The self-help genre is exploding in popular culture. Everything from how to be more fit, more mindful, how find your purpose and how to live the life you were meant to live.
The stories are compelling.
The deception that much of the self-help genre relies upon is that your life, right now, is not good enough. You can do better. You must do better to be the person that you want to be. Pick yourself up. Get motivated. Work!
There is a subtle poverty mentality going on, a failure to recognize your innate qualities and potential. Often we find the Buddha's teachings lumped into this self-help category, a sort of new age twist to an ancient tradition.
Here is the key distinction- the self-help genre wants you to get out of your current situation in search of a better situation. The Buddha's teachings want you to be fully present in your current situation. See how subtle that is? One wants you to start running and keep running, the other wants you to sit and be present with the world as it is.
Both methods create dramatic change. The difference is that one keeps you on a cycle in which you never reach your fulfillment, and the other starts with finding your fulfillment and then teaching you how to move from that ground with intention.
The Buddha's teachings become applicable to any life, any situation, any profession. Right now, just as it is.
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