Throttle Your Inner Child

The following points are abstracted from the book The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall. With thanks to Eugene Craig Campbell for drawing it to my attention.


* Self-esteem: Highly overrated. In fact, research shows that high self-esteem relates to health problems and stress. Moreover, mass murderers, gang leaders, and even playground bullies are distinguishable not by their low opinion of themselves but instead by their inflated self-esteem and disregard for others.

* Guilt: Highly underrated -- and the only way to identify and make needed changes in behavior that is harming others. In fact, research shows that the happiest, healthiest people are often guilty worriers.

* "Learning to love yourself": loving us is someone else's job, and loving someone else is a prerequisite to the right to love ourselves.Putting ourselves first makes us contemptible, both to others and to ourselves.

* Being "Judgmental": making moral judgments about others -- and ourselves – is essential to mental and social well-being as wellas spiritual and moral growth.

* Throttle Your Inner Child: Your "outer elder" is more important. Self-help wrongly embraces the idea that infancy is more important than any other stage of life.

* Childhood experiences have almost nothing to do with problems in adulthood.

* Your "limitless potential": Sorry, you can't "do anything you put your mind to" -- and pursuing goals that are truly out of reach will only make you miserable.


Duh! Silly old Christianity had it right all along.