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Doug Toft's avatar

This is a dazzling post (as usual) —cascading levels of insight upon insight. Yes: self-help books are often crude and sometimes life-saving. (Case in point: Alcoholics Anonymous.) This is what I appreciate most about your writing: your willingness to dance on the edge of paradox. Thought experiment: Substitute "self-help" for "self-care" and see what you get. Many blessings to you!

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Adam's avatar

Take Janet: Janet wants to lose weight. Janet probably could if: (a) her husband Steve wasn't also fat, or at least he wanted to lose weight with her; (b) she recognized that her job and/or kids exhausted her, but had a growth mindset and realized she probably had some habits or ways of responding contributing to that exhaustion and she could change that; (c) she made more money, thus opening more options toward eating conveniently that wasn't total garbage; (d) etc.

We're all imperfect introspecters. So, when someone says that either they, or people in general, can't change, I just think: BS... we're just really bad at understanding ourselves. We don't properly *try*; almost nobody really *tries*. The weight loss one is particularly maddening and intriguing. With the right personal resources, it should be a piece of cake, just eat a *little* less, eat more regularly, do that for a long time; yet we know it's not, and one must wonder: why? And this applies too to other self-improvement endeavors: why can't a father lashing out at his kids just stop? Again, due to many complex reasons--but that doesn't make them intractable. For example, one I've seen and done myself is stubbornness--and if we're ashamed of some behavior, defensive mechanisms kick in to change our perception so we don't believe we're doing something wrong.

I will never accept "people can't change"; I will only accept "people are complicated".

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