One of the many things that sets man apart from animals is his desire to improve. Unlike animals that can live the same life day after day and year after year, man craves change — change for the better. From the times when we discovered fire and invented the wheel till now, when we re creating cell phones, tablets and millions of other gadgets to revamp the communication scene as we know it, ours has been an uphill climb towards improvement. Today, self improvement — also commonly referred to as self help — means self-taught intellectual, economic or emotional improvement brought about by initiating changes in thinking patterns and consequentially, behavior.
There are various ways in which one can start off with self improvement. The first and most obvious way would be to read about it. Self help material is easily accessible — it can be found online, or in printed publications such as books, newspapers or magazines. Another way would be to join a support group. Support groups are associations where people from similar backgrounds meet and discuss strategies to cope with certain problems and help bring about improvement. The members of such groups help and extend support to one another to accomplish personal goals on the path towards self improvement.
Self help is one of the most marketable concepts of the modern age. The self help industry in the United States alone was worth over $9 billion in the year 2006 — it s up to anyone s imagination what it must be worth today. This demand is only likely to rise in the future, as life gets more challenging with time. With people expected to accomplish more and more within a limited period of 24 hours, they resort to the self help industry to help them cope. And self help information can be accessed through nearly any medium — you can choose between books, audio or video files or CDs, healing institutes or groups, mail-order catalogs, infomercials, stress management or weight-loss programs or even seminars from motivational speakers.
An industry that has grown at such a phenomenal pace to such astronomical proportions, though, is sure to attract its fair share of criticism. Several scholars are of the opinion that most people who claim to help people are misleading the general public. Many intellectuals believe that in the case of self help books, supply influences demand instead of the other way around — that the more people refer to them, the more they grow to depend on them. This leads to the need growing into an addiction rather than a partnership to facilitate individual growth. Whatever the criticisms surrounding self improvement claims, though, there is no denying that for now, this industry is here to stay.