Shelf-Help Books: Stop Doing that Sh*t

For those of you who don’t know, I absolutely adore shelf-help books. I find them relaxing to read and sometimes I even learn something pretty awesome about people (which I can use in my writing) or about myself (which improves my life). I occasionally blog about these books because I want somewhere to get my thoughts out of my head.

Right now I’m reading, Stop Doing That SH*T by Gary John Bishop. It’s a book on self-sabotage and how to avoid it in life. I’ve gotten to the first of the three saboteurs, the assumptions I have about myself. I haven’t read this section yet, but that’s where I am in the book.

What I want to talk about is what I’ve read so far and maybe speculate about what I’m going to read.

Bishop’s primary premise is pretty simple. You’re born malleable, but as you get older you become less and less malleable until you are set in stone and often the things we are set in stone about cause us pain and suffering. Hence the title. His secondary thesis is based on the idea that we get some small comfort out of the things we do. We basically get a ‘high’ out of saving ourselves from the problems we ourselves create.

In short, we create a life then we sabotage it, save ourselves once again, and are on a never ending hamster wheel of crap because of it.

I haven’t gotten far enough into the book to see how he says we should go about getting off the wheel, but I can speculate at this point. I’ve read to the introduction of the three saboteurs: stone thinking about myself, the others in my life, and my life itself. I think it’s in that order. Anyway, one of the things I assume he’s going to cover is how to change one’s innate perception of self. How I’m not sure; however, he will cover that probably in the next section.

What I like about the Gary John Bishop books (He also wrote Unf*ck Yourself) is they really do pull no punches. He tells you what he thinks, you can like it or lump it. I tend to like it, but I deal with pseudo-confrontational pretty well. I also enjoyed Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Curse words in the title of shelf-help books aren’t necessary to my enjoyment, but they don’t detract from it for me. I know they do for some people.

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