Self Help 101: Self-Reinvention

Note: This is a series of awkwardly written articles by the maker of Self Help Radio about popular self-help topics because he's getting all self-help-y after many years of mocking self-help with the title of his radio show. People, it's bad.

You are unhappy. So what? So am I. What do I care? But what if I do care? Can I speak to you in generalities that may soothe your inner turmoil with only slightly concealed condescension? Is that what you want? All right then!

Imagine you have a nice house, or any permanent place to stay at all. & maybe a relationship although you're pretty sure your so-called "partner" has cheated on you, even once with someone who works at a bike shop. A bike shop! Do you spend a lot of time daydreaming about being someone else, like someone whose antipsychotic drugs work most of the time & who can afford a semi-automatic weapon?

Whoa there Gloomy Gus! What if you're actually projecting into the world your own unhappiness? Wouldn't you just continue to be sad, even after you got a nice Walther P99 & figured out how to load it? Of course you would. Because it's not the world you hate: it's yourself. It's time for what we in the self-help trade call "re-invention."

Here are five ways to re-invent yourself that I just made up but which totally sound like they'd work:

1) Start talking in an English accent. Don't be all goofy & attempt to say things like British people would - like "telly" for "television" or "biscuits" for "food" - but instead use the limited vocabulary you've always had. It's not an affectation; it's a re-invention. (This could work with other accents, too, although an Australian accent would be annoying.)

2) Think like a jogger. This is handy because it doesn't require you to act like a jogger, which involves running & sweating & long hours wasted running & sweating. What does it mean to think like a jogger? I don't know, I'm not a jogger. But some joggers seem to have it all together.

3) Realize that you are powerless over your addiction, that your life had become unmanageable. Oh, no, wait, that's the first step of the 12 Step Program. Sorry about that.

4) If you find yourself often fleeing in terror, see if there are other emotions in which you can flee instead. Fleeing in amusement, for example, is easier on your heart & might actually be charming. Fleeing in hatred might have saved your last relationship, or at the very least prolonged it long enough so you'd have a date for your cousin's wedding.

5) Try a new salad dressing. What could it hurt?

As you can imagine, there are many web sites & books on self-re-invention. None of them work but mine. I know, some of them say the same thing on their jackets, but who are you going to believe, some person who's taken the time to write a whole book full of ways to re-invent yourself they've made up or someone who has a show called Self Help Radio?

I thought so.