Wisdom, or not?
In the latest issue of The Economist, an article, 'Words of Wisdom' featured a recent study by Dr Joanne Wood from University of Waterloo from Canada about the effects of positive self-statements on people of low self-esteem. Apparently the study argued that "When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, ... there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception." and the writer of the article concluded that "Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be worse than useless."
As a frequent self-help book reader, I disagree with the writer since it's too simplistic to think that these books merely make use of positive self-statements to aid the readers. I read these books mainly to find nice anecdotes to encourage and motivate people around me and I've come to realised that self-help books usually tries to encourage you to discipline your mind and control your thoughts. The above stand made by the study considers subjects to be helpless beings prodded around by their mere instincts and have little control over the direction of their thoughts or are not conscious of how their minds are processing the statements they tell themselves. That's not true at all!
I believe that most readers of self-help books might have lower self-esteem but they're imbued with a genuine interest to improve themselves and find out what areas they can try to advance into. Thus they'd be naturally more receptive to the ideas injected, even through positive self-statements. Eventually, it boils down to the choice of the individual whether she/he wants to be skeptical or hopeful about himself/herself.