The hero in you

‘My basic philosophy has been: if something good happens I appreciate it, if something bad happens I see it as a learning process.’

Appalling punctuation notwithstanding, the hugely popular "The Secret" series has plenty to offer the seeker of instant coffee version of nirvana. I’ve always wondered what draws people to self-help sections in bookstores. This book offers a smorgasbord of “good” advice, expected from people in search of a “Hero”, someone to guide them.

Now the logical me laughed at homilies repackaged: Be aware of what you are feeling, because at times when you feel negative, you feel down, or defeated… acknowledge that those feelings have emanated from what you’re thinking, and choose to do something different to alter your current circumstances. But then when you look at the number of people all guided by their hearts, all those who suffer enormously because they allow their misguided hearts to rule their lives, that’s when you realise that these books are a valuable crutch.

Now for such people, a book like this actually works in the most positive way. ‘There’s nothing wrong with small dreams’, ‘When you wake up in the morning and you’ve really only got one major decision; it’s not about the clothes you are going to wear, it’s not about how you’re going to do your hair. It’s, are you going to have a good attitude or are you going to have a bad attitude?

Because a positive attitude is so critical’, ‘You will never know the power of gratitude and to transform your entire life until you have a grateful heart’ and so on… such positive stuff does inspire, but this book is not as half as ‘cool’ as "The Secret" was. The message in the first book was really life affirming. It gave hope. In this book, although tremendous effort has gone in collating quotations from ‘heroes’ (with each chapter telling you why these various personalities are called ‘heroes’) the author hardly has anything new to offer.

If everyday heroes are what inspire the book, then there are so many other inspiring stories, why only these ‘materially successful’ people?

The book does start off really well, telling us that there is great potential for both joy and unhappiness in our lives. And then it tells you how lives can be changed with the power of dreams and positive thinking. But as you go through the pages, the pattern of quotes from “heroes” just begins to seem repetitive. By the time the ‘heroes’ discuss the qualities and abilities one would need to ‘maintain’ one’s dream, I must confess I had become depressed by the amount of positivity needed to achieve anything. Does everyone with a positive attitude do no wrong? What if the project is ridiculously impractical and pointless? Will just being positive and dreaming good dreams turn it into something worthwhile?

I realised that by part four in the book, which is called "Victory" I did not care who was saying what. These were just annoying quotes on success. You could get those in your inbox by subscribing to some annoyingly sunshiny website that sends you ‘quote of the day’.