Strategies for success - Jeon Yejin

 

 

SUCCEEDING STRAREGIES IN SELF-HELF BOOKS

 

 

 

 For last two or three years, there was a rapid increase in the sales of self-help books in Korea. It is said that this is because Koreans began to think that they can change their life into being successful. Though the public attention for self-help books is a recent phenomenon, in human nature there always has been a strong desire to succeed in some part of their life from a long time ago. Everybody wants to succeed in whatever they want to be successful. Even the authors of self-help books which people often read to get an advice for successful life cannot stop being concerned about whether her or his book can attract people. Looking into seven books (THE SECRET, THE STORY OF MARSHMALLOW, A MORNING PERSON, THE TECHNIQUES OF TAKING NOTES, THE JANITOR, THE CONSIDERATION, OUTLIERS) which have been so popular in Korea from the point it was published that most people know at least its title until now, I found something very interesting: They have strategies in common that makes their books attractive to people.

 

 The first thing that commonly appeared in the books is that the authors wrote what he or she knows a lot and specialize those contents. This can give two advantages to a self-help book. If an author writes what he or she majored in or has studied for a long time, the reader of his or her book tends to believe what the author says to them. For example, A MORNING MAN was written by Saishow Hirosi who graduated the international college of bedding and is now the representative of the center for a morning life. For this reason, he can give many tips for avoiding failures in changing one's habits especially in using the morning time. In his book, A MORNING MAN, his words can have a strong power because he can prove what he argue about by giving the results of his research on changing a night man into a morning man. As a result, people can feel easier to believe his words, trust him and finally open their minds to listen to him. As for specializing, I found almost all of the seven books specialized the idea that can be summarized into just a few words: Change what you're thinking and just DO it! However, they are actually showing very different contents. For instance, THE SECRET makes this sentence the secret, as it shows in its title. The author says that what you believe is going to happen to you and it is THE SECRET. Also, THE STORY OF MARSHMALLOW is another case of specializing. It represents a marshmallow to explain potential barriers which stop people to go on to success. These specializing of contents can help making the ideas of the books seems new and different from the self-help books published before. Continuously, this allows the books to be more interesting to the readers.  

 

 After attracting people's interest what the seven books do is to give them motivation to change. When I looked into the online reviews of the books, most of the readers say that they like the book because it gives them motivation. In other words, what the readers need was being interested, actual reading, and being moved by the books. Briefly, the books chose two different ways to motivate the readers. Some of them tried to assure the readers of their argument by giving realistic, practical examples or highly possible effects it would make. One of the books which used examples successfully was THE SECRET. The book contains the cases of twenty four people who are widely accepted as having succeeded and, by the author's view, used the secret well enough to reach the success. This includes Jack Canfield, the author of CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL and John gray who wrote MEN FROM MARS AND WOMEN FROM VENUS. On the other hand, THE TECHNIQUES OF TAKING NOTES chose to let people understand making to take a note into a habit would definitely change the readers' life. The book gives effects which the habit would make and the reasonable explanation on them to motivate people. Meanwhile, some books motivate people by allowing them to identify characters in the books. THE JANITOR and THE CONSIDERATION made the interesting stories to make people identified. THE MORNING PERSON use similar strategy, using the actual stories of some night men. All of the three used stories to make people motivated because as reading the difficult situations and the bad cases which the characters of the stories experienced would remind a reader the similar experience the person actually went through. From then identifying goes on and it gives the readers the idea that they can be changed like the main characters of the books.

 

 From the seven books we can find that for making a self-help book be loved for a long time, the author would better to write what they really know, specialize it, and then use a lot of examples of actual persons, possible effects, or even stories to motivate the readers. Actually this is a long, difficult way to go. However, I think what the authors of the books did in common could be summarized into a word: Conversation. They made people open their mind and listen to them by concerning what would the readers want to hear.