I have written about the main problem with self help before (rampant secularism), but that's not the only one. While secularist self help can, in most cases, easily be deciphered and translated into the terms and conditions needed for those of us who affirm religion-oriented worldviews, this other problem I've been noticing is actually much more difficult to overcome. That is, mainly, self help is written by and for the day to day lives of people who only have themselves to worry about, and likely with a rather cushy set of responsibilities to boot.
If that's not the case, they sure do a magnificent job at appearing that way. It seems they have never had to consider the difficulty one may have in "dedicating a full day to blocking everyone else out of your thinking space" when they live with family and have daily responsibilities or "learning to say no when you're having me-time" when their toddler has chosen just that time to poop their pants. It turns out a lot of nice-sounding ways to reduce your stress or increase your productivity are likely to do the exact opposite if you try to apply them as presented when you're not a single, childless journalist living in a studio apartment.
These problems are not so easily translated for us in these situations. While we can take some secular self help advice and actually heighten and accentuate its value by understanding it from a Christian worldview, that's more of a philosophical translation. Today I read a tidbit about changing your "have-tos" into "get-tos" which is a page taken right out of the Christian book of how to be grateful and contented. You don't "have to" cook dinner, you're blessed enough to be able to, to have the ability and freedom to create your own meals - or more drastically, have the means to eat at all rather than starve. This is Christian gratefulness 101, but for a secularist with no true moral grounding it's simply nice sounding. Without the backdrop of understanding the value of appreciating God's grace and mercy, it may be very difficult to apply to your life effectively.
This other problem is not simply translation trouble, but a flat out inability to even perform the self help advice in question. I have a toddler who is about to turn three and was a late bloomer into his "terrible twos". He's a lot of work, emotionally needy, and stubborn as a mule, a family trait inherited from both sides. He is literally fighting with me right now over the fact that I've told him not to pick loose skin from a wound on his toe. I have forgotten the sentence I was planning to write and am holding one hand over his foot while typing on my phone with the other, trying to reason with him why it's bad for him, whether a boo boo and a wound are the same thing, and why it wouldn't change if it was okay to pick at it whether it were a boo boo or a wound. Does the single man in his apartment writing his self help article think I can simply lock my kids in the other room like he does with his cats? (This is not a slight against cat owners, I have three.) Or does he, more likely, not even consider the varied lives of others while he writes?
Today an article suggested "reducing the amount of decisions you make per day". It explains a concept called "decision fatigue" which causes rational people to make poor decisions as their day progresses and their mental energy decreases. The author suggests either automating or delegating decision making to help reduce your mental burden and allow you to continue to make sober decisions well into the evening of your day.
My first decision of the day is usually at 3-6am, when my youngest son climbs out of his crib, scampers to my and my husband's bed, and stares at me until I wake up from nothing but the sensation that I'm being stared at in my sleep, which is something I didn't know could wake me until recently. He wants to sleep in our bed until the sun comes up, which is at about 7am, two hours before "awake time". It's not good for his independence and not good for our sleep, which we desperately need. When he wakes up at sunrise, he normally runs in and out of our room to his and back until I make the decision to stop him. Periodically he will go into the living room or dining room unless I make the decision to stop him. Both him and his brother are supposed to be allowed to play in their rooms from 8am to 9am, but the youngest enjoys waking his brother up early and asking if he can begin playing at 7am. All of these decisions ride on whether I want to pretend I'm going to get anymore sleep that morning or if I'm going to give up on that dream and just wake up. Both of these decisions come with yet more of their own sets of inevitable decisions, as if I'm awake and wandering the house, both kids usually come out to ask me questions and attempt to collect further privileges, believing that since I'm awake it must be awake time, unless I make the decision to be stern and authoritative when I tell them to go back to their room, which may not work anyway and thus be a waste of my energy.
The day continues like this where I must make constant administrative decisions about how much effort my exhausted, pregnant mind and body feels like dealing with at the moment. Honestly, I'm sure Vincent didn't mean any harm when he wrote this article, and he surely is trying to help. He's not doing anything wrong on a level of personal responsibility, but it doesn't help to dull the reactive, incredulous laughter in response to advice like this. My two and four year old children cannot make these decisions themselves, nor can these decisions be automated. I can refrain from actively making any decisions, which is itself is a risk-reward decision that comes with its own set of stresses - allowing my children to push the ticket and develop bad habits, a lack of respect for rules, or possibly a selfish and thoughtless attitude and perspective, versus whether I need to get up or not. A bowl of apple pieces is surely a better snack than saltine crackers, but the children cannot cut up an apple alone. If they eat a whole apple without it being cut up, they waste nearly the entire thing. Is the monetary cost of anywhere from 4-14 apples being 1/4th eaten a week worth me not getting up? Will having an apple distract them long enough for it to even be worth it? Should I try again to explain the importance of eating the entire apple or will they ignore that for the 300th time? Is it really that huge of a waste if I'm feeding these three-bite apples to the chickens? Surely the chickens could use some apples, my exhausted self reasons, feeling quite justified.
When the kids refuse to take their naps, is it worth it to let them make a ruckus and cause a commotion up to and including simply coming out of their room altogether? Do I have the mental energy necessary to talk them down from their rule-breaking high? Will it even be worth it to ignore, since I'm not getting any rest anyway? Will declaring naptime over and simply allowing them to "wake up" (despite having never fallen asleep) cost less energy than attempting to enforce nap time?
Vincent, and most self help writers, have not considered this, probably because it has never entered their mind. My decision to not make a decision is a decision itself, an active choice that causes a staunch risk-reward weighing challenge in my mind, of whether this particular fight is important enough today, whether not fighting this fight will embolden my children to initiate this fight again the next day. The two year old is stubborn and mischievous, but that four year old is manipulative. He has the memory of an elephant and is an aspiring lawyer, reminding me of that one time I let them have marshmallows before bed, or when I let them watch youtube videos in the morning that one time three weeks ago. I let him come out during nap time yesterday, so surely that is the new, established norm, despite the precedence of weeks of intolerance to his rule breaking beforehand.
Roy F. Baumeister, the man who coined decision fatigue, explains that needing to make too many decisions causes us to get worse at making decisions. We either avoid making decisions or make the easiest decisions when we suffer from decision fatigue. I definitely believe this is a thing, and I'm sure I suffer from it, but probably all the time rather than just at the end of the day. My decision fatigue seems chronic, given the near constant demand for decisions. I attempt to make what seems to be the easiest decision at the time from the start of my day - I gave up attempting to disallow my child from climbing into our bed at 3am long ago. Our 9am awake time has been as early as 7:30am some days, and saltines sound like a great snack pretty often. It's not that I don't think decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, but rather that the advice given by Vincent and others is utterly useless to someone in my situation.
Is there then no other treatment? Is decision fatigue only combatable via the "automate or delegate" method? Is my situation hopeless? These are the questions left for people like me, who read these well-meaning self help suggestions written by people who forget not everyone lives a life like theirs.
It can't be the only solution, as there are times, utterly exhausted and running on empty, in a place where it seems impossible to do any single thing more - when allowing the kids to watch youtube for another hour sounds better than actually putting them to bed - where I make the right decisions. The pure force of will to demand my mind and body do the right thing when it matters is within my grasp, though perhaps harder to locate on certain days than others, despite making administrative decisions since 3am that day and every hour before that since I first gave birth about 4.5 years ago.
The solution is somewhere for people like me, but the people who have the time and luxury to publish these sophisticated self help books and run self improvement seminars are not the people who have experienced them. Vincent cannot help me, and likely Roy F. Baumeister cannot either.
Having children isn't the only life situation where generalized self help from well off suburbanites isn't going to be applicable, either. From homeless teenagers to lonely elderly folks, it's clear we are not getting enough information for the demanding lives of the majority of people. Hopefully most people reading these articles recognize that they are not doing anything wrong by being entirely unable to adhere to these suggestions, but the tone carried in some of these articles can be their own problems.
I read one article about how to increase your productivity that suggested taking "quiet time" to yourself, even making a whole day of it. This is clearly not possible under certain circumstances, but the author took the time to more or less shame people who don't take time for themselves. We work so hard to keep ourselves available for everyone, he says, and we need to take a stand and tell others that they aren't entitled to our time. It's a poor personal decision not to give yourself me-time, he all but states out loud. Yes, I will go ahead and explain this to my two year old right now, sir. I'll surely be surprised when he intentionally does something he knows is bad and requires immediate attention in order to force me to acknowledge his existence specifically because I told him to not be in the same room as me.
Teaching children to respect their parents' alone time is a long term, decision-wrought experience of its own. It is probably a very smart and proper decision to begin teaching boundaries and establishing mama's alone time as early as possible, even if it doesn't pay off until much later. This is, of course, the more difficult decision to make, and highly likely to not be the decision we make while decision fatigued. Maintaining a constant dedication to responsible decisions that facilitate positive long term payouts amid the daily and constant demands of our children requires a different solution than we are offered by people who've never even had to consider how to handle it. Making fewer decisions is unworkable and will likely harm our children, one way or another - physically, emotionally, or developmentally. The solution to decision fatigue for people like us is not going to be avoidance, but acute awareness of it and the proper tools to counter it.
From the fact that I've yet another child who won't understand the concept of boundaries or independence for at least year and probably longer arriving in just a few months to the near disorder level attachment suffered by my youngest who hasn't separated from me with any regularity for a year due to lockdowns, a solution such as "simply make fewer decisions" is not just inapplicable, it's practically tone deaf. The self help authors start to seem less innocently naive and more like disconnected, upper class snobs. The helpful-sounding advice to improve my sleep routine and stop allowing people to demand my time turns suspiciously into an implication that my lack of alone time and poor sleep are my own uneducated, irresponsible decisions stemming from a lack of discipline and willpower.
Putting my foot down and disallowing my child from laying down with me for "one more minute" before bed, which turns into several sessions of one more minute spread over the next half hour as he continues to test my leniency or a fierce battle of wills as he continues to come out again and again despite my objections, is not a failure to make responsible personal decisions and take my life and my sleep schedule into my own hands. It's also not a failure of parenting that despite days and months straight of attempting to dictate how they should behave at bedtime, their willpower is greater than mine. I will miss one day the mischievous grin of my tiny children as they slowly reveal their presence at my doorway and quietly plead "one more minute?" an hour after I've put them to bed. The risk-reward equation is far more complicated than assumed, as the "best" decision is frequently unclear and, sometimes, depending on your outlook, may actually be the easiest decision.
Therein we see the greater problem with presumptive self help gurus who tell you authoritatively the best ways to get better sleep, improve your outlook, get more out of your day, or simply live your life "most effectively" - their advice is given in a vacuum, absent any greater context. If self help makes you feel stupid because it seems so simple and easy and yet you fail to make it your reality, it's probably not due to your own personal failure to "just do better". It may not even be good advice. If trying to "make time for yourself" causes more problems than it solves, then it's probably bad advice for your life situation, not your own fault.
I can hardly get my kids to take naps and the power struggle of trying to enforce it is an exhaustive routine. They remain awake after bedtime and test boundaries for as long as two hours every night. They wake before the sun and know I am at my weakest in the morning where they have learned to take full advantage of my leniency. There is no space in my life for the traditional concept of "time to myself". It would invariably cause more stress than it would alleviate to even attempt something so ill-advised.
I actually used to get time to myself, when the kids were one and three and my husband worked early, they actually took good naps. I had 1-2 hours a day to myself. Right now, my reality is that I do not have time to myself. Believing I may rest in the morning, at nap time, or after bed time will likely only set me up for disappointment. It is much more realistic to assume I will not have time to myself and merely take advantage of the opportunity if it arises. Indeed, I've realized lately that the expectation that I will not have to respond to my children before 9am, after 1pm, or after 8pm has led me to being short with them or dismissive to their needs. This doesn't mean I don't ever relax, but simply that such advice as "you don't always need to make yourself available, be assertive and make time for yourself" is ineffective advice for me, possibly even harmful. Finding ways to relax alongside my children is much more effective advice, but a line of thought I have never once seen from these esteemed self help gurus who make their living off of trying to help others "improve their lives". The chasm of disconnect between the lives we live is practically impossible to breech.
So those of us who must adapt constantly to the ever changing demands of our lives, compromising with children, our basic needs, and the passage of time itself for even a small reprieve, must make our own advice. You should not feel bad if between the constant emotional and physical demands of your daily life you can barely muster the creative juice to even begin to consider how to make the best of your sleep, your me time, or your diet. Given that these disconnected urbanites' self help articles are not good enough for the vast and varied kind of lives we all live, we have little choice but to figure it out ourselves. What we should do is share with one another, our friends and families, how we manage to cope with the unrelenting demands of life and take advice from people who actually can actually relate, because these authors and their cats have absolutely no idea the extent of demand we experience daily.
There are surely people writing advice for broader audiences with all of their various life experiences, but they are not broadcast like these others. I do not seek out self help articles, though it may seem that I do as I've written about them before. I, for some absolutely stupid reason, enjoy clicking on article titles that I think I will find issue with, and self help articles fall under that umbrella consistently. I receive a mailing list from Medium, which publishes a vast variety of articles but definitely has a bias toward the kind that it will amplify, especially in the top spot of their email newsletter. This is not Medium's fault necessarily, as they often spotlight authors and contributors that are already popular. It's so seamless I would believe it if you told me it was fully automated based on view metrics. I find other articles here and there and read them out of a morbid curiosity and masochistic tendencies to make myself upset at the internet. While there are articles about specific types of scenarios (job interviews, fighting writer's block, or saving money at the grocery store), I find the majority of the generalized "be better at being alive" advice columns just assume we could all easily just "take a day off".
This lack of signal boosting for whatever beautiful souls are out there writing about how they have managed to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks for those of us with constant, unignorable responsibilities is perhaps my real complaint, as the milquetoast musings of the upper class writer from his skyrise talking about all the great advice he's read from books, because he is very sophisticated you see, simply aren't helping many of us. "Establishing a better sleep routine solves so many of your problems," he says, as if we all have simply never thought of it before. The bare basic commandments of improving your life are repeated so often that they become almost annoying. Of course you shouldn't use screens before bed, which means to live a better, more successful life, definitely don't use that one hour you have between when the kids actually fall asleep and when the sheer exhaustion of life hits you all at once to play video games or write a post about how tired you are of hearing the same droning self help advice from every well off "professional writer" on the internet. Maybe it's just my decision fatigue convincing me to make poor decisions at the end of the day - or maybe life advice really is not a "one size fits all" situation.