Why this project: why would somebody need help to help herself?

Well, first of all, welcome to my new project: SHelperNet!

Now you might be wondering what it is. To put it simple: A page devoted to the many things that are usually labeled “self-help” or “self-improvement“. There are as many areas that I could mention now as there are flaws that people tend to see in themselves and others, and since that is a near-endless list I won’t even bother you with it here, I will introduce topics as I blog along!

So why am I, and should you (!) be interested in something like “self-improvement”? To again make it overly simplistic: Because it is a common thing that people don’t like themselves. Actually, there are even people (scientists?!) who claim that nobody actually likes him- or herself. That’s for a reason I’d like to show you: Everybody, wherever and whenever in life, wears a mask and tries to show off all those things that she* thinks others expect of her. We could label this “politeness” (e.g. when once again you pretend that you know that person that just greeted you with your name…) or self-protection or whatever. But fact is: Everybody wears a mask for most of the (non-alone) time.

So, since everybody does it, there is an interesting effect: In turn, everybody only sees people that she thinks are better than her. Those people are nicer, look better, have better memory, use their time wisely, can play better golf or soccer, have more friends, earn more money, … – well, at least they seem to be.

The result?

Everybody wears a mask, making her feel false and insufficient for not having those abilities and social status that she tends to have
Everybody also always encounter people that somehow seem to be better or better off in so many things, making her feel worse than them

You can guess what I’m heading for: Social encounters en masse can hit you hard and make you feel bad. This is not to say that social encounters are bad, in the opposite, they are what defines us and life without them wouldn’t be worth living! But the way it is, every time you go out there and start comparing yourself (which seems to be instinctive) you realise the things you are lacking instead of those that you have. It’s seldom that someone acknowledges your abilities, but far more you internally see somebody else’s ability and skills and success and happiness and you want to have the same.

So, we already have quite a few lessons:

Others are not always as good/sexy/successfull/… as they seem
You are worth far more than you think, it’s just that you just look more at your ostensible lacks and failures than all your real abilities and successes.
Whenever you note somebody’s talents and successes internally - let them know. That’s not to throw 500 compliments a minute at somebody, but when you notice something exceptional, tell the person with true honesty and appreciation – you “help” them and that will somehow pay back! And you slowly break the cycle of unhappiness.
When you lack something you should go and get it.

I think the first three should be pretty self-evident. Number four then is, where this blog kicks in (and billions before it… and even more books).

Whenever at some point you think you lack something that you should have, there is an easy series of question to go through:

Can I have it? – if not: Forget about it, don’t worry or curse or whatever. If there’s no way making yourself feel bad for it won’t help! Just forget it.
Do I really want it? – often we just think we want something, out of the moment, but on reflection we realise it is something we actually don’t really care about or that might be even bad for us. An example: Most people want to be famous. They want people looking up to them, and money, and photoshoots. But do they really want to have a crowd of 20 reporters and cameras around them 24/7, taking pictures through their windows, stalking their family, scaring friends away, hate rages on the internet, bad rumors about them, their private life in public, not a single quiet minute… It is clear: Many things that we think we want are actually by far not that want-worthy!
How do I get it?

If you arrived at number 3 without stopping – then you are in the right spot. Whatever you do from that point on is what I would label “self-help”: You do a course, you read a book, you train something at home, you work out, you change your diet, even changing a relationship – all that is a sort of self-help – you notice a deficit and you take ACTION to change it. You go and do something for yourself – that’s self-help!

Now you know what it is and I might take the guess that you also know that it is something that you should not laugh about or think of as weak or whiny, but that it is something that you, that everybody wants, should do and does on a daily basis. This blog is devoted to giving you the techniques, information and inspiration to make it better.

Why another page? Isn’t there enough out there?

I know there are many blogs and websites on the topic out there, but I always felt a lack of objectivity: Most of the pages that are labeled as self-help or self-improvement (which sounds much nicer by the way!) actually only try to help themselves – to your money. Most sites have a bunch of sometimes useful articles, but most of those have them for just one reason: To get you to the site and buy something that the author has written (like a book) or has an interest in (like affiliate links). So, in the end, it’s just shameless promotion.

I personally hate don’t like searching my way through such pages, but i’ve been doing it for a while – and, well, I think now I have quite a good feeling for them. I read a lot of books on the different topics, even took an intense ten day meditation course, and most importantly: Personally tried a lot of stuff. So I guess I am as much or as few qualified to write and judge on the topics as most of the people out there that call themselves self-help-trainers or whatever.

And I have three more motivations for doing this project that you should know about: One is that I finally want to start blogging again – I had several projects before, my most successful one being a political blog with at it’s high a number of 150-200 readers every day, and the last one a more private blog about my 4 1/2 months in India. I felt I wasted a lot of my time, and I think blogging about one of my passions will focus me and help me dive deeper into the topics! I also hope to meet more great people and get to broaden my horizon to include even more areas. Further, I have a deep desire to help other people – I just love knowing that I helped somebody else even in the slightest, and I feel that with this project I can change a lot of lives to the better – by the way, I would love to hear your story! And lastly, I have a very selfish reason: I want to learn more. There is not a single better way to learn than to teach – and I think if I write here, explaining concepts and techniques, the one that at the end of the day gained the most insight will be me! (If you’re wondering why I don’t mention money: For once at the moment I don’t need any, but more importantly I’m not that deluded to believe that this project could actually pay for the work I put into it. If that happens – great! But to hope for it or even do it solely for that would be plain stupid.)

So far so good… but what will happen here?

Quite a few things! First of all, I will mostly quote from and link to good articles – sort through the stuff that’s already out there and guide you to what you might find interesting – because I think it is. Obviously, feel free to recommend things! This will be the main section of this blog, as I don’t have the time to write well-researched own articles every day.

Second, I will try to compare different approaches or solutions to a problem (e.g. there is a whole controversy around affirmations and that they might actually be bad for you).

Third, I will try to occasionally post techniques that I learned along the way (e.g. for NLP or meditation). We will see how much that will be.

Fourth, I will occasionally reviews books and audiobooks (and other products if I actually find some that are useful) and tell you how to get them. I will use “referal links” ( which means if you buy that stuff I will get a small proportion of the price you payed) when I link to Amazon or the like, for the sole reason that I don’t see why I shouldn’t: Referal fees are not taken from the buyer but from the seller, so they won’t increase the price for you but give me a small reward for my work. Sounds fair to me, if that sounds corrupt or biased or anything else to you then please ignore those articles – but don’t skip the rest because of it!

Fifth, as a student I have access to several scientific journals and I intend to occasionally sum up scientific articles and research and try to show what they mean for us in daily life. (Please let me know if you find anything interesting that I should read, especially if you can’t access them yourselves!)

And lastly, I will occasionally let out my own ideas – I am a student of Philosophy with Psychology and have a general interest in “how we humans work”. So, I often have my own concepts and ideas, which I like to present to you and you may or may not find them useful.

Well, to be honest I’m surprised you read until here… quite long, huh? Don’t worry, I intend to keep future articles as short and tasty as possible!

So, then, once again, welcome to this new project – I am excited and I hope you are too! Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, find typos or factual errors (shock! sadly I’m not perfect (yet).) and whenever you’re bored just drop me a line, usually even if I’m stressed like crazy I will still find a moment to answer – I love to talk!

And, there are many ways to contact me…

For once, you should follow either the project twitter feed here – or if you want to get some of my random thoughts and ideas and a lot of links as well you should follow my personal feed on twitter here!

If you want it even easier, you can use the no-signup contact form. And if you want it even more easier – how about leaving a comment with some feedback on how I’m doing with a simple click left of this post?

Can’t wait to see you here again!

Konstantin

* in this blog I will use “she” for neutral “people” terms. For once most of the authors that I will refer to tend to be male, so the she instead of he makes it easier to separate and secondly I’m male myself, which would make it somewhat obnoxious to use “he”. Also, I will occasionally use “everybody” as a sort of singular person-term that refers to everybody, but, well, just one of them us.

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