I recently read a bunch of popular self-help books to see what the fuss was all about. Here's my takeaway from it.

- While all these books contain some nuggets of wisdom, I found a lot of them were wanting to tell me how to be and act and that, to me, is a recipe for unhappiness in itself. Very few of these books stressed to be yourself and I found that to be a huge omission. - Listening to others also seems to a key theme and rings true to me from my experiences as well. If you look someone in the eyes and engage with them you can get a long way into a relationship without ever having to say much at all. This won't work with people of substance though because they will feel distrustful if you make a habit of taking and not giving. It's not something I recommend to anyone really wanting to form a good relationship with someone. - Most of it all boiled down to achieving things equating with contentment and satisfaction. Whether that was picking up that girl/s, doing that weekend project or succeeding in your career, it was all the same theme. I can see why video games and, in particular, MMO's have become that crack for people looking for an achievement fix. - Most of the advice here is rooted in eastern religious doctrines and philosophies. You could easily substitute most of them for books of this type and be better off in your time spent. Listen to Alan Watts for few hours and you have a lot of these authors pegged. - I can't help shake the feeling that the type of people who read these books are the type of people who just aren't naturally inclined to think the way the books want them to and therefore will become, as one book put it; self-help junkies. - If I had my time again I would probably re-read Lord of the Rings but I did have a lot of fun applying some of the techniques to real life situations and did learn a bit. Hopefully I don't forget it too quickly.