self-help often utilizes publicly available information or support groups, on the Internet as well as in person, where people in similar situations join together. From early examples in self-driven legal practice and home-spun advice, the connotations of the word have spread and often apply particularly to education, business, psychology, and psychotherapy, commonly distributed through the popular genre of self-help books. According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, the potential benefits of self-help groups that professionals may not be able to provide include friendship, emotional support, experiential knowledge, identity, meaningful roles, and a sense of belonging.

Importance of Self-Help: Self-help is the best help. If we glance at the developed nations, they have already presented the best or most ideal examples of self-help. Depending on the mercy and kindness of others drag a man to beg. Self-help rescues him from beggary. An undeveloped nation can be developed by virtue of self-help. It can bring about a change in the fate of a nation. Self-help always teaches a man to stand upon his own foot on earth. Hence this habit should be formed in childhood. Its importance in individuals and national life cannot be ignored.

Examples of Self-Help: There are examples of self-made men and countries before us. Most great men were self-made men who stood against their poverty and all sorts of obstacles that appeared in the course of their life, Japan is the best example of self-help. It has become a world power even after the massacre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Self-help played a vital role in this. It is said in Greek mythology that Hercules, the god of strength does not help a person who sits idly and only pray. Once a carter fell in danger when the wheels of his cart got stuck in the mud. He sat on his knees and prayed to Hercules for help.

But Hercules did not help him directly. He advised him to put his shoulders to the wheel and pull them. The carter did so and the cart got free. Likewise, a beggar who lives on the charity of others and does not try to help himself remains a beggar throughout his life.

Proper Utilization of Self-Help: Not only in individual work, but we should also share our responsibility in their work too. Any team-work may fail if we do not perform our own shares perfectly. However, we should remember that God has given us a head, heart, and hands. We should fully utilize these gifts to enrich our lives.

Self-help writers have been described as working “in the area of the ideological, the imagined, the narrativized…. although a veneer of scientism permeates their work, there is also an underlying armature of moralizing.”

Conclusion: Self-Help is a noble virtue. It is the root of being independent and self-reliant. Self-help is not a divine gift; it can be formed and attained by making frantic efforts and perseverance.

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Self Help is the Best Help | Essay | Paragraph | Story

April 7, 2020 by Study Mentor 2 Comments

There is a great saying that God will help those who every time help themselves in any situation and circumstances.

You can say it as self improvement which is a powerful method to tackle yourself intellectually, economically or emotionally. Self help also considered as a psychological support. Many different group programs are running over the globe for motivating people for self help.

Every group has its own ambitions, focus, beliefs, techniques and some of them are controlled by a leader of different thinking. Terms and concepts originating in self improvement culture or twelve step culture, like recovery, codependency and dysfunctional families have become as an essential part

Self help can be done by utilizing support groups or publicly available information. It can be brought in concern either through internet or in person. Internet or group provides a table where people suffering from same situation meet with other person.

Groups are also associated with patients who are suffering from health conditions. Sharing your experiences with in a group helps other to motivate from the failures and which ideas are beneficial and which are not.

Table of Contents

In layman language, when you are in problem what will you do? Either you will take help or do it yourself. Self help is the option which helps you to take independent decision whether you are right or wrong at least you can help yourself to tackle any problem or issue.

If you are feeling thirsty then you yourself drink water because it is a problem which is creating problem to you and not to anybody.

When you help yourself in particular issue, then who gain confidence such that you can help others too. Your knowledge towards that area will get increased.

We are having different websites which are running to solve problems; it is a kind of public portal where everyone shares their problem. Those who already faced that issue can help without any problem.

You have a powerful engine on internet i.e. Google as if you have any problem you direct go to Google in order to check the available solutions on internet.

This help has revolutionized the world in order to gather information more than your storage capacity. Similar to Google other search engines are also available which contains abundant amount of information.

Disadvantages for not helping themselves

People generally try to complete their work or solver their problem by themselves. This helps to increase in their knowledge effectively. But sometimes they do not want to do their work which affects their daily routine as follows

• They feel very lazy while completing their work on time.
• They lose confidence of their friends and groups as they are unable to do their work sincerely.
• People gradually start losing faith in them and once the faith has been lost it cannot be done again.
• These people wait every time for somebody who can help them at every step in their life.
• They are unable to take independent decisions.
• They ignore the criticism just to remain away from work.
• Other people definitely take advantage of their laziness and dependency which ruins them mentally and emotionally.

Example of certain personalities

• Mahatma Gandhi was a great man who never loses hope in himself while struggling for the independence of India. They fought with British people all alone. He motivated and enlightened whole country to protect their rights against them. In daily routine, he cleans his room himself. He cleans his own clothes. He took care of himself in all days and at every stage of life.
• Apple, Microsoft companies are the pioneer in motivating a person for self help. If these companies head were dependent on other persons then it was very difficult for them also to stand in the crowd.

In your life also many will give you suggestions to work in certain manner but in the end it is dependent on you to make decisions which lead them to achieve great success.

Self help helps to create motivation among yourself which leads you towards the solution for your problem. It is important for every single person therefore it should be adopted by everyone and all. It will help you to make active and smart but also helps to solve the difficult problems or situations automatically by yourself.

Great men were never showed their dependency on other persons they always preached and practiced self help. As it is a quality which helps a man to become great and legend.

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March 31, 2020 at 11:32 pm

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The best form of self-help is … a healthy dose of unhappiness

B ooksellers have announced that sales of self-help books are at record levels . The cynics out there will sigh deeply in resignation, even though I suspect they don’t really have a clear idea of what a self-help book is (or could be). Then again, no one has much of an idea what a self-help book is. Is it popular psychology (such as Blink , or Daring Greatly )? Is it spirituality ( The Power of Now , or A Course in Miracles)? Or a combination of both (The Road Less Travelled)?

Is it about “success” (The Seven Secrets of Successful People) or accumulating money (Mindful Money, or Think and Grow Rich)? Is Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman self-help? Or the Essays of Montaigne?

Self-help – although I would prefer the term “self-curiosity” – is almost as broad a genre as fiction. Just as there are a lot of turkeys in literature, there are plenty in the self-help section, some of them remarkably successful despite – or because of – their idiocy. My personal nominations for the closest tosh-to-success correlation would include The Secret , You Can Heal Your Life and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – but that is narrowing down a very wide field.

In the minority are the intelligent and worthwhile books – but they can be found. I have enjoyed so-called pop psychology and spirituality books ever since I discovered Families and How to Survive Them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner in the 1980s, and Depression: The Way out of Your Prison by Dorothy Rowe at around the same time.

The Cleese book is a bit dated now, but Rowe’s set me off on a road that I am still following. She is what you might call a non-conforming Buddhist who introduced me to the writing of Alan Watts ( another non-conformer) whose The Meaning of Happiness and The Book have informed my life and worldview ever since.

The irony is that books of this particular stripe point you in a direction almost the opposite of most self-help books. Because, from How to Win Friends and Influence People through to The Power of Positive Thinking and Who Moved My Cheese?, “positive thinking” seems to be the unifying principle (although now partially supplanted by “mindfulness”).

The books I draw sustenance from contain the opposite wisdom. This isn’t negativity. It’s acceptance. Such thinking does not at first glance point you towards the destination of a happier life, which is probably why such tomes are far less popular than their bestselling peers. Yet these counter self-help books have a remarkable amount in common.

Most of them have Buddhism or Stoicism underpinning their thoughts. And they offer a different, and perhaps harder, road to happiness: not through effort, or willpower, or struggle with yourself, but through the forthright facing of facts that most of us prefer not to accept or think about.

Whether Seneca, or Nietzsche, Viktor Frankl or Rowe, Watts or Oliver Burkeman ( The Antidote ), or most recently Jordan B Peterson ( 12 Rules for Life ), these thinkers all say much the same thing. Stop pretending. Get real.

It is not easy advice. Reality – now as ever – is unpopular, and for good reason. But the great thing about these self-help books is that, while giving sound advice, they are clear-eyed in acknowledging the truth: that happiness is not a given for anyone, there is no magic way of getting “it” – and that, crucially, pursuing it (or even believing in it), is one of the biggest obstacles to actually receiving it.

Such writers suggest the radical path to happiness comes from recognising the inevitability of unhappiness that comes as a result of the human birthright, that is, randomness, mortality, transitoriness, uncertainty and injustice. In other words, all the things we naturally shy away from and spend a huge amount of time and painful mental effort denying or trying not to think about.

Peterson perhaps puts it too strongly to say “life is catastrophe”, and the Buddha is out of date with “life is suffering”. Such strong medicine is understandably hard to take for many people in the comfortable and pleasure-seeking west. And despite what both Peterson and the Buddha say, not everyone suffers all that much.

Some people are just born happy or are lucky, or both, and are either incapable of feeling, or fortunate enough to never to have felt, a great deal in the way of pain or trauma. They are the people who never buy self-help books. But such individuals, I would suggest (although I can’t prove it), are the exception rather than the rule. The rest of us are simply pretending, to ourselves and to others, in order not to feel like failures.

But unhappiness is not failure. It is not pessimistic or morbid to say, for most of us, that life can be hard and that conflict is intrinsic to being and that mortality shadows our waking hours.

In fact it is life-affirming – because once you stop displacing these fears into everyday neuroses, life becomes tranquil, even when it is painful. And during those difficult times of loss and pain, to assert “this is the mixed package called life, and I embrace it in all its positive and negative aspects” shows real courage, rather than hiding in flickering, insubstantial fantasies of control, mysticism, virtue or wishful thinking.

That, as Dorothy Rowe says, is the real secret – that there is no secret.

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College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Self help is the best help

Self help is the root of all success and achievements in this world. A self-reliant person do no depend upon others for doing their work. The spirit of self help creates many good qualities in a person. These people work more harder than a person who is reliable on others for their work. This leads to help them obtain strong will- power and determination. A self-reliant person develop faith in themselves. They earn courage and strength of mind. They can face even the hard difficulties boldly and overcome them very easily. Hence, they win success in their lives. From my personal experience, it is a real pleasure when I do my work by myself.It develops a sense of conviction and confidence in me. By depending upon others we tend to lose self-confidence. We start to have a suspicion that without others help we will fail do any work by ourselves. People have a tendency to always expect positive approvals from others and if this do not happens they feel vulnerable and loses their confidence. But,a truly strong person does not need the approval of others.Focus on what you believe to be right in situations, rather than what others may lead you to do. Be your own person. If we are around people who do make blanket, negative, and premature opinions of you based on a few words or actions, then we need to remember that is all about them – not us. We should prime our minds to be more creative.Reliable self-confidence takes a little time to built up. We have been hearing since our childhood that “ God help those who help themselves “. A great man believes himself  and his own intellect to achieve something great in life. He plans everything in advance in a well-ordered way, so that he is not required to depend on anyone’s advice or help. He knows himself how to act properly and how to get things done on time. So it does not become difficult for him to raise high in life. It cannot be denied or ignored  that in the way of one’s life, there may sometime come some failure. But failure is not a infamy in the life’s game. ‘Failures are the pillars of success’.

So,as long as a person goes on attempting his efforts repeatedly on a certain thing in order to achieve it, he needs not to worry much; for success will be his in future. If he does not lose faith in himself, and believes in his own capability and potential of doing things skillfully, he will definitely succeed in life and command respect, confidence and regard of others. A attitude of self-help can make a man perfect and successful in life.

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16 Comments . Leave new

Inspiring article. Good work Megha 🙂

Inspiring one 🙂

motivational

Such an inspiring article it is

Thank you so much everyone. 🙂

very nice article

Motivating!

Nice, motivting and inspiring

Inspiring :Do

Totally agreed and Great efforts 🙂

Self reliability is imperative in the materialistic world of today,so you must be self dependent to combat any impediment in the near future, indeed a great job very well written

Superb. Keep it up!

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Home / Book Writing / How to Write a Self-Help Book: The Complete Process

How to Write a Self-Help Book: The Complete Process

Life can be pretty hard. Almost as hard as writing a book. (Okay, maybe life is way harder than writing a book.) And since life is hard, it's normal for us humans to seek out the help of others. This is why the self-help genre has such a massive audience. 

In fact, self-help is kind of a misnomer. Because when we seek out a book to help improve our lives in some way, we're actually seeking the author's help. And this is perhaps the most important thing to remember as we dive into this article on how to write a self-help book. 

• Who should write a self-help book.
• What to do before you start writing.
• Steps for outlining and writing the book. 

Table of contents

• Should You Write a Self-Help Book?
• Narrow Your Focus to a Specific Problem
• Define Your Audience
• Choose a Title and Subtitle
• Step 2: Choose Your Publishing Path
• Spend Time Getting the Outline Right
• Research and Research Some More
• Write it Like a Long Essay
• Include Personal Anecdotes 
• Impart Your Style
• Include Actionable Advice 
• Self-Help Books to Read for Inspiration
• Writing a Self-Help Book: Wrapping Up

There's only one thing to ask yourself to determine if you should write a self-help book: Can you help other people with a specific problem that you have experience overcoming?

If the answer is no, then you may want to re-think writing this type of book. If it's yes, then this article is for you!

Many people think that they need to be an expert with a degree in psychology or some other field to write a self-help book. And while expertise certainty does help by lending you credibility, it's often not as important as personal experience. 

Formatting Has Never Been Easier

Write and format professional books with ease.  Never before has creating formatted books been easier.

We tend to learn by doing, and doing requires hard work, struggle, and perseverance. So if you've overcome a problem that many other people face (which is most problems), then you may have a unique perspective that could help readers improve their lives. 

But that's where the work of writing one of these nonfiction books begins. And before you start putting words on your screen, it's important to develop your idea. That way, when you start writing, no words will be wasted. 

Step 1: Develop Your Idea

The idea-development stage is incredibly important. This is where you really nail down your book's central thesis—the problem you're going to solve for readers. Because with so much competition out there, you need an angle that is both unique and attractive to readers, but that also fits into your experience and/or expertise. 

It can be tempting to cast as wide a net as possible with your nonfiction book. After all, you want your book to be able to help as many people as possible. 

Unfortunately, the wide net strategy backfires more often than not. This is because people want specifics in their self-help books. They'll purchase books that speak specifically to them. So if the subject matter is too broad or vague, they're likely to pass them up for something a little more specific. 

Everyone wants to be happy, but happiness means different things to different people. A book about being happier will be too vague. On the other hand, a book about learning to be happier for mothers in their thirties will speak to a specific audience by aligning your practical advice with their problem(s).

So when you're developing your idea, dive down as deep as possible. Find a niche audience that will benefit highly from your book, as opposed to a wide audience that will find your advice too generic to apply to them. 

Narrowing your book idea also has the added benefit of helping to define your audience. This can help you develop a picture of your ideal reader. And when the time comes, you can write the entire book as if you're talking to that one ideal reader. 

This is among the best practices for writing a self-help book. Instead of focusing on a huge group of disparate people, you can write to one person, which will allow you to write in a way that will resonate with your readers. 

Part of defining your audience is getting clear on the specific problem you're going to help your reader fix—and how you're going to help them do it. Once you have your problem, solution, and audience in mind, then it's time to think about your title and subtitle. 

You could arguably choose a title and a subtitle during any step in the writing process. But I find it's better to do it near the beginning. Because your title and subtitle will do so much to help readers find you among the thousands of other self-help books. 

Nonfiction book titles should directly relate to the problem you're trying to solve for the reader. Take the book Joy At Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondo. Both the title and subtitle speak to her ideal reader. If you're not finding joy at work, or you're struggling to get where you want to be, then the book will likely speak to you. And if you were searching on Amazon for phrases like “Professional self-help books” or “work self-help books,” then it would be more likely to come up because the words “professional” and “work” are both in the title/subtitle. 

This is exactly what you want from your title. 

One great resource for researching nonfiction book titles is Publisher Rocket. It can also give you a good idea if the self-help niche you hope to write in is overly competitive or not. It does this by pulling data from Amazon on four distinct categories:

• Keywords – Brings you information on phrases and words Amazon customers use to search.
• Competition – Analyzes the competition for a given keyword or phrase by looking at the bestseller rank for the top books that show up (among other data points). 
• Category – Presents useful data on specific Amazon categories to determine how easy or difficult the category would be to break into.
• Amazon Ads Keywords – Quickly finds relevant keywords and phrases you can use for advertising with Amazon ads 

You can also get this same information by spending some time researching on Amazon, but Publisher Rocket is much faster and more efficient. To learn more about how to do this, check out my article here . 

If you do nothing else, look at the top ten bestselling self-help books in your specific niche. Note their titles and subtitles, and let them inspire yours.  

Note: If choosing a title and subtitle at this point in the process seems like too much, move on with the next steps. Just keep it in mind as you do, and come back to it after you’ve written your outline.  

Deciding whether you want to self-publish is a big step. Your other choice is to seek out a book deal with a traditional publisher. And given how the traditional publishing system works with self-help books, you may want to shop around your idea first to see if there are any takers. 

Like many other nonfiction topics, self-help is a genre where you don't necessarily have to have an entire book written to get a book deal with a traditional publisher. In the self-help genre, you can shop around a book proposal instead of an entire manuscript . 

And writing a book proposal takes significantly less time than writing an entire book. For many aspiring authors who dream of landing a deal with a big publisher, this is an attractive prospect. The problem is, it can take years of shopping your proposal around before you learn whether a literary agent or publisher is interested in your book.  

If you don't want to wait years or simply want the freedom and control of self-publishing, then you can start the writing process. And it all begins with a thorough outline.  

Step 3: Outline Your Book

Before you can get to writing, you'll need to spend some time outlining your book. When it comes to self-help books, outlining is an essential part of the book-writing process. 

Every section needs to be pertinent to the thesis of your book—the problem you're helping the reader solve. While you should certainly share personal anecdotes, you're not writing a memoir. So writing an outline can keep you on track by making sure every chapter and section provides value to the reader by helping them understand how to overcome their problem.  

Most of these books start with an introduction, where you introduce yourself, discuss your credentials and pertinent life experience, and generally tell the reader why they should listen to you. This is also where you can prepare the reader for the structure of the book by explaining the layout and emphasizing how you aim to help them solve their problem. 

Doing an outline for a self-help book can almost be like writing a first draft. While every author tends to outline differently, you'll want to be as detailed as possible. Most of these books are somewhere around 50,000 words . Keep this in mind as you outline your chapters (you don't want them too long or too short).

While you're outlining your book, you'll want to do extensive research to support your solution. Personal experience counts for a lot, but it's important that what you're saying is grounded in reality with studies, research, other people's firsthand experience, and data. 

Not every self-help subject will lend itself to this, but many of them can and should be supported with research. This is yet another way to gain credibility in the reader's eyes.

Telling a reader that standing on their head for an hour a day will contribute to their personal development could stretch credulity. It may have worked for you, but most readers will want to see some evidence before they get a sore neck from taking your advice.  

Step 4: Write It!

After all that, it's time to write the book ! Depending on how much detail you put in your outline, this step could be just a matter of filling sections in and making adjustments. Or it could involve getting the meat of the book down. Either way, it's the fun part!

The basic structure of a self-help book is similar to that of a college or high school essay. You want to start (after the introduction) with the problem in the first chapter. In the second chapter, you'll give an overview and some real-life stories on how you're going to help solve that problem. 

After that, you can dive into the step-by-step guide to solving the problem before wrapping everything up once again at the end of the book. 

You really can't go wrong with this format no matter what self-help topic you're tackling. 

Humans naturally gravitate toward stories. We see our lives as stories, and it's how we make sense of the world. This is why sharing personal experiences and anecdotes in your self-help book is such a powerful thing. 

Not only is this a way to further demonstrate your credibility, but it's also a way to get the reader to glean valuable insight from your book. Stories help us internalize lessons. And that's just what you want your reader to do as they read your book. 

Additionally, personal anecdotes help you keep the writing personal, like you’re trying to help a good friend. Whether it be financial struggles, mental health issues, or some other problem directly related to the subject of your book, readers will identify with you. This can not only help them, but it can also help you when they spread the word about your work!

As the writer, it's up to you to make your book stand out not just in terms of its unique angle on a problem, but also in its style. And by that, I mean your style. 

Just as in writing fiction, the author's voice really does a lot to make the writing engaging. Of course, the specific style of your book will depend not only on your writing style but also on the angle you're taking with the whole book's presentation . 

Take The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. The title of this bestselling self-help book gives you a pretty good idea of what you're going to get inside. Mark Manson's comedic voice and irreverent tone make it both a pleasure to read and an entertaining look at how we've perhaps been thinking about self-help wrong all these years. 

While your book may not be so extreme as to have a curse word in the title, you certainly don't want the writing to be dry and impersonal. Be yourself and impart your style to the book . You can bet that people will respond to it. 

Giving the readers actionable advice in the form of exercises or steps that can help them is essential to an effective self-help book.

People don't want to just hear your success story (although that's part of it). They also want to hear what exact steps you recommend they take so they can get to where you are. 

Many authors do this by including a section at the end of each chapter with a recap of the points covered in the chapter, followed by steps of practical guidance that the reader can follow. 

After all, one of the main complaints self-help books get is that they’re not specific enough in their advice. 

As with any other genre, you need to know what works well in the self-help genre. The following are excellent examples of self-help books done right:

• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
• You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero
• Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne Dyer
• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
• Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondo

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Being a self-help author is wildly rewarding. Helping people is one of the fundamental joys of life. And making a career out of helping people is something many dream of. Luckily, there's never been an easier time to do it. 

Whether you want to go through traditional channels or self-publish, you'll have to make sure you have a great book that solves a specific problem for people. And to do this, it takes time, research, writing skill, and marketing savvy . The best part is, these are all things you can learn. 

Whether you're a life coach looking to expand your reach or someone with a unique life experience you want to share, I hope this article has provided you with a self-help template for your book-writing process! 

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

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Essay/Paragraph or Speech on “Self Help” Complete Paragraph or Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

There is a saying: “God helps those who help themselves.” Self – help is the best help. It is a heroic virtue. It gives us the spirit of self confidence and strength of mind. God has given us physical strength and intelligence enough to live a healthy life. So we should properly use these two important qualities order to build up our life. Life itself has to be adequately planned beforehand.

Energy and strength have to be drawn to give it a proper shape. Strength is power in inherent elements found in a person. No one has to utilize it properly by helping oneself.

No outside help can help one in a better way than one own help. A person has to be alert. Diligent , thoughtful and disciplined enough to work out a successful plan of his own life. And the success is his.

It is also said, “Failures are the pillars of success” that means, experiences gained through repeated failures teach a faithful aspirant the way to success. So the person should not feel dispirited at his failures.

He should try again and again to reach his goal. His determination

 and perseverance will lead him to his goal today or tomorrow. And it is possible only by the spirit of self – help. Self – help makes a person perfect, ideal and confident in his life.  

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Do write more essays. But this one was good.

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17.Short Story : Self Help is the Best Help

Complete the story on the following beginning

Once there was a poor weaver named Sam. He was very lazy………………………

Self Help is the Best Help

Once there was a poor weaver named Sam. He was very lazy and always used to shirk the work. He could not earn much because of it. He always used to blame his fate for all adversities in his life and the failures that he used to face. He kept on living like this for years together and did not even try to mend his ways. One day a saint happened to pass by his cottage. He stopped there to talk to him. The weaver again repeated the same thing in front of the saint too. The saint tried to console him and advised him not to blame his fate like that. He also encouraged him to work harder and try to give up laziness. He explained to him that God also helps those who help themselves and he wants to get anything in his life by blaming others. The weaver understood and took each word said by the saint to his heart. He followed his advice and toiled really hard than ever before. Soon, he becomes very rich and prosperous. He realized the fact that “Self-help is the best help.”

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How self-compassion can help activists deal with stress

PhD student, Clinical Psychology, University of Manitoba

Disclosure statement

Sophie Olivia Hanson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

University of Manitoba provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.

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Why are activists, who are so passionate about their social justice work, so often burned out by those very causes? We don’t often think about activism as a form of labour, but it is. Research on the activists that make up social justice movements suggests that the pressures of activist work, can cause them to experience serious consequences to their own mental well-being.

In some cases they might be driven to leave activism altogether , hurting their activist movements as a whole.

To understand how activists can better manage the challenges of their work, our research examines how self-compassion could be used to help them alleviate stress and avoid burnout.

Activist work often isn’t successful at first: social progress takes a long time, especially in the face of systemic barriers . Activists tend to be very aware of the injustices they fight against and how hard it is to make change happen . In the face of these struggles, many activists can feel hopeless about the issues they are passionate about, causing serious mental distress.

Can self-compassion help?

Given these burdens, activists need support for coping with their painful thoughts and feelings. However, some activists suggest that these resources aren’t always available. Non-activists may look down on their efforts or be unsupportive and activists who belong to marginalized groups can experience discrimination even within their organizations . On top of this, some activists feel pressure to participate in social justice work without complaint even when they are seriously struggling.

It’s important to acknowledge that many of the negative experiences that activists encounter will need to be addressed by systemic changes. This could include a society that is more open to progress and more sympathetic to those engaged in social justice work. Progressive movements could also offer more support to their members, particularly those who experience prejudice themselves.

However, if movements are going to provide resources to their members for coping with the stresses of their work, we should consider what supports might be most helpful. Enter self-compassion — this term refers to our ability to respond to our own suffering with care and support, and is made up of three components.

Self-kindness is the ability to show ourselves warmth and encouragement rather than judgement during difficult experiences.

Common humanity is the knowledge that our struggles unite us with, rather than isolate us from other people.

Finally, mindfulness is the ability to be aware of our pain, without becoming overly entangled with it.

As there are many resources and interventions for self-compassion that have been tested and shown to be successful, this adds to its usefulness for activist populations.

Tips for activists

For activists struggling with the painful emotions that arise from their work, being self-compassionate might be a valuable support. This could involve treating themselves with kindness, remembering that they are united in their struggles with other activists and being mindful of their thoughts and feelings.

Using these strategies could help provide activists with the internal strength to continue their efforts while also making time for their own self-care.

In previous research, self-compassion has been connected to higher levels of hope and lower levels of hopelessness . These are both emotional states that activists link to their well-being and ability to manage the pressures of their social justice work. Possibly, by being more supportive of themselves, self-compassionate people are able to be more optimistic .

Additionally, the mindfulness aspect of self-compassion may help individuals to avoid ruminating about difficult experiences , in turn reducing feelings of hopelessness. Self-compassion and self-compassion interventions have also been linked to lower levels of burnout across various working populations.

My own thesis research in psychology has expanded on these findings by identifying a relationship between higher levels of self-compassion and lower levels of hopelessness and burnout among activists. This suggests that the relationship between self-compassion and mental health extends to those involved in social justice movements.

From campaigns about climate change and income inequality, to protests against anti-racism and war, activism plays a vital role in the world. It draws attention to those marginalized by unequal systems and casts light on often forgotten issues. It is important to recognize this work as well as the emotional and mental toll it can take on the people struggling to make change.

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English Short Story “Self-help is the best help” for School, College Students, Moral Story for Class 7, 8, 9, 10, Class 12, College Exams.

Self-help is the best help

Once a cartman was going to the market place. His cart was loaded heavily with bags of corn. It was evening time and growing dark The weather also was bad. On the way it was pitch dark due to clouds. Soon it began drizzling. Now it began to rain heavily. The path became slippery and full of pools of water and mud. The cart was moving very slowly and heavily. He tried to goad his oxen to speed up but in vain. They went on at a snails pace.

Suddenly the wheels of the cart stuck up into thick mud. Soon the heavy load stuck them deeper. He tried his best to goad the oxen out but in vain. Now having given in, he sat on one side of the ‘road grieving badly on the state of affairs.

God Hercules, the god of strength, appeared in the shape of a farmer before him and asked him the cause of his woe. He explained to him his position. The farmer took him to task for sitting idle, “Why don’t you give your own shoulder to the wheel of your cart? It can be pulled out.” The cartmar got up and put his shoulder to the wheel and the god also put his hand to his help. The cart began moving as usual. The farmer disappeared in no time. The cartman now understood it was none other than Hercules himself. He got a great lesson for his life. He realized unless you come up to help yourself god will not help you. He clearly saw his own strength had pulled out the wheel, the man had simply touched it with his hand. The god helped him only when he helped himself.

Moral: God helps those who help themselves.

Self-help is the best help.

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From NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher: Thoughts on our mission and our work

The message below was sent by NPR's President and CEO to all staff:

This has been a long week. I'll apologize in advance for the length of this note, and for it being the first way so many of you hear from me on more substantive issues. Thanks for bearing with me, as there's a lot that should be said.

I joined this organization because public media is essential for an informed public. At its best, our work can help shape and illuminate the very sense of what it means to have a shared public identity as fellow Americans in this sprawling and enduringly complex nation.

NPR's service to this aspirational mission was called in question this week, in two distinct ways. The first was a critique of the quality of our editorial process and the integrity of our journalists. The second was a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are.

Asking a question about whether we're living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.

It is deeply simplistic to assert that the diversity of America can be reduced to any particular set of beliefs, and faulty reasoning to infer that identity is determinative of one's thoughts or political leanings. Each of our colleagues are here because they are excellent, accomplished professionals with an intense commitment to our work: we are stronger because of the work we do together, and we owe each other our utmost respect. We fulfill our mission best when we look and sound like the country we serve.

NPR has some of the finest reporters, editors, and producers in journalism. Our reporting and programming is not only consistently recognized and rewarded for its quality, depth, and nuance; but at its best, it makes a profound difference in people's lives. Parents, patients, veterans, students, and so many more have directly benefited from the impact of our journalism. People come to work here because they want to report, and report deeply, in service to an informed public, and to do work that makes a difference.

This is the work of our people, and our people represent America, our irreducibly complex nation. Given the very real challenges of covering the myriad perspectives, motivations, and interests of a nation of more than 330 million very different people, we succeed through our diversity. This is a bedrock institutional commitment, hard-won, and hard-protected.

We recognize that this work is a public trust, one established by Congress more than 50 years ago with the creation of the public broadcasting system. In order to hold that trust, we owe it our continued, rigorous accountability. When we are asked questions about who we serve and how that influences our editorial choices, we should be prepared to respond. It takes great strength to be comfortable with turning the eye of journalistic accountability inwards, but we are a news organization built on a foundation of robust editorial standards and practices, well-constructed to withstand the hardest of gazes.

It is true that our audiences have unquestionably changed over the course of the past two decades. There is much to be proud of here: through difficult, focused work, we have earned new trust from younger, more diverse audiences, particularly in our digital experiences. These audiences constitute new generations of listeners, are more representative of America, and our changing patterns of listening, viewing, and reading.

At the same time, we've seen some concerning changes: the diffusion of drivetime, an audience skewing further away in age from the general population, and significant changes in political affiliations have all been reflected in the changing composition of our broadcast radio audiences. Of course, some of these changes are representative of trends outside our control — but we owe it to our mission and public interest mandate to ask, what levers do we hold?

A common quality of exceptional organizations is humility and the ability to learn. We owe it to our public interest mandate to ask ourselves: could we serve more people, from broader audiences across America? Years ago we began asking this question as part of our North Star work to earn the trust of new audiences. And more recently, this is why the organization has taken up the call of audience data, awareness, and research: so we can better understand who we are serving, and who we are not.

Our initial research has shown that curiosity is the unifying throughline for people who enjoy NPR's journalism and programming. Curiosity to know more, to learn, to experience, to change. This is a compelling insight, as curiosity only further expands the universe of who we might serve. It's a cross-cutting trait, pretty universal to all people, and found in just about every demographic in every part of the nation.

As an organization, we must invest in the resources that will allow us to be as curious as the audiences we serve, and expand our efforts to understand how to serve our nation better. We recently completed in-depth qualitative research with a wide range of listeners across the country, learning in detail what they think about NPR and how they view our journalism. Over the next two years we plan to conduct audience research across our entire portfolio of programming, in order to give ourselves the insight we need to extend the depth and breadth of our service to the American public.

It is also essential that we listen closely to the insights and experiences of our colleagues at our 248 Member organizations. Their presence across America is foundational to our mission: serving and engaging audiences that are as diverse as our nation: urban and rural, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, often together in one community.

We will begin by implementing an idea that has been proposed for some time: establishing quarterly NPR Network-wide editorial planning and review meetings, as a complement to our other channels for Member station engagement. These will serve as a venue for NPR newsroom leadership to hear directly from Member organization editorial leaders on how our journalism serves the needs of audiences in their communities, and a coordination mechanism for Network-wide editorial planning and newsgathering. We're starting right away: next week we plan to invite Members to join us for an initial scoping conversation.

And in the spirit of learning from our own work, we will introduce regular opportunities to connect what our research is telling us about our audiences to the practical application of how we're serving them. As part of the ongoing unification of our Content division, Interim Chief Content Officer, Edith Chapin, will establish a broad-based, rotating group that will meet monthly to review our coverage across all platforms. Some professions call this a retro, a braintrust, a 'crit,' or tuning session — this is an opportunity to take a break from the relentless pressure of the clock in order to reflect on how we're meeting our mandate, what we're catching and what we're missing, and learn from our colleagues in a climate of respectful, open-minded discussion.

The spirit of our founding newsroom and network was one of experimentation, creativity, and direct connection with our listeners across America. Our values are a direct outgrowth of this moment: the independence of a public trust, the responsibility to capture the voice and spirit of a nation, a willingness to push boundaries to tell the stories that matter. We're no strangers to change, continuously evolving as our network has grown, our programming has expanded, and our audiences have diversified — and as we look to a strategy that captures these values and opportunities, the future holds more change yet.

Two final thoughts on our mission:

I once heard missions like ours described as asymptotic — we can see our destination and we strive for it, but may never fully meet it. The value is in the continued effort: the challenge stretches on toward infinity and we follow, ever closer. Some people might find that exhausting. I suspect they don't work here. I suspect that you do because you find that challenge a means to constantly renew your work, and to reinfuse our mission with meaning as our audiences and world continues to change.

The strongest, most effective, and enduring missions are those that are owned far beyond the walls of their institution. Our staff, our Member stations, our donors, our listeners and readers, our ardent fans, even our loyal opposition all have a part to play: each of us come to the work because we believe in it, even as we each may have different perspectives on how we succeed. Every person I have met so far in my three weeks here has shown me how they live our mission every day, in their work and in their contributions to the community.

Continuing to uphold our excellence with confidence, having inclusive conversations that bridge perspectives, and learning more about the audiences we serve in order to continue to grow and thrive, adding more light to the illumination of who we are as a shared body public: I look forward to how we will do this work together.

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How to Clear a Stuffy Nose Fast—And Get Back to Breathing Normally

By Alexis Berger

Medically reviewed by Aaron N. Pearlman, MD

Blowing your nose to oblivion without dislodging any of the snot clogging it is the physiological equivalent of screaming into the void: Sheer force won’t change the reality of what you’re dealing with.

In the blocked-nose situation, at least, you’ve got other options. There are easy, effective ways to help you inhale normally, even when you swear the tissue box is straight-up mocking you. Here are the best methods out there for helping you unclog that schnoz, put the mouth-breathing lifestyle behind you, and find relief.

First, let’s look at why you might be so hellishly congested in the first place.

Getting a cold here and there is a (wack) fact of life, and it often comes with nasal congestion. Kevin Hur, MD , assistant professor of clinical otolaryngology at Keck School of Medicine of USC in Los Angeles, tells SELF that if your blocked nose doesn’t clear up within two weeks (by which time a cold should have left you alone), you should visit an otolaryngologist, a.k.a. an ear, nose, and throat specialist (or ENT). An ENT can use a small camera called an endoscope to see if there’s a physical blockage behind what’s going on, like nasal polyps or a deviated septum, or diagnose and treat another underlying issue causing your inner nostrils to swell and muck things up with snot.

If you know you don’t have a cold, the flu, or a sinus infection, there are other culprits that could be behind why your nose feels like it’s filled with cement: allergies , smoke exposure, and environmental pollution are all possible causes behind being miserably clogged. Certain lifestyle tweaks might help cut down on how often your nostrils are blocked or how severely that messes with your day. If you have allergies, try limiting your exposure to potential triggers (including everyone's least favorite springtime assailant, pollen ) to begin with. “Simple methods, like using HEPA filters in your home, keeping your windows closed, vacuuming carpets and rugs often, and keeping pets out of your bedroom” can make a world of difference, Taylor Carle, MD , an otolaryngologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Group in California, tells SELF. Antihistamines and other OTC decongestants might help too.

Whatever you’re dealing with, there are a few solid means of finding relief in the here and now, other than (or in addition to!) making lifestyle tweaks or popping meds. Here’s how to get unstuffed.

How to unclog your nose and breathe normally again

Yet another excuse to enjoy an extra-long and toasty shower : Taking big breaths of steamy or misty air can thin and loosen even the most stubborn gunk. “When you use a humidifier or steam, you’re diluting the mucus in your nose that’s stuck. It allows your body to open itself,” says Dr. Hur.

There are a few easy ways to try this out. Steaming up your bathroom with hot running water can help turn your nose into a running faucet. Aim to stay in the bath or shower with the door closed for 10 to 15 minutes to break up your boogers. But you don’t even need to jump in the shower to find relief from teeny-tiny droplets of water. If you want an even simpler option, deeply inhaling the steam rising off of a hot cup of water or tea for a few minutes can provide a little relief too—and it comes with the benefit of being a solution you’re probably able to try at work or school.

If you’re at home, you can also opt to add snot-busting vapor into your life with the help of a humidifier (and SELF has got some great recs for you on that front), which helps keep your nostrils from drying out and stuffing you up.

You’re probably aware of nasal rinses in the form of neti pots, which irrigate and flush your nostrils with saline solution. But they can be a little complicated to use correctly—and a recent CDC study warned about the risk of infection that comes with misuse.

A simpler way to use saline to your stuffed-up advantage is huffing it in nasal spray form. These OTC meds help relieve inflammation and swelling inside your nostrils and make room for things to get moving again, according to the Cleveland Clinic . In addition to saline sprays, plenty of medicated OTC nasal spray options, like ones containing topical steroids or antihistamines, can be worth sticking up your nose, Dr. Carle says. Like saline-based nasal sprays, they’re safe for daily long-term use.

Just don’t confuse over-the-counter saline, steroid, and antihistamine options with sprays marketed as “decongestants,” which have different active ingredients (some common ones are oxymetazoline and phenylephrine). While saline, antihistamine, and steroid options are long-term relationship material, think of decongestants as more of a weekend fling. “Decongestant nasal sprays are intended for use for two to three days during a cold, but not for long-term use,” Dr. Carle says. That's because if you use decongestants (including popular brands like Afrin and Sudafed PE) for longer than directed, you run the risk of a “rebound effect,” according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology . After a spray addresses your stuffy symptoms initially, the situation stands to come back to bother you again—and even potentially make things worse than were to begin with by irritating the nasal passages. So spray wisely.

You’re ready to close the book on a day of mouth-breathing, and as soon as you lay your head down on your pillow, things only get worse . That has to do with gravity and blood flow. “Head position makes a big impact on nasal congestion,” says Dr. Carle. “The nasal cavity has a high density of blood vessels and, thus, nasal congestion is highly dependent on the position of the head. Keeping the head elevated above the level of the heart can help minimize the amount of blood that pools in the nasal tissues, causing congestion.” Research also supports that laying down is associated with increased nasal blockage…but you definitely know this already if you’ve ever struggled to get to sleep because you’re congested as all get-out.

Finally, take it easy to whatever extent you’re able. “Make sure you drink lots of fluids and are getting rest,” says Dr. Hur. “If you’re doing things like exercising a lot, then your body is spread thin, which isn’t helping it recover.” When you’re dealing with snot issues, use it as a sign it’s time to fill up your emotional support water bottle and kick back. Even if you feel like your head is full of glue right now, you’ll be inhaling normally again soon.

• Can You Develop Allergies Later in Life? Sadly, Yes—Here’s How to Deal
• Here’s How to Stop a Runny Nose as Quickly as Possible, According to Doctors
• Dealing With Yellow Mucus? Here’s What Your Body Might Be Trying to Tell You

SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.