How to navigate through self help material and spot stuff specifically tailored?

[Preety_India]

I often have this predicament where I'm collecting self help material like books, videos, articles, podcast. It's like an ocean out there with self help stuff. 

Randomly going through this is a very arduous process, not to mention extremely time consuming. 

Often I watch a video or a read a book and halfway through realize that it's not too useful in my scenario, maybe useful in general or useful to someone else but not useful to me, it's nice to gain that knowledge but it's not specifically applicable to my issues and needs and situations.  So it becomes redundant for me and I feel in the end like it was simply a waste of time watching that video or reading that book. 

I want to avoid this. I want to be able to read/watch devour only that information which is essential and optimized for my general self help needs so I don't feel like I'm investing or wasting too much time reading random self help material. 

What are some suggestions you can give me so that I'm only consuming more of the essential and useful stuff 

 

[Jacob Morres]

may be obvious but one thing is focusing on your goals/current needs/desires and consuming information that is directly correlated and helpful for that. i fall under the same trap so i understand

Also asking the question: what personal development is most relevant to me? 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Jacob Morres

[hyruga]

Go to Goodreads.com check out the reviews and ratings and find the books you want to read. Then go library or some places to buy or read the books.

Edited April 27, 2021 by hyruga

[BipolarGrowth]

I’m not sure how we’re supposed to help much if we know nothing about where you’re at in your development and what your primary goals are. Provide some at least rough idea of this, and I’ll be happy to think about some content I’ve encountered which might resonate for you

[Preety_India]

@BipolarGrowth no I did not mean it that way. That would be like me asking for direct input regarding what I'm looking for. For example if I asked for material on mindfulness, you would provide me with all the material on mindfulness. 

But that's not what I meant. I want to know in a general sense how to know if something really resonates with my goals and issues without watching a video or reading a book. 

There is a temptation to read all sorts of random material. 

How should I tailor it to fit my needs where I know that whatever I'm looking through is matching well with what I want. 

Should I have a whole layout on key aspects of my goals and issues and only look for material that deals with it?

By using keywords in Google and in Youtube?

This is one way of doing it.

What can be a better way of sorting through all the material and finding stuff that best suits my needs. 

 

 

[BipolarGrowth]

29 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

@BipolarGrowth no I did not mean it that way. That would be like me asking for direct input regarding what I'm looking for. For example if I asked for material on mindfulness, you would provide me with all the material on mindfulness. 

But that's not what I meant. I want to know in a general sense how to know if something really resonates with my goals and issues without watching a video or reading a book. 

There is a temptation to read all sorts of random material. 

How should I tailor it to fit my needs where I know that whatever I'm looking through is matching well with what I want. 

Should I have a whole layout on key aspects of my goals and issues and only look for material that deals with it?

By using keywords in Google and in Youtube?

This is one way of doing it.

What can be a better way of sorting through all the material and finding stuff that best suits my needs. 

 

 

I guess my advice given simply would be to plan future learning less and to allow it to be more spontaneous. Once something seems off, as in it does not hold my interest and seem highly relevant to my situation and goals, I move on quickly. 

Keep the answers to the questions I asked in the forefront of your mind while looking for useful content. Where am I at in my process? What are my primary goals? Use where you’re at to look forward for the next steps. Use your primary goals (the end state) to look backward for what final steps would look like. Consume content all along this spectrum with a main focus on the next few steps in front of you. Keywords in Google and YouTube would be the most obvious way to investigate for specific sources. I’d say it could be helpful to keep to a few goals at once at the most. Too many categorically different topics will likely stagnate your progress unless you are more of a generalist and that’s where your energy (interest/motivation) is naturally led. It sounds like you’re trying to create some sort of a curriculum for yourself ahead of time. That may work for you, but I’ve never gone about self help in that way. If you try to compile a list of resources for the next few months, certain topics and things might really resonate at the time you compile the list, but once you’re a couple months in, some shifts in you could likely have occurred which would change what resonates and what is of most importance and interest. If you’re making any significant progress, I would think that shifts in focus or what is most important to learn at that time would come quite often. I have a natural and intuitive flow when I’m trying to find this stuff I guess. As soon as something doesn’t resonate or I lose interest, I typically move on quickly. Now this has downsides of course. There are certainly things to be learned in a source I abandon, but I only abandon it because it’s not what I’m in alignment with any longer. I could force myself to finish every source I start to explore, but this would have me wasting time on things which aren’t most important to my situation. If something starts to stink, stop smelling it. 

[Preety_India]

@BipolarGrowth that's excellent advice. Thank you so much. I'll keep all those points in mind. 

 

[BipolarGrowth]

@Preety_India I knew exactly what you were asking when I made my first post. It just seemed so alien to me that someone might not already be doing it exactly how I do lol. It just feels so natural. Let your desire guide you. 
 

Ultimately your question was how can I tailor something for myself. Using the tailoring/clothing example, think about some styles you like, try on what looks good, get rid of what doesn’t fit right, and keep what didn’t fit and what did fit in mind when looking for future outfits. Once you know your size (preferences), it gets really easy. The thing is that your preferences come so natural that all you need to do is try some different things out to keep honing in on the next best thing to focus on. Your emotional responses will give you really all the guidance you need. Are you lifted up, passionate, and energized by what you’re currently studying? If not, the goal you think the content is helping with might be too far off of your personal values to even be worth pursuing. An interested student will always perform closer to their potential than a disinterested student. The only question that remains is are you interested and drawn to the classroom you’ve put yourself in? If not, it’s time to try a new classroom! 

[Preety_India]

@BipolarGrowth

Ok I thought about your answer for the last 30 minutes and I made a few observations 

A) I always feel scattered brained. Like a blurred picture. 

B) I always feel blank with any question 

Despite the difficulty above, I managed to draw a rough skeleton of what  I want, my ultimate goals and scheme

It's very scattered. 

This is how it looks

 

 

Core or spiritual grounding 

Mastery 

Glory or growth 

Great working relationship with God. 

Love in action 

Embody love 

I want to be a hero 

Make my life an example that others can follow as inspiration 

I believe that the growth curve in my life should be trapezoidal. It should be start, vigorous growth,  plateau and continuation 

Mastery. Both material mastery and spiritual mastery 

Glory. I want vigorous spiritual growth in myself.. Like a fountain. Growth and flourishing 

I want the completion stage of this growth curve to be sustenance -weathering storms, surviving and continuation after vigorous growth phase 

4  core components (derived from above )

1.  Mastery and spiritual grounding 

2.  Growth and productivity 

3.  Sustenance 

4.  Embody and spread love 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Preety_India

[SamC]

7 hours ago, Preety_India said:

I often have this predicament where I'm collecting self help material like books, videos, articles, podcast. It's like an ocean out there with self help stuff. 

Randomly going through this is a very arduous process, not to mention extremely time consuming. 

Often I watch a video or a read a book and halfway through realize that it's not too useful in my scenario, maybe useful in general or useful to someone else but not useful to me, it's nice to gain that knowledge but it's not specifically applicable to my issues and needs and situations.  So it becomes redundant for me and I feel in the end like it was simply a waste of time watching that video or reading that book. 

I want to avoid this. I want to be able to read/watch devour only that information which is essential and optimized for my general self help needs so I don't feel like I'm investing or wasting too much time reading random self help material. 

What are some suggestions you can give me so that I'm only consuming more of the essential and useful stuff 

 

What I would do if I were you is to work towards discovering your problems/ challenges and the root solution to them and then figure out which concepts are used in describing the thing you want to change or improve. The same thing goes for if you want to improve on something. For example, if you want to learn how to set boundaries, then google boundaries and look for concepts and resources that are interrelated to that ( For example, inner child, shadow, anima, or whatever). Then when you have identified something which seems helpful to learn more about you, you go into that rabbit hole ( for example, shadow work or whatever)

The key is from my experience to find the root solution to a problem, which usually is done through going deeper and deeper into the thing you want to develop, understand or change.

In other words, be specific about which problem you want to work on/ improve and then go deeper and deeper into it by going deeper and deeper into concepts that are related to that one thing you want to improve. Hope this helped (:

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by SamC

[Preety_India]

@SamC thank you. 

 

[BipolarGrowth]

19 hours ago, Preety_India said:

@BipolarGrowth

Ok I thought about your answer for the last 30 minutes and I made a few observations 

A) I always feel scattered brained. Like a blurred picture. 

B) I always feel blank with any question 

Despite the difficulty above, I managed to draw a rough skeleton of what  I want, my ultimate goals and scheme

It's very scattered. 

This is how it looks

 

 

Core or spiritual grounding 

Mastery 

Glory or growth 

Great working relationship with God. 

Love in action 

Embody love 

I want to be a hero 

Make my life an example that others can follow as inspiration 

I believe that the growth curve in my life should be trapezoidal. It should be start, vigorous growth,  plateau and continuation 

Mastery. Both material mastery and spiritual mastery 

Glory. I want vigorous spiritual growth in myself.. Like a fountain. Growth and flourishing 

I want the completion stage of this growth curve to be sustenance -weathering storms, surviving and continuation after vigorous growth phase 

4  core components (derived from above )

1.  Mastery and spiritual grounding 

2.  Growth and productivity 

3.  Sustenance 

4.  Embody and spread love 

 

Nice. Now you can keep these four core components in mind easier since you’ve taken the time to clarify them to yourself. If a resource isn’t in alignment with at least one of these four, you know it’s not helping you with your highest goals. 

[Preety_India]

Just now, BipolarGrowth said:

Nice. Now you can keep these four core components in mind easier since you’ve taken the time to clarify them to yourself. If a resource isn’t in alignment with at least one of these four, you know it’s not helping you with your highest goals. 

Yea that makes perfect sense. My brain was a bit scattered and that could be one of the reasons why I was simply browsing through random stuff. Now I can tailor it around the 4 components and that would be make it easier 

Thank you for all your effort it really means a lot.