Choosing the Right Self-help Program

Self-help Might not be the Best Help Always!

Each person is his/her own guide in some way. Gratitude for our teachers who help us shine in life, parents who act as the guiding light in every single step we take and people around us who mold our well-being is indispensable but above all these external guiding factors every individual relies/trusts himself/herself the most at all major junctions in life. During some situations, some people might find self-help programs to be their only source of reliability. But the results might not be for the positive always. The intention of every self-help program might be good but what we are unsure is whether the result might be equally good as well. Further, it also depends on how well people use such programs.

Self-help Guides

As the name suggests, ‘self-help’ is an individual-based guide which might be a book, CD, video, app, program or podcast which assures the use of ultimate benefits. Any product marketed will never reveal its downside but only exaggerate on its positives. Hence, it depends on the discretion of the user to choose the best self-help guide that would genuinely help the individual fulfill his/her endeavor with ease. It is better to go through the below-mentioned guides before choosing any of the self-help programs available in the market.

The facts listed must be real-time and reliable: Before releasing guides and know-hows on different topics, there are several researches and studies that happen behind any of these. Once these studies bring upon a solution, scientists use statistical analyses to gauge whether some intervention might work better than a placebo for most individuals. If there is a positive response from the analyses showing that an intervention definitely works better in 80% of people involved in the study, one cannot be guaranteed whether you fall in the 80% category for which the intervention works or the other 20% category for whom the intervention failed. Human variation is such that scientists now feel that any study is 100% effective only when it is conducted on the individual study subject who plans to use the intervention-this is close to impossible. Hence, study data and results can only be relied upon to a certain extent and not completely.

The program must meet your requirements: Any program caters to a specific group of audience who more or less have similar requirements and no one program focuses specially on your requirements. For instance, a study might be conducted on a set of people who suffer from the same disease, are of similar age and of the same sex. But still, each person’s genes, race, personality and even their beliefs change which impact in finding out whether a particular intervention program will benefit the user or not. Elaborate studies and their findings on how results differ based on a person’s qualities is clearly available for referral at www.firsteatright.com.

A small insight about the author might prove to be helpful: Authoring a self-help book is a monumental task that is complex and needs real talent. Getting to know about the author’ background and his/her domain can give you hints on whether or not to follow the author’s advice. Scientists and researchers have the experience of having worked with different kinds of people but even researchers are limited to these sets of people. There are also other crucial factors such as religion, cultural sensitivity and spirituality that may affect your decision to go with the author’s recommendation or not.

All these suggest that there are different requirements by different people and all of them are from varied backgrounds, religion, race and with different personality. There can never be one solution that caters to every individual’s requirement. The end choice is always yours. It solely depends on your discretion to use or ignore a self-help program after taking into account all the pros and cons.