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- I'm a jazz musician, and often used to do a lot of negative self-talk while playing in public. Like "Oh no, omg that was terrible, oh yuk, oh geez I can't play at all, oh that sounds awful!" etc. I read this book Effortless Mastery that mainly said, never criticize yourself on a gig—do that when you practise but never ever on gigs. So I stopped, and ever since have just had fun. The change was amazing.
I'm not sure but I think that affected my life in other areas too. Although I read a lot of self-help, psychology, new agey, etc books in my 20s, no one thing helped as much as that. I guess it's part of learning to love yourself. I was trained as a kid and young adult to treat others well, but never to treat myself well! The idea of yourself being one of these people you should treat well, never appeared. You can be so mean to yourself, say truly horrible things you'd never say to a friend or loved one, and hardly notice, if it's something you've always done. And I was bullied a lot at home and school, so treating me badly was something it was easy to also do myself, until I learned just to stop, to never do it. Then when you are kind to yourself, it's natural to be kind to others.
Some books I remember helping with this: New Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis (on becoming aware of your habitual thoughts and self-talk, and changing them for the better where necessary), Wayne Dyer's first two books Your Erroneous Zones and Pulling Your Own Strings (similar to Ellis), Louise Hay on loving yourself, SARK's first 8 books, everything by Robert Fulghum, A Life of One's Own and An Experiment in Leisure by Joanna Field/Marion Milner (psychological self-explorations). Emerson's essays. Also keeping a diary was very useful for seeing patterns, e.g. I'd describe some emotion for what seemed the first time, then see I'd described the same thing 10 times before!
- It sounds like you were into those things, now you're not. No big deal. So find something else you are now into and do that, maybe come back to those other things later.
I'm into a lot of different things, but only 1 or 2 at a time. I can't force myself to do something I'm not naturally into at the moment. I'm taking better notes now (started a couple of decades late) so when I go back to a subject months or a year later, it's all there waiting for me to continue.
You seem to be trying to force yourself, and seeing it as a problem with you that's it's not working. Be kinder to yourself! If you were treating someone else that way, trying to force them to focus on something they didn't want to, day after day, you would seem very mean, wouldn't you? One thing I've learnt is, we're taught to be nice to other people, but not to be nice to yourself, which is perhaps most important, as treating others well is difficult at best without that, and we're with ourselves 24/7. Treat yourself like someone you really love.[1] Sounds like you're blaming yourself, torturing yourself! The Albert Ellis' classic New Guide to Rational Living[2] was also very helpful to me, to become aware of how I was treating myself, what things I was saying to myself, and changing the negative things.
John Perry's essay on procrastination might be helpful too[0] – in short, have such a great list of To Dos that even if you're procrastinating by doing things much lower on the list, they still add up to an awesome life! I thought it was genius.
Good luck!
[0] http://structuredprocrastination.com/
[1] I think I got that from Louise Hay's How To Love Yourself.
[2] Also Wayne Dyer's excellent first 2 books Your Erroneous Zones and Pulling Your Own Strings cover similar ground, and might be more to your taste.
I feel I've had a huge amount in my life out of self-help books, on a real variety of subjects. There's a lot of obvious bullshit out there (like The Secret), but also plenty of gold. Scanning through my notes, and in no particular order, I have extensive notes from (and thus enjoyed):> To be honest I always thought that these kind of books > (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
* Beyond Chocolate
* Driven From Within (Michael Jordan biography)
* Get Altitude
* How To Make Friends and Influence People
* Iron John (Robert Bly)
* Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
* Never Eat Lunch Alone
* Psychocybernetics
* Pulling Your Own Strings
* Ready For Anything (same author as GTD)
* The Dip
* Ten Days to Self Discipline
* The Power of Now
* Personal Power (Tony Robbins)
* Warrior King Magician Lover
Some were easier reads than others, and I suspect I am unusual in that I have a pretty rigorous system for making sure I regularly review my notes, and implement exercises and ideas in the books, but I feel I'd be a very different person for the worse without the value these books have added to my life.
