SELF-HELP-INDUSTRY SOLUTION’S FALL SHORT; THE FIX?
SELF-HELP SOLUTIONS AREN’T WORKING FOR MOST
Everyone dreams of becoming more competent, valued and helpful. It’s in our DNA. Sapiens couldn’t have upset the balance of nature without our -curiosity, agency, collaborative ingenuity, and kindness.
Here’s a paradox. Even though our modern world has increasing conveniences, tools and personal possibilities, negative health trends are increasing in all first world countries– especially amongst young adults 16-25.
No problem! These unhappiness needs are not being met by booming sales for the self-help industry which includes three new, notable categories:
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The “science of happiness” (since about 2000)
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Health-metric wearables taking off with the FitBit Classic in 2009, which has expanded into an anti-aging solution industry.
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And, meditation/mindfulness apps taking off in 2010-12 with smartphones.
But, these wellness “solutions” (often “science-proven”) have not turned around the negative trend stats for:
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Obesity, anxiety, loneliness, and depression. (GLP-1 meds are helping obesity, although not addressing the underlying causes for the epidemic.)
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Academic achievement scores.
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Employable skill-deficits for both the knowledge-economy and US trade-skills
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Enlightenment in either the spiritual or secular, flourishing sense
It turns out, wellness solutions won’t buy you mutually caring, trustworthy, collaborative relationships. Nor will apps do the hard work of the mastery process to skill up in any chosen way. Every desirable habit or skill has a big pool of aspirants. Many vow to achieve, but then quit creating a funnel effect down to single-digit, achievers. Martial arts dojo and New Year’s resolution stats illustrate this funnel effect:
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For every 100 white belt enlistees at a dojo, only 1% get to black belt.
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Only 6% of New Year’s resolution aspirants achieve their typically simple, health habit/goal on a sustainable basis. Most drop out by mid-February.
Many self-help solutions have value, but exhorting - “just do it” - does not suffice for most. What does? What’s missing? I offer a comprehensive 8-step, process of processes for achieving mastery in an ever-improving, sustainable way. Could this framework help to increase funnel achievement percentages for:
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Learning how to learn and master new skills on a person’s own for life…
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Increasing personal agency and self-efficacy to specifically:
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Have good health habits.
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Have greater Emotional IQs to co-create mutually - trustworthy, collaborative and supportive relationships.
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Learn, unlearn and relearn occupational skills to counter the accelerating job-skill obsolescence rate to secure a lifetime of gainful employment. (Hello AI!)
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Move gratefully through the stages of the “adult development models” to reach - generative, practically-wise, and joyful - senior years.
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Experience along the mastery journeys greater amounts of “spiritual energy” from: love, awe, wonder, beauty appreciation, gratitude, forgiveness, altruism, and self-transcending relationships with others, nature, and even the cosmos.
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Achieve ever greater levels of enlightenment (mastery) as each of us might choose.
8 STEPS FOR MASTERING THE PROCESS OF MASTERY
Here is my prototype -1.0 for an 8-step process that can be applied in both a linear and situational way. (Improvement suggestions are welcomed!) What follows is a brief description of each step, for deeper coverage of each step see the last section.
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Brain Management 101. Brain science discoveries have accelerated over the past 40 years. Key concept: due to neuroplasticity, all skill development requires “deliberate practice” to develop new neural circuits that enable excellent “unconscious competence” or spontaneous, habitual excellence. What must be done to optimize the formation of the new circuits?
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Wake Up: Many are in denial about their challenges or victims who believe they can’t act due to external oppressive forces. But, once denial ends, the first skill to master is: meditation to become mindful to then become self-aware and start to grow self-knowledge. Mindful self-awareness is a foundational skill needed for doing all of the following steps.
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Step 3: Reduce Brakes: We all have motives for wanting to achieve, but we also have brakes for not acting. Like: limiting false beliefs; automatic negative thoughts (ANTs); trauma caused toxic shame; etc. It is best to first release these brakes before we then…
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…Grow Agency: the proactive, can-do energy to act on developing chosen – habits, skills and eventually composite skills like emotional and wisdom IQs. This will require a “growth mindset” and a tuning up of a maximum number of positive, intrinsic and extrinsic motives.
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Explore Skills, Life Design: with can-do energy and curiosity we can then test many possible interests to then choose a skill(s) to master. This process can be helped by wise advisors who can help with “Designing Your Life” skills, which were unneeded until recent overwhelming possibilities combined with uncertainties. (See book by same title by Evans and Burnett, published 2016). Life Design then leads into…
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…Planning and Teaming-up for each chosen mastery journey. Few get to “black belt” at anything on their own. What coaches, motivated peer pals, structural and environmental disciplines do we need to get hooked on a mastery path?
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Mastery to a Sufficient Level of Excellence: The art and science of mastering skills enables the growth through stages of competence. To blend two competency-stage models.
a. novice/unconscious incompetence. You don’t know what you don’t know
b. advance beginner/conscious incompetence
c. proficient/conscious competence.
d. Expert/unconscious competence
e. Elite mastery. Automatic, habitual excellence.
For modernity’s challenges, kids (K-12+) need to be formally taught - how to learn and master skills on their own for life. As a fallback, might -experts, self-help gurus, parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors – who are strong in one or two of my 8 steps collaborate to fill this educational blind-spot?
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Serve the greater good. Once we have some talent, then we can help at least all of those who are behind us on the same path. Our DNA evolved to be naturally altruistic and care for the next generation as our elders did for us. When most of us witness an act of “moral beauty” – i.e. someone does something courageous, generous and/or kind for another in distress – we have an emotion known as “moral elevation” coupled with the wish to be as noble if given the opportunity. And, generally when we help another, we get a neurochemical “helper’s high”.
APPLICATIONS FOR THE 8-STEP MODEL
This 8-step framework can explain several things.
FIRST: the framework can shed light on the growing Know-How, but Can’t-Do Gap. The “science-based” knowledge of - what we should do, why, and how - is burgeoning and typically for free on the net. Because so few have the (intuitive) 8-step-skill set, what’s the growing gap between the self-starters and the non-starters? Self-learners are skilling up and getting more education and better job security and income. They could be on their own virtuous, upward spiral of achievement. The Can’t-Do’s often know what they should do, but can’t on their own. They subsequently feel: guilty; perhaps victimized; and even envious of the Can-Doers. They risk getting into a downward, vicious spiral of despair. But, they can temporarily escape into distracting, passive, negative dopamine entertainment (or digital gambling) on their phones 24/7. But, this only adds to their longer-term despair.
Our 24/7/365 digital engagement world has turbo-charged a Mathew Effect (25:29): the rich (in skillful capabilities) will continue to get richer and the poor will get poorer (in mental health). If Can’t-Do voters vastly outnumber the Can-Do ones, then won’t populist politics and polarization continue to grow?
SECOND: We can now understand why so few achieve the following levels of excellence.
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Self-actualization, then self-transcendence (Maslow guessed less than 1%)
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Reach Robert Kegan’s final stage of Self-transforming Mind” (about 1%)
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Reach Lawerence Kohlberg’s Stage 6 (Universal Ethical Principles): 2%
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Reach Susanne Cook-Greuter’s 10th, final stage – Unitive (.5%)
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Stages 7-9 in total – about 9%
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Become a Modern Polymath (under 1%)
Most strivers don’t get to these levels, because they are driven by obsessive, perfectionistic needs to please their caregivers’ values and expectations. They are strong with skill mastery, but short on mindfulness, self-awareness and therefore self-knowledge.
The rare, super-helpers to society are at the narrow end of a giant funnel of humanity. At the top are too many Can’t-Do Dreamers. But the path to increasing excellence and maturity (step 7) is long and arduous with dramatic drop-out rates. Consider stats for -“health is the first wealth”- New Year’s Resolution:
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About 8-9% achieve their goal by year end
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6% maintain their result beyond a year
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23% quit the first week; 43% by January 31st
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80% have abandoned their quest by mid-February
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And how many don’t “wake up” to even bother with a health resolution?
If the 8-step-framwork were more widely understood and applied, could society achieve greater percentage numbers at each step down the funnel? Wouldn’t it be great if, for example, 5% made it the final stages of the adult development models above?
THIRD: Most science-based – researchers, experts, self-professed-guru popularizers-- for achieving ever greater levels of achievement and happiness must express their advice in one of three ways:
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Go narrow and deep to the living edge of one or two-contiguous steps (of the 8) to ask next questions to research. Great for experts, but not average folks.
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Try to popularize their general insights for a few contiguous steps with superficial suggestions for some of the other necessary steps.
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Or, theoretically collaborate with experts across all 8 steps to create a holistic curriculum to train certified coaches to help the legions who can’t do it all on their own.
Prof. “Richie” Davidson is attempting all three options. Davidson is a renowned neuroscientist and psychologist on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He pioneered putting fMRI, skull caps on meditating monks, and he’s been publishing breakthrough brain-discoveries since 1979 (step 1: brain management).
Two of his published books illustrate options 1 and 2+:
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Option one: The Emotional Life of Your Brain (2012);
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Option two+: Born to Flourish (2026)
“Emotional Life” shares research on how the brain creates the emergence of emotions: fascinating for experts. But his “Flourish” book is the most impressive attempt I’ve encountered to go broad on the most steps with accessible language (and a practice tool) for the general public. His overall objective is to help us: “rewire our brains” (step 1) to ultimately “flourish” (step 8).
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His best coverage is for steps 1 to 4: brain, wake, brakes, agency.
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For brakes and agency, he has created a 4-step tool: “awareness, connection, insight, purpose”.
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He skips 5 and 6 (explore, life design, team up)
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For step 7 (the mastery path), he has created an app and a supportive web site at Humin | Science-Based Wellbeing Tools & Programs.
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And, at the site, you will see that he isn’t finished. His team is collaborating to offer a train-the-trainer curriculum: an option 3 endeavor. The trainers could then help with all of the steps (especially step 6 – team up) for those who need help at local levels.
I give the “flourish” book 5-stars, because it is the first to be so broad-stepped with the best follow-through support tools and forthcoming coaching development effort. Most popular, self-help, books share achievement stories and tactics with a closing “just do it”. But, self-help junkies can’t.
FOURTH: we can now understand why self-help addicts keep attending live motivational events and/or consuming “be your best self” books without results. The crowd is composed of self-selected, hopeful, wannabees which provides its own buzz. Then, a professional “dare to be great” promoter lifts the crowd higher – like alter calls. Most attendees vow to change starting tomorrow. But, each one goes back to their quotidian life which is loaded with – distractions, negative triggers, and closest, naysaying relationships. Like New Year resolutions, best intentions fizzle. But, memories of the live-audience high will keep them subscribing to every new guru fix that comes along – if just for the event high. (AI prompt: define what a self-help junkie is)
FIFTH: The 8-step framework can be expanded both vertically up for level of mastery and down for degree of sophisticated depth. Once you understand the 8 linear steps, you can score yourself on how competent you are at each step on the up axis. Are you, by example, a black-belt, second-degree and ascending at step 2 mindfulness? Or, rate yourself by the competency stages in “step 7 mastery” above.
Then, going vertically down we can assess an expert’s level of depth for each step they are addressing by using Dreyfus levels again. Does the publication or lecture offer shallow, populist guidelines or dive deep to living-edge research for step/silo experts.
DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS FOR EACH STEP?
I’m planning on next writing specific blogs for each of the 8-steps. So, stay tuned to my website at
merrifield.com.
CONCLUSIONS
Modernity is stressing out increasing numbers of society due to “evolutionary mismatches” and consumer capitalism that preys on these mismatches. (See my essay on these mismatches). Answers for these challenges are all over the net for self-learners. But, too few are not curious enough to explore these solutions and/or have enough agency and self-efficacy to embrace the solutions. It would be great if schools K-12+ taught all 8 of the framework steps. But, while we wait for such a new curriculum to emerge, we need more – parents, teachers, coaches, employers, mentors, and experts – to grok the 8-steps and fill the gap for their charges.