Intentions on a bookshelf.

Perhaps the saving grace of Amazon is how easy one can stock up on good intentions… with free shipping. (Unless, of course, you consider the exorbitant price you pay annually for Prime. But it’s untoward to speak of such things…).

After reading the latest health “research” from a snippet thumbnailed on your google search homepage, you can order and receive within 3 days another supplement to add to the collection in the cabinet and swear to take every morning along with the bee polllen, mushrooms extracts, and the other 6 you bought two months ago but have since forgotten what they are.

A friend at the gym had a new foam roller. It was green. Yours is purple. You never use your purple one, but if you had a green one you’d definitely roll out your muscles every morning while brushing your teeth. It should arrive by Tuesday. Great!

On the plane you read about a better type of sunscreen. You haven’t touched sunscreen in two decades (which is, without-fail, pointed out by the dermatologist every couple of years), but if you got this new kind there would be no excuses. You’ll change immediately now that it will be in the upstairs bathroom, and of course you’ll wear it daily! Yes, even in the winter… Arrival ETA is Thursday before 9pm. Excellent.

I’m definitely guilty of the supplement hoarding. Ask anyone who’s seen those two shelves in my pantry cabinet. The stack I actually do consume daily now resides on a rack on the back of the cabinet door so I can actually find these select few amongst the masses.

I can’t even find my foam roller to check if it’s purple or green. I actually think it’s pink, although I don’t know why because I’m not really a pink kind of gal. Foam rolling is overrated IMO.

But I am the girl who refuses sunscreen. Do as I say, not as I do. I know myself actually too well to fall for buying another one. It’s just not gonna happen.

But more books? That’s another story.

Like millions of others, I’m constantly seeking to change myself, change my life, create a better future, get myself healthier, be better at x, or not care anymore about y.

Last night I went to cram another new self-improvement book into the bookcase. It came yesterday… earlier than I was promised. Even so, I’d already forgotten I had ordered it two days before. Apparently at that time in my life, an entire 43 hours prior, I was someone who felt the need to learn about attachment theory and re-attach, or maybe just attach, or maybe un-attach myself from someone or something. (I don’t know yet- I haven’t read it yet so the book hasn’t had a chance to fix me or tell me what to do.)

There was ZERO room on the self-improvement top shelf. The second shelf for spiritual-growth was full as well. I could have stuffed it between my husband’s stock market trading books or the gardening books (none of which either of us have read yet, so thankfully at least the gardening books probably aren’t yet obsolete even if they were intended for Georgia and we now live much further north…), but then I’d forget it was there when I wanted to read it since it’s next in line after the other 1,2,3…23,24..27…

When the self-help/change me/learn more/fix life book count reached 50 I stopped counting. I nearly brought up Amazon on my phone to see if I could find a book on how to not get overwhelmed when you have too many books to read and all the covers tell you that you are less-than, not-enough, still-broken.

I found 5 really thick ones taking up a good bit of room, and all having to do with recovering from disordered eating. I’d completely forgotten I had even purchased these several years ago. I’m sure they are very good. If they didn’t have good reviews I wouldn’t have them on my shelf. But to be honest, they didn’t do me any good because I didn’t read them. And I still haven’t. And I’m completely free from all disordered eating patterns.

The time when they could (theoretically) have helped me has passed. Yet I realized that at that time- all those times over all those years- I wasn’t ready to change. So (theoretically), they actually couldn’t have done what I bought them to do anyhow.

The 5 books are now sitting by the door along with a grocery bag full of other bits and pieces to take to Goodwill. And there is now so much room to squeeze in my newly-arrived self-help book that a few books on the top shelf are actually leaning a bit!

The self improvement industry is seeing annual growth of 6%, and had reached well over $13 billion already by 2022. As well as coaching and speakers, a huge percentage of this spend is on self-help books and audiobooks. We’ve become obsessed with the optimization and perfecting of our lives. (Well, first we become obsessed with what’s wrong with our lives, but it quickly progresses to answer-seeking.) ‘Hustle culture’ has rendered work-life balance obsolete, with social influencers sharing their productivity hacks and “that girl” days. (“Those girls” don’t have any problems- it’s why they get so much done before breakfast and journal in colored gel pens btw.)

Self-improvement books are filling our shelves, promising to teach us secrets that will make us wealthy by working less, completely revamp our physique, develop a perfectly productive life, and create the lives of Hallmark characters complete with the perfect house and perfect fence. (And no bad attachments, or un-attachments, or whatever the new book says I need or don’t need.)

But here’s the thing… don’t you think that if billions of people were actually changed by the over 100,000 self-help titles available, or are going to be changed by the estimated 15,000 new ones that wilL come out this year, that, as a whole, we would all be happier, more successful, definitely more fit, and all so confident that we verge on cocky and need to read a book to tone it down a bit?

With the world accelerating faster than the speed of light, trends changing, entire industries being replaced by robots, and creativity being snuffed out by ChatGPT, it’s of little wonder that we all constantly feel so inadequate, broken, insufficient, and overwhelmed. So we live in constant scramble to fix everything perceived to be not good enough.

But change can’t occur in overwhelm.

Despite “Multitasker” being widely accepted as a proper pronoun, with productivity and efficiency (read the book 4 Hour Workweek anyone?) apparently being THE key to success and lifelong happiness, intentional “becoming” is actually a really slow, methodical, and sometimes incredibly challenging process.

In a society where comparison is the standard, and nothing about who and how you are ever seems to be “enough”, it is easy to intend to challenge every aspect all at once… But maturing is an assiduous undertaking. And the brain can only handle one thing at a time. Like a child with too many toys to choose from with which to play, if you have too many self-help books to read on your life’s shelf, chances are, you will not read a single one.

Furthermore, intentions are not solutions.

Hear me… there is absolutely nothing wrong with good intentions. I buy a lot of them on Amazon. And I mean very well every time- not just with the purchased kinds, but with all the kinds. All change starts with intention. But true intention requires a foremost a fundamental desire to change.

It took me a really long time to understand this concept. Intellectually I valued growth, and therefore change, if it led to said growth. But in my heart I was/am typically very averse to change. I generally live a very far cry away from actually desiring it because, usually, change is hard. Sometimes really, really hard. Far more characteristic of me (and you, no doubt) is to desire the outcome of change, but not the actual change part. James may strongly instruct that we “consider our trials with great joy…”, knowing that the outcome of the struggles undertaken will be fruitful. But knowing this- even believing it is true- doesn’t equate to desiring what is entailed.

I remember when I first recognized this discrepancy in my thinking and had to take a hard look at whether or not I was willing to do whatever was asked of me in life. Not too seldom, asking for God to calm our storms is because we don’t want to take responsibility for our part in creating the gusts that knock us about or have to change ourselves. We just want the situation, and whatever gails are blowing, to go away.

Just like the little bee bashing into the window in my post “A bee and a window”, I continually asked My Heavenly Father to change me and help me keep my good intentions. But I didn’t want to change.

It was not until I realized that I had to dig beneath the fairly shallow requests (even massive requests can be shallow) and ask Him to give me the desire to change, so that I could actually motivate myself to do what I knew to do (“feel shit, do it anyway”) that we began to make some real progress.

* Warning to my readers- Be careful and prepared when praying to desire change. This generally leads to discontentment with shortcomings, uncanny ability to clearly see flaws, added tension in our tidy worlds, and sometimes rather abrupt awakenings to areas in our lives where we are not being all we are called to be, as these are all catalysts for growth used when us mere-mortal humans are incapable of maturity based solely on wisdom and righteous pursuit.*

When you truly desire to change deep within, and at whatever cost, it’s not often far behind that answers and directions reveal themselves.

Or do they?

Perhaps answers were there all along and you just couldn’t see them because you didn’t want to pay attention yet. Subtle and not-so subtle guides have always been trying to steer you in the right direction. Think about how the body always trys instinctively to navigate back towards equilibrium and health, cautioning you when you mess with it’s chi. Nagging whispers guilt you when you reach for *fill in your go-to crutch*. A tiny spark of courage showed up when you needed her most, but insecurity stuffed her back into hiding. Wise words from your therapist at one point a few years ago suddenly sink in and only now make sense, and a verse you memorized as a child decades ago but found hard to believe all these years reminds you of who you are… just as you are.

No book was going to change the relationship I was engaged in with food and give me a new, healthy one. That is, until I wanted to let go of the one I was in. A new gym bag (delivered for “free” in 2 days, now including Sundays) won’t give you washboard abs. If you want to do sit-ups, do sit ups- you don’t need a new gym bag. And learning all about how to have courage will not give you courage. Doing something afraid is having courage. So, go do something you are afraid of.

Feel free to continue to make good intentions, especially if the New Year’s ones are long since forgotten and certainly never started. And feel free to purchase a few (more) on Amazon with your Prime account. Intentions are great. They mean you care.

But mankind progressed just fine before the time of influencers, bookstores, and guides for how to think, feel, act, and even breathe (no kidding). When you are actually truly ready to change, you already have what it takes to make baby steps of progress. And when you do reach out for help, or read a self-help book, it may actually finally make a difference- by simply revealing to you what you’ve had within you all along, and by showing you steps you are now finally ready and willing to take.