What Does "Self Help" Mean?

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True happiness is a byproduct of meaning and purpose.

Maintaining meaning and purpose depends on remaining true to the most important thing about us.

Personal power is the ability to act in your long-term best interests and stay true to your deeper values.

Happiness is great, but it's elusive and fleeting on its own. True happiness is a byproduct of meaning and purpose.

Below are the crucial elements we must cultivate for a life of meaning and purpose.

The Most Important Thing About You

Here's a question about meaning and purpose that we must ask ourselves:

What is the most important thing about me?

What is the most important thing about me?

It's not an easy question to answer, in part because there are many important things about us. Still, we must know what is the most important.

Is it a personal quality, like honesty, integrity, industry, friendliness, ambition?

Is it a personal talent or gift, such as intelligence, creativity, skills, intuition, street-smarts?

Is it work accomplishments and successes?

Or is it love and protection of your family?

Would you want your tombstone to list:

What you gave to the world or what you took from it?

What you improved or what you made worse?

What you criticized or what you appreciated?

What you created or what you destroyed?

When we violate the most important things about us, we experience guilt, shame, and anxiety. If we blame those feelings on someone, they become resentment, anger, impatience, envy, or general misery.

Maintaining meaning and purpose depends on remaining true to the most important thing about us.

Personal power is the ability to act in your long-term best interests, while remaining true to your deeper values. Emotional power is using inherently short-term emotions for your long-term best interests, which is no easy task.

Most self-help advice on coping with negative emotions makes it almost impossible to act in your long-term best interests. They falsely describe emotion-coping as binary:

Suppressing is clearly bad for physical and psychological health. This fact has led to a cult of feelings:

Every feeling needs expression! Feel your feelings, that's what they're for!

Every feeling needs expression!

Feel your feelings, that's what they're for!

For one thing, we can’t literally express what we’re feeling. Expression of emotions amplifies and magnifies them, decontextualizes them, changes them, much like the observer effect in physics. Expressions of strong feelings impair reality-testing, create temporary narcissism, and make it impossible to see other perspectives or any kind of nuance.

The binary view of emotions ignores their primary function, which is to send actions signals to the organs and muscle groups of the body. They prepare us for action—mostly approach, avoid, attack. For example, compassion prepares us to approach; anger and resentment prepare us to attack—devalue, warn, threaten, intimidate, or harm mentally or physically.

What Does "Self Help" Mean?

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The alternative to express or suppress is to regulate—change perceptions of self and/or others. Emotions don’t just happen to us; they result from how we’re perceiving ourselves in the environment at the moment.

Goodwill is expressing friendly, helpful, or cooperative attitudes. Possibly because cooperation was and is necessary for survival, goodwill generates meaning and purpose.

Meaning, Purpose, Responsibility

Consider what motivates most of your behavior. Is it:

The top four motivations are short-term experiences or perceptions. Responsibility is more durable, rising from values that shape our lives. Irresponsible behavior causes guilt, shame, anxiety, resentment, or depression. Responsible behavior and attitudes feel more authentic and yield longer-term well-being.

We become adults the moment that being protective is more important than being protected. Responsibility gives life meaning and purpose.

Do You Love Yourself?

Devaluing others keeps us in devalued states. When in devalued states, it's hard to like ourselves. Too much devaluing relegates meaning and purpose to a desire for retribution or revenge.

Take a moment to think of adults you have known who are lovable.

You didn’t think of people who only care about getting their needs met. You probably thought of people who are compassionate and kind, whose humane values are bigger than their egos. Acting on humane values eliminates the guilt and shame that inhibit genuine love.

Think of what makes you like yourself better:

Improving a situation or blaming it on others.

Valuing someone or devaluing someone.

Judging or trying to understand.

Compassion or resentment.

Showing kindness to others or looking out for number one.

Connection to loved ones or stonewalling them.

Appreciating loved ones or complaining about them.

Protecting loved ones or making them feel bad or afraid.

Our behavior choices should always make us like ourselves better. It’s difficult to maintain meaning and purpose when they don’t.

© Psychology Today