Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Shripad Dharmadhikary
A Lion Needs No Toothbrush
The Hilarious Field Guide to the Wild World of Self-
Help Books
Chill Pill
Self Help Lessons in Stress Busting ......................... 164
How I Lost It
Self Help Advice for Diet and Weight Control ...... 230
One then has to adjust for the fact that some readers
may have read more than one self-help book. This
required some skilful estimation. I put together, from
a survey of my friends, of people I encountered in
trains, of Amazons Those who bought this also
bought etc. some very useful co-relations. For
example, that 50% of those who read a self-help book
on management are likely to read a self-help book on
health. That those who read books based on oriental
mysticism were only 30% likely to read a book based
on good Christian values. I found that on an average,
20% of the books were sold to libraries, so that these
books were read by more people. Using these and
other complex mathematical equations, I found that
300 million people in the world had read one or more
self-help books.
But you are still suspicious. After all, in the big bad
world of publishing, what is to stop the publisher and
author from reaching an agreement whereby the
publisher is allowed to print One Million Sold on
the book, while paying royalty only for the 857 copies
actually sold, in the hope of doubling that number?
The author too has an interest in the book being
pushed. Here you have a sure shot confirmatory test.
If the book is a bestseller, it is definitely going to be
pirated. Conversely, if it is not being pirated, it is
nowhere near a blockbuster. Just go out on the
pavements and see if the particular title is available
with the roadside booksellers selling cheap editions
of popular books. If you see the book there, you can be
sure that the claims of the publisher are correct, give
or take a few hundred thousand copies. In the
publishing world, it is an honour to be pirated, for it is
a sure sign that you have indeed arrived.
Now we come to the various categories of self-help
books. This is very important to understand as it can
help you chose the book most appropriate for you.
First of all, there are the Traditional Books. These are
books written about 40-50 years ago, with fairly
straightforward titles like Work Hard and Succeed,
Tough People Always Survive, Truth and Honesty the
Way to Win in Business and so on. Now you really
dont want these books unless you are a masochist. I
mean, if you really want to do things the ever so
boring old-fashioned way of working hard to succeed,
why do you need the books at all? We can get such
books out of the way fairly quickly. It also helps that
they have straightforward titles, which makes it easy
to identify them.
Indeed, if you strip off all the thous and thees from
Shakespeares plays, what you have left is all the
wonderful wisdom of the world. For example: All
that glitters is not gold (dont fall for that email from
Nigeria where the daughter of an overthrown general
wants to share her fortune with you); A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet (dont pay that
exorbitant amount just for the brand name); No
comets are seen when beggars die, the heavens
themselves blaze forth the death of kings (the rich get
all the attention); Take your pound of flesh but not a
drop of blood (When you go to collect your free gift
or encash your accumulated points, you find that
Conditions Apply); and I Love you Portia (Oops, that
last one doesnt sound very profound).
I am
Angry G0
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Excerpt 1.2: George Washington and the Cherry
Tree
Cholesterol
If there is one substance that competes with salt in
making so many parts of the body (particularly the
mind) tremble with fear, it is cholesterol. We have
been repeatedly told that we need to be wary of the
bad cholesterol (yes, there is a good one too!).
Stress
Now if there is another killer to rival cholesterol, it is
stress. I would say that stress clinics have made as
much money as heart hospitals. Stress help books
outsell books related to heart problems by far. In my
own collection (which we already know is a
statistically representative sample of self-help books
worldwide), stress related books outnumber books on
heart problems by three times. Now stress is very
important because it can lead to hypertension, heart
attacks, strokes, hysteria (which in simple words
means having the symptoms of the disease without
having the real thing), ulcers, hallucinations,
delusions, obesity, weight loss, divorce, marriage, and
so on. So I hope you are convinced that stress is a
terrible thing.
Why does stress affect us so much? It is very simple
really. (See Three Simple Ways to Handle Stress by David
Sampson, 2 Million Sold). All our stress problems can
be traced to our ancestors. No, no, teenage readers,
please. I dont mean parents. And for all those young
brides reading this - I dont mean your husbands
parents. Modern day stress affects us because of the
way we have evolved biologically. It is in our genes,
part of the survival weaponry of our ancestors. Now
our ancestors lived in the bad old days when ferocious
sabre-toothed tigers were on the prowl and
mammoths routinely blocked the pathways to forests
where our forefathers gathered succulent fruits and
other such things to feed themselves. Danger also
came in the form of fellow forefathers who fancied
some part of the booty from the hunt, or thought that
hitting you with a bludgeon on the head was a sure
way of winning the election to become the headman of
the tribe. This led to some real tricky situations when
the rather unfortunate homo sapiens suddenly came
face-to-face with one of the abovementioned ferociouses
tigris, or worse the bludgeonis wielding brothoris.
However, intelligent race that it was, the human
species developed a wonderful mechanism that was a
winner in the evolutionary competition. This was
called the fight-or-flight response. This is so important
that we should spend some time understanding it.
(See Using Fight or Flight to Survive the Office and Reach
the Top, by Dr. Doshi and Dr. Joshi 200,000 copies in
print).
Exercise
According to all the self-help books on health, along
with a proper diet, exercise is the best medicine for
your body. Pages after pages of self-help books are
filled with the fantastic benefits that exercise offers.
Luckily for us, it is very easy to exercise in todays
times. Huge strides in science and technology have
made exercising a relatively uncomplicated and fairly
straightforward matter. Our ancestors were not so
fortunate. First of all, the daily grind of life left them
with hardly any time to exercise. Our forefathers
would have to get up early in the morning and walk
several kilometres to their fields. There, they would be
doing all kinds of back-breaking work ploughing,
sowing, cutting, weeding and so on. Then they would
have to walk back to the house. By that time, there was
no time left for exercise. The lot of women was even
worse. The day began even earlier for them.
Immediately after getting up, they would have to go to
the well and draw out buckets and buckets of water
for daily household use. Then they would milk the
cows. Then came cutting of vegetables, cooking,
washing clothes and utensils, which went on till the
evening. In the afternoon, they had to go to the field
with lunch for the men. From time to time, the floor of
the house would need a coat of gobar (cow dung). As
you can see, the women had even lesser time for
exercise. Children were really underprivileged. They
too had to get up early to walk to school. Studies took
up quite some time. There was no T.V., let alone any
computer games, internet and so on. So the poor kids
had to spend their time on the ground outside the
house, trying to entertain themselves with some trivial
pastime like gilli danda or catch, or even just
climbing trees or splashing in the river or stream close
by. You can imagine that they hardly had any
opportunity for exercise, fitness training or physical
workouts.
I then set out to explore the lake I knew the city had,
as also the river that flowed through the town. I could
not locate the lake even though I knew I had the exact
location from the map. Indeed, from where I stood, I
could also see a tall building called Lake View
Apartments. So a lake should have been visible from
this building. Then it suddenly dawned upon me that
I was standing in the line of sight from the building.
On asking, a friendly passer-by informed me that
some years back the lake had been filled up and a
housing complex built up on it.
A Question of Attitude
As many self-help books will tell you, the worst kept
secret of getting rich is that its all in the mind. Think
like the rich and you will be rich. This is the sum and
substance of what is claimed as the most powerful
technique of getting rich. The best way to explain this
technique is to tell you how I first learnt it.
I was first introduced to this technique by a Self-Help
Guru in person when I attended his workshop. (My
savings were set back by about Rs. 5000, but as the
Guru explained, the cost of the workshop was not an
expense but an investment, so my net worth did not
reduce. See how important Financial Education is?
Even if you keep spending away your money,
Financial Education can show how you are as well off
as before).
So, the moral of the story is that those who take risks
make big money. You would do well to memorise this,
for it is the second most important component of
Think Like the Rich. Cast away your Fear. Be mentally
prepared to Take Big Risks. Got it? But wait, this is not
enough. If you learn just this much, you will sooner or
later have a crash landing, wrecking your whole
financial edifice.
But in this case, you only get Rs. 900 per egg,
because you are getting money here and right
now, and not sometime in the future. However,
what if you want the money now, and that too at
the rate of Rs. 1000 per egg? Well, here is another
method. This method is also particularly useful
when there is no Mr. Big Money to buy your
future eggs all at one go. In this method, first you
need to find a Mr. Small Money. They are easily
found everywhere, particularly those with family
name G. Reed. Now you tell Small Money that
you will sell him an egg at a future date in the
year for exactly Rs. 1050. Since the price of a
golden egg is likely to go up by then, Mr. Small
Money thinks, At that time, the egg will cost Rs.
1100, so I am going to make a cool profit. And I
dont have to pay right now. So he promises to
buy your egg in the future for Rs. 1050, and you
promise to sell it to him for that amount. This is
called Forward Trading. If you can find a Mr.
Small Money for each day of the year, you have a
Secured Future Cash Flow Stream, of Rs. 1050 per
day. (Better than Rs. 1000 per day or Rs. 900 per
egg).
Just as the day was divided into only three parts, the
calendar was also divided into imprecise slices of a
few days. So if I needed something done, and asked
Kab hoga? (When will this be done?), the reply
would invariably be Kuch din mein ho jayega (It will
be done in a few days.)
The more formal services like buses and the post office
were supposed to be better in this regard, but reflected
the same lack of any value for time. For example, a bus
that started from the bus stop at one end of the town
would slowly make its way across to the other end
before it got on to the highway. Between these two
points, it would stop when people wanted to get on (at
any point where it was flagged), when people who
had forgotten to take along essential necessities of life
requested the bus driver to stop for a moment near a
shop as they picked up these things (these necessities
consisted usually of gutka, mava, or paan), or when the
conductor wanted to pick up his lunch box from his
house that was on the way. If this affected the time it
took to reach the destination, well, you guessed it, no
one was counting.
All this may take some time, but unless you invest
time, you wont be able to manage or save time. Just
like money! But then, this should not be surprising, for
we know that Time is Money.
Now that you are trained in preparing your activity
record, do this for at least a week or ten days. Once
you have the record, you may find it most convenient
to enter it into a Worksheet, and categorise the various
activities (such as work, leisure, waste, etc). Make
sure that the categories do not overlap (e.g. if you
think work is a waste, then dont have two different
categories for them).
You are right. This technique does not tell you how to
stop wasting time but is a fundamental prerequisite
for doing so. Only when you see where you are
spending your time, can you start allocating time to
the priorities and not to trivial things that eat away
your valuable time. Once you do this, you are already
half way home on getting your time management
right.
A Primary TMQ
In a standard TMQ for example, as described by the
pioneering Seven Practices of Very Efficient Persons, the
four quads represent four categories of activities.
Some activities are urgent, and others are not so
urgent. Let us put these labels at the top of the main
quad. Tasks can also be important and not important.
Let us label this on the side of the main quad. Now the
TMQ will look like this, and is ready for use.
Non-Urgent Urgent
Non-
QUAD 1 QUAD 2
important
Non-Urgent Urgent
Non-
QUAD 1 QUAD 2
Enjoyable
Some Caution
When To Do lists emerged as such powerful tools and
took the self-help world by storm, some disgruntled
elements (that is, those who had overlooked including
this wonderful tool in their books), started spreading
rumours that these lists were ineffective, and even
counterproductive. Now, most of this is purely sour
grapes, but as an independent expert, I have to admit
that some of the criticism is valid.
The Fundamentals
With this short introduction, let us now turn to the
basics of marketing and sales, which can completely
transform your effectiveness in persuading people to
buy. We shall see that these tremendously powerful
techniques will help you become a super-salesperson,
so that you can sell whatever you want to in a matter
of a few minutes.
Now that does sound logical, doesnt it? But they are
mistaken. As a lot of marketers have discovered to
their shock logic doesnt always work in this field.
Got it? In short, sell what people dont need, but make
them feel that you are selling what they need.
Smart readers will also notice that the last of the three
steps is nothing but transforming a situation where
you have no control to one where you have direct
control. This will remind readers about the first myth
that stress is not about unpleasant situations, but
rather about situations in which you have no control.
And But dear, just now you yourself said that they
were shouting so how do you think I could have heard
the doorbell, and they just turned up unexpectedly
and how could I turn them away when they were
already here, and yes, I agree by mistake I had told
them yesterday that it would be great to watch the
match together on the large screen TV at our house,
and since you were having your little kitty party (It is
not a kitty party, it is our Book Reading Clubs
monthly meeting), yes yes, thats what I meant, since
you were having your little meeting, you would be in
the lounge downstairs and we would be in the
upstairs TV room, and you would not I mean we
would not disturb you. You get the drift. As the
conversation goes on along these lines, with emotions
flaring, your voices getting louder, and accompanied
by increasingly graphic movements of the arms, you
notice that when your wife is angry, the tip of her nose
turns red and sort of bobs up and down. Just like the
Angry Ogre in the first story in Fairy Tales from
Fairyland that she reads aloud to your son every night.
(Why cant you read him the story once in while? is
a question you have always considered to be a
rhetorical one that needs no answer.) You picture the
Angry Ogre, now with your wifes face, with his red
nose tip bobbing up and down, and you just cant help
laughing out loudly.
Motivation by Incentives
Now people believe the most important incentive is
money. A popular saying is often offered by some self-
help books: If you pay peanuts, you will get
monkeys. Unfortunately, they dont tell us the second
part of this proverb, that chances are high that even if
you pay by the bagful, you will still mostly get
monkeys, for the simple reason that monkeys
dominate the herd out there. As most people are not
aware of this second part, companies offer high
salaries to their staff. But this is not good enough, for
with the salary now fixed, there is little incentive for
the worker not to goof off. So companies invented
bonuses. This worked for some time, till management
discovered that bonuses were too good to be left for
the staff, and started appropriating all of them. Then
came ESOPs, which worked well, but only till the IT
bubble burst and people lost lakhs of rupees worth of
incentives as the share values turned to dust. Of
course, when the ESOPs worked well, companies
found that the staff did not, as they were secure in the
knowledge that if kicked out, they could sell the
shares and live a comfortable life. Because of all these
problems, monetary incentives as a method of
motivating employees has been greatly discredited,
and these are now reserved for the top management.
Diets
The first word that pops up when we think of weight
loss is you guessed it diet. Diets confront us with
grim and glum visions of eating cucumbers and
carrots for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day after day,
so that the thin watery soup and dry bread sticks that
come as a bonus on Sundays appear as a lavish spread
in comparison. No wonder diet is a four letter word.
The book will also take pains to point out how if the
protein level goes below 27% (as it will in the rival
diets), then the carmanium glands will slow down the
secretion of the above mentioned tongue-twister
enzyme, and instead, the blastadian bodies present in
the lining of the stomach will react by increasing the
absorption of carbohydrates and sugars (as these are
high in the diet), so not only will you end up eating
more calories but also absorbing more of them, and
presto, you will put on weight.Such friendly sparring
between various diets and their respective self-help
books adds spice and zest to what can otherwise be a
somewhat boring process of wading through tomes
choosing the right diet for oneself.
The book, the scales and the calculator will also help
you plan lunch and dinner, and similar watchfulness
at the table will ensure that these meals too are a
success. Dont worry, this is easier than it sounds. The
first few days are the most difficult in any diet and this
is not an exception. However, by the end of the first
week, you will find that you know by heart the
proportions of fats, proteins and carbs in most
common foods, and will be able to juggle around
quantities, do the maths mentally and dish out
balanced meals.
No Nonsense Diet
The No Nonsense Diet is not so much a diet by itself
as it is a method of implementing a diet. It is short for
I will not tolerate any such nonsense. How any diet
is implemented can make or break the diet, so it is
worth considering this method here. This method
needs two persons, one of whom is to follow the diet,
and one who is not to. Typically, this is a husband-
wife couple. To understand this method, let us assume
for a moment that the husband is on a diet and the
wife is not. The method normally comes into play after
a few days of the diet, when the frustrated husband
tentatively asks the wife if he can eat just one piece of
that cake, only for today, wont even think of it
again for the next seven days, please. The wife can
either fall for the pleading look in his eyes and give in
thus destroying the diet, for this is the thin end of the
wedge, and the husband knows that if she falls for it
once, she will be game again and again. Or, the wife
can look squarely into his eyes, purse her lips firmly,
and tell him in a stern voice I will not tolerate any
such nonsense. As he wilts under her unyielding and
unsympathetic gaze, the diet is on its way to sure
success. As this factor has led to the success of many a
diets, it has commonly (and erroneously) been thought
of as a Diet in itself. Of course, this is not correct, but it
remains a very useful method important to the success
of any diet.