What is your opinion of self-help books and why?

I’ll never forget the first time (and last) I read a self-help text. It was in the form of a pamphlet my grandmother comfortably slid in front of me as I was lunching at her house. Only after biting into my savory turkey and cheese sandwich (extra cheese, mayo to all the edges, yes-I’m-going-to-eat-it-all) did I realized what I was looking at. Dr. Phil’s 10 Necessary Steps to Losing Weight and Keeping It Off. Although my memory is a little fuzzy in regards to what happened next, I remember getting a phone call from my mom later wanting to know “why is grandma so upset?” I carefully (and by carefully, I mean I left out all the colorful words I may have used with grandma) explained why one might take offense to being fed such hinting material while eating. You see, each week grandma used different ammunition in order to get me to lose weight, based on what material she read most recently; “no white at night” or “smaller portions, smaller waste”, and my personal favorite “loving carbs is hating your body”. Although my grandma loves me very much (and I her) and has nothing but the best of intentions, all kinds of self-help have since become haunting reminders of what others think I should be doing. I won’t say that I am completely satisfied with my life and all things as they stand today, nor should people always refuse help that is offered them. In fact, I consider it my own personal goal to progress as an individual. Perhaps self-help books truly work for some people. But it’s those who have the courage to get out and live in order to learn valuable lessons, to make mistakes along the way and overcome their shortcomings through human experience that I respect the most. It’s not the people who have conquered the latest popular issues by reading a book or magazine. If everyone read books and followed someone else’s advice in order to better themselves, we’d become not individuals, but robots, programmed to behave just so, and never color outside the lines.