Self Help Snake Oil

Beware self-improvement snake-oil.
In The New Atlantis, Algis Valiunas waxes poetic about the self-help industry:
A vast apparatus of uplift and solicitude services Americans’ longings for success and happiness. Self-help, positive thinking, actualization, motivation, empowerment: the industry of worldly wisdom whirs on like a perpetual-motion dynamo, powered by the consumers’ insatiable compulsion to have it all and to feel good about themselves, and by the purveyors’ confidence that they, at any rate, can indeed have it all, by turning out swill by the boatload and feeding the cravings of the perennially feckless.
With this beautiful passage, Mr. Valiunas reveals a misgiving I've harbored since first starting to explore the science of self-awareness.  Specifically, is all self-improvement advice a bunch of mumbo-jumbo?

On the one hand, I've stumbled onto a ton of science that indicates that certain metacognitive skills are critical for performance: self-control, grit, creativity, optimism.  In these cases, there is at least a smidge of research suggesting that if you possess these characteristics, life is better. +1.

On the other hand, anyone can spew any advice about anything.  And, there are plenty of people who are, including me. Much of the advice hasn't been put to the test. -1.

So, what are we to do?  What is the snake-oil and what is the medicine?  The scientist in me would argue that we should study the various theories.  Whatever methods hold up to rigorous testing can be adopted and the rest discarded.  However, the pragmatist in me realizes that there aren't enough scientists to test every opinion on self-improvement.

So, what are we to do, as individuals?  Here's where I fall on the matter: I'm an empiricist.  I read some scientific tidbit, or digest some philosophic treatise and then I try it on for size.  How then do I feel?  How then do I perform?  I keep my eyes open for feedback on my performance and monitor my emotions.  What works, for me, works for me.    If I like the way things are moving, I'll keep doing what I'm doing.  If it ain't broke don't fix it.

At the heart of this approach, and at the heart of all science, is skepticism.  Is it real?  Is there proof?  Can I see it for myself?  The same can be said for self-help information.  Is it based on science?  Good science?  And, does it work for me?  We can all be scientists with our own minds.  And should.

Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

Uncomfortable? Yes.  Smart? No.
When I'm bad at something, I feel like 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.  In other words, making mistakes makes me really uncomfortable.

Unfortunately for my feelings though, becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable may be the single most important thing I can do to become a better person.  Researchers and educators are beginning to appreciate that embracing failure and learning from our mistakes is a critical skill if we want to be our best.  And that appreciation is beginning to catch on in the popular press.

For example, when the New York Times Magazine published "What if the Secret to Success is Failure?", the piece quickly became one of the most emailed articles.  But it didn't stop there.  A month later, Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post reminded us "How we succeed by failing" and Jonah Lehrer pointed out that mistakes explain "Why [...] Some People Learn Faster".

Soon bloggers picked up the scent: Zen Habits suggested we face our failings (and in public) and LifeHacker showed geeks like me "How to Identify and Learn from Your Mistakes".  The punchline: coming face-to-face with our failings is essential to improve on them.  By putting our heads in the sand, we may feel better in the short term, but in the long term nothing changes.  If we're lucky, the ostrich strategy will allow us to feel all warm and fuzzy about ourselves.  If we're unlucky, our failings will come up and bite us.

Intellectually, I think we all appreciate that we need to work on our weak points to get better.  But all this great advice misses a critical reality: it sucks to suck.  Being bad at things is emotionally painful.

So what do we do?  My vote: train our brain to like the pain.  Not all uncomfortable things are bad, and we have the ability to re-label feelings consciously so that our feelings of pain become badges of honor.  So, instead of reacting to discomfort with "this sucks", we can tag on an addendum: "this sucks but look how tough I am".

Put simply: discomfort is proof we're willing to become better.  Being willing to withstand some pain shows that we're ready to change.  From now on, every time I make a mistake and feel like an idiot, I'm going to embrace the feeling: if I weren't pushing myself then I wouldn't be making mistakes.

Forgetting the Krebs Cycle

The product of a google image search of "Monkey Cycle".
I'm in the process of applying to teach a science class, and one of the requirements is to craft a teaching philosophy.  Of course, being so gung-ho about metacognition, my philosophy focused on how I will try to help my students develop transferable skills that could be useful in any endeavor: creativity, communication, synthesis of new ideas, etc.

Naturally, my thoughts then drifted to the Krebs Cycle and how angry it makes me.

What is the Krebs Cycle and why does it make me angry?  Well, unless you are biologist or chemist working on energy metabolism, the Krebs Cycle is not something you need to worry about.  And, that's why it make me angry.  Because I was forced to memorize all the steps of the Krebs Cycle in high school.

Why did that happen?  Why are students all around the country being forced to memorize the details of a chemical reaction that has little relevance to their daily lives?  I'm sure proponents would suggest that it somehow "trains" students to be able to memorize things, but even as a practicing scientist I rarely need to remember some arcane detail to do my job.  Instead, I need to know where to look for an important detail.  Or, I need to have a general sense of how something works in order to make predictions about the system.

Instead, can't we have students memorize things that are more relevant?  Human nutrition, for example, or exercise physiology.  I'm confident most Americans would benefit from a little more knowledge about how to exercise and eat right.  I digress.

Or, better yet, let's get away from this whole memorization thing entirely.  Let's focus on the skills that will help the most people be awesome in the most settings: transferable metacognitive skills.  No more Krebs Cycle.