Outsourcing Reflections (or keeping the Tony's in business)

i wasn't expecting to get an inspiration for a reflection from a joel stein article. after all, stein doesn't really do life lessons and all those stuff that make jessica zafra cringe.

But in his aug2 TIME article, he talked about his conversation with this guy tony robbins, apparently a biggie in the self-help industry. i have nothing at all against self-help* but i didn't think tony was the kind of guy the likes of stein would be excited to write about (at least not in a serious, mindful way).

so it was kind of a surprise treat to read his article about a chief purveyor of self-help (was probably instructed to do so) and their discussion on, whatelse, understanding and improving thyself. despite being written with the humor and sarcasm i read him for, stein's article, for the first time, got me into some serious thinking.

like:
if happiness is when your life conditions are the same as your blueprint, what is my LC and BP? how do i know my BP? do i even believe in this theory?
what are my paradigms: what do i believe about myself and my circumstance?
If tony is about understanding and helping, what am i about? If the things stein values the most are significance and variety, what are mine? how are my values and self-image affecting my decisions, interactions, relationships?

then i asked myself why i bother asking myself these things. is it because there's always an opportunity to become better and i indeed long for my better self? because before i can help myself become better i need to understand myself?

ten minutes into my reflection, i was lost in a maze of questions. it got heady and nauseous so i emerged out of it even without getting any answers.

i then just wished tony would do it for me the way he did it for stein ("You'll be less critical of others if you stop believing that you lucked into a gig in which you seem funny only because you're in the world's least funny magazine without the word science in the title.")

then it got me thinking again: would an external opinion on who I am be more acurate or important than my own? Probably not, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't bother getting it. (Hello? juhari's window)

Perhaps there's really no such thing as honest-to-goodness self-help, because what others think about us also helps, others like our family/friends and even experts. If self-help was really possible, Tony and his cohorts will be out of business.

(see how i drifted in my reflections? it was supposed to be about self-discovery but i ended up questioning the concept of self-help. i say we all need guided reflections. tony, hello?)




* on the contrary, and i say this with all the courage i can muster, i might actually be an SH junkie. and it's not funny