MY GREATEST GIFT (AND I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH ONE OR TWO) IS MY NATURAL POSITIVE ATTITUDE

Plenty of moments and things in life are teachable. Piano. Etiquette. Languages. Behaviors. Some modes of thought.

And some are not.

You can’t teach speed or power. You can’t teach real and pure quickness. Or jumping ability.

Nor can you teach a naturally positive attitude: God-given, inborn, unlearned, innate.

Genealogy has something to say here, but only something.

I mean I know plenty of people who come from one depressed parent and one who is or was not. Or even two. And they are happy — naturally, with no aforethought.

(In fairness, some aren’t).

They instinctively err on the side of the “positive” — hopefully after assessing the situation at hand but not always — and then move forward to address whatever is next.

What a gift!!!

Although words don’t do this justice, let’s give it a whirl.

Attitude is everything. Good or bad, it influences and impacts all that we do. How we act, how we think and even what we say.

A lousy attitude is like a cancer eating away at your core until there is nothing left. A shell with no substance is what you have and along the way you find yourself either with those just like you or alone.

If nobody’s around it’s because this condition is infectious and contagious and most would rather not become afflicted. Those who share your attitudinal bent define the expression, “misery loves company.”

But even they disappear eventually because they’re up to their necks in their own quicksand.

Poor or negative attitudes have been instrumental in the birth, development and real/virtual explosion of the “self-help” industry which generates about $10 billion per year in the United States alone.

Soaring revenues are sustained and grow (6.1% average annual growth rate projection by Marketdata Enterprise Inc.) due to the high recidivism rate associated with the industry at large; it is widely documented that the most likely buyer of a self-help book for example is the same person who purchased one 18 months ago.

Is this a testament to the value (or lack of same) of the books or to the glaring need of the public?

To both probably.

Regardless, the future is as rosy as the past has been prolific for self-help and all that it touches.

The New Statesman’s Barbara Gunnell concurs when she observes that “never has an age been so certain that it deserves not just freedom from distress, but positive well-being… [people’s] belief in their right to feel good [represents] a lucrative market.”

Challenging this need, Algis Valiunas cuts to the heart of the matter like a warm knife through butter in his biting commentary, “The Science of Self-Help” (The New Atlantis) remarking edgily that “this is the scientific fruit of those who consider themselves not only the wisest of our time but evidently the wisest of all time.”

He describes the teaching as such as “sensible, unexceptional. It is also obvious and insipid. Accept imperfection and pain. Do some jogging. Slow down and count your breaths.”

Valiunas further argues against the assumption underlying and permeating the demand for self-help which is that the desired end-result is attainable to all.

It is not although as in most areas, years of hard work and deliberate practice can lead to self-improvement.

Soberly but perhaps realistically Valiunas points out that “beauty, size, strength, health, energy, disposition, verbal or spatial or mathematical or emotional intelligence, ability in music or painting or oratory simply are not parceled out equally — and in any chosen activity, not even a single-minded devotion or expert training and wholesome diet can ensure that all will come out even in the end. Natural inequalities will always make for differences between one person and the next, and these differences will always be cause for unhappiness.”

“Always?”

Not necessarily.

Yet the books keep flying off the shelves.

The fact that the self-help industry is such a roaring success purely from a business (and not a success rate) standpoint in spite of its inherent problems speaks volumes to the nature of attitude and self-perception.

The most glaring of these problems, according to Mark Manson (markmanson.net) are as follows:

“Self-help reinforces perceptions of inferiority and shame”;

“Self-help is often yet another form of avoidance”;

“Self-help marketing creates unrealistic expectations”;

“Self-help is (usually) not scientifically validated”; and

“Self-help is a contradiction.”

These platforms and positions belong to one man who has researched the topic and they contain many valid points.

But it is clear that the ability or inability to self-accept is the river that runs through it all.

Shame, unworthiness, anxiety, neuroticism, guilt, self-loathing…feed into the self-help world and drive it.

But what Manson realizes, “is that the first and most fundamental step to growth is to admit that you’re okay as you are…It’s the prime belief, and by its very definition, it’s something that can’t be given to you by someone else, it must be reached on your own.”

A blatant contradiction of the self-help concept to be sure and a perfect segue to attitude.

Manson contends that once you accept the fact that you do not need someone else’s help or counsel to become a good person, it is then and only then that their advice is of value and can become useful to you.

The point is to figure it out for yourself; he rhetorically wonders “why anyone else [would] have the answers to your life but you.”

Fair enough.

If no one can help you but yourself and no one can be happy for you, then you must rely on your self-perception, self-confidence and attitude to pull you ashore.

You must rely on yourself.

And if a natural positive attitude is not in your toolbox, a plain old positive attitude will do just fine.

It can take you to the moon and back.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in November 2016.]