6
and carrying out self-help plans (both in your own life and with others-
-friends, family, or a support group), you should be able to:
1.
quickly analyze any problem into meaningful parts for better
understanding, and
2.
select, master, and carry out appropriate self-help treatment
methods, and
3.
assess your progress and make modifications to your plan if it
isn't working.
In fact, I believe a person of average intelligence, with this
knowledge and practice, will be able to develop self-improvement
plans that are as good (judged by experts as "probably effective") as
treatment plans developed by professionals (psychiatrists,
psychologists, social workers, school psychologists, counselors, etc.).
It is an empirical question. I won't guarantee these results, but if the
average person believes he/she can do it (and does the work), I think
they can. Many of us inflate the ability of others and sell ourselves
short.
Lastly, a self-help introductory text should be updated
every three to five years to include the latest research and
techniques for self-improvement. It should contain a wide variety
of self-help methods; one person's way of self-helping may be
totally rejected by another person facing the same problem; we
each find our own way. Such a book is a massive undertaking, but
a wonderful extra bonus would befall us all if self-help books
encouraged researchers to develop and publish more effective self-
control or self-insight techniques.
Finding what you need in this book
I have done my best to make this big book user-friendly. I don't
want you to get bogged down in the first chapter, in technical stuff, or
in topics that don't interest you. Therefore, the book has been written
so you can skip around, finding the parts that address your concerns
and interests today. A search engine was added to help you. Of
course, you can read the book straight through if you want to (or are
assigned reading that way).
As you can tell by looking at the table of contents, the remainder
of this chapter provides basic facts or things you need to know about
self-helping in general. Chapter 2 gives you a system for
understanding your problem situations better, and then it guides you
through explicit steps for devising self-change plans and trying them
out. The system isn't amazing, fantastic, or ingenious; the system is
just reasonable. The system isn't fast, simple, and easy; human
problems aren't that way. But human problems and this self-help
system aren't impossibly complicated, either.
Before deciding on major changes in your life, you need to decide
on your life goals, i.e. what you want to become, what your ideals,
