The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths by Anna Katharina Schaffner was a book that I purchased and started reading on the day it was published. Schaffner is Director of Emergence at Perspectiva, an organization I became aware of a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, I had read her insightful essay, Can Emergence be our Saving Grace?
The Art of Self-Improvement is a comprehensive survey of the self-help and self-improvement field from ancient to current times. It is mostly a descriptive work, although Schaffner occasionally adds her own evaluative perspective. And in a few instances she adds personal details which I very much appreciated.
My book report is not of much value because I do not engage with much of the content of the book and that is where the gold is. I wish only to highlight how vast the subject matter is. I want to give only a little taste whereas the book itself is a full meal which will leave a reader stuffed. And I want to use this book report to raise awareness of Perspectiva and its Emerge initiative.
Preface
I have tried out my fair share of self-help regimes and read hundreds of books on the subject. My reading has always been driven by hope—the hope that the next book really will hold the key, the long-lost formula for a sustainable better life. Self-improvement promises nothing less than salvation, of a secular kind. Crucially, self-improvement is intimately linked to the transcendence of the self. While that may sound paradoxical, I strongly believe that the truly improved self shows itself in its interactions with others. It is less egoistical, humbler, more generous. It is not constantly preoccupied with its own anxieties, perceived shortcomings, and disappointments.
In this book, I have brought together what I consider to be the ten most valuable and enduring ideas about self-improvement. These ideas come from different periods and cultures, and they have undergone variation across the ages. I encountered them while I was working through the vast literature of self-improvement, the origins of which lie thousands of years in the past.
Introduction
Each chapter of this book focuses on one of these ten core themes from the long history of self-improvement. I examine the different guises they assume in changing cultural contexts, as well as how and why they resonate with our present-day concerns. It is from these enduring ideas about how we can improve ourselves that we have most to learn. For new is not always better. Sometimes, we forget what we already know. History holds many answers to our most pressing contemporary challenges.
...the specific self-improvement aims I encountered in my research for this book tend to revolve predominantly around social relations, status, learning, variety, and altruism.
CHAPTER ONE - Know Thyself
GENUINE SELF-KNOWLEDGE HAS to be the starting point for any attempt to improve ourselves. Without a proper understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, we cannot determine what needs to be improved and how that might be possible... But knowing ourselves—truly understanding who we are—is by no means easy.
Schaffner takes her readers on a journey that starts, of course, with Socrates. She adds perspectives from Buddhism, the Romantics, Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung, Joseph Campbell and others. And there were names that were new to me - Marsilio Ficino, Steve Peters, Richard Wiseman and others.
Reading Chapter One was somewhat of a bonding with Schaffner experience for me. We are both melancholic. We have the same Myers-Briggs Type Indicator profiles, ISTJ. And I suspect that I would have a similar Big Five profile.
The Big Five test tells me I am a fairly neurotic, extremely introverted, but highly conscientious person, anxious not to offend others but very open to new experiences.
Then Schaffner adds a long, interesting paragraph that begins with “My test results will not, for example, tell you…”
CHAPTER TWO - Control Your Mind
THE BELIEF THAT WE can control our feelings by controlling our thoughts is both the most simple and also the most radical premise on which most modern self-help rests.
Schaffner adds Stoicism, William James, Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, Martin Seligman and more to her survey. Of particular interest to me was David D. Burns’s Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, published in 1980. That book was a positive turning point in my personal self-help journey.
CHAPTER THREE - Let It Go
Most twenty-first-century Western interpretations of the ancient injunction to let go follow a similar pattern. Many self-help books encourage us to let go of social expectations where these collide with our personal needs… The original Eastern art of letting go, by contrast, could not be more different in spirit.
Significant contributions in this chapter come from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Daoism, Confucianism, bishop Augustine of Hippo, Viktor Frankl, Russ Harris, Robert Kegan and Buddhism again and more.
CHAPTER FOUR - Be Good
Schaffner continues to draw on the previously mentioned sources to which she adds Aristotle, Matthieu Ricard, Immanuel Kant, Stephen R. Covey, Alfred Adler and more.
One sentence in this chapter was of particular interest to me.
A growing number of philosophers, such as Lene Rachel Andersen, Tomas Björkman, Jonathan Rowson, and Zachary Stein, seek to revive the eighteenth-century concept of Bildung, emphasizing that inner and social transformation are inextricably linked.
It is only in the last couple of years that I have discovered these philosophers and their ideas and I now casually follow their efforts. Tomas Björkman and Jonathan Rowson are co-founders of Perspectiva and they hired Anna Katharina Schaffner for her current position. Using language that many people will not understand, they are Game B players.
CHAPTER FIVE - Be Humble
AT FIRST GLANCE, THE injunction to be humble does not sound particularly appealing. It appears to be in conflict with our current valorization of self-esteem and self-worth, and to contradict one of the core messages of almost all self-help literature, namely that we should celebrate our achievements and take pride in ourselves.
Humility is also a core value in Christianity, where it takes the form of self-renunciation and complete submission to God.
Until midlife I was a Christian and I understand that view very well.
Humility, then, is also about admitting our own shortcomings and seeking to overcome them… Humility involves teachability, a mindset that embraces constant self-correction and self-improvement… Humility is also the only effective antidote to narcissism.
This chapter introduces a new, modern idea.
Self-help that encourages us to learn from animals or even from plants suggests that our problems can be seen as species-specific… In the self-help literature of the last three decades, the list of animals whose behavior we are encouraged to emulate is topped by wolves, followed closely by cats, while the sloth is a noteworthy recent addition.
This chapter adds transhumanism to the mix of ideas explored and Schaffner does not hesitate to share her perspective.
Personally, I still desire to master my problems on my own terms, with my own uniquely biased cognitive capacities, my entirely inadequate psychological skills, and my flawed human hardware in the form of my aging body—however imperfect and slow in coming the result may be.
CHAPTER SIX - Simplify
A GROWING NUMBER OF THINKERS argue that we are currently experiencing not just a “meaning crisis” but a “sensemaking crisis” as our world has become too complex for our own good.
Marie Kondo, Henry David Thoreau and the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement appear in this chapter.
And this chapter focuses on a uniquely twenty-first century problem.
Keeping it simple in the twenty-first century involves yet another set of important tasks. These include decluttering our minds by switching off our devices and disconnecting from digital distractions… Our presence is constantly seeping away, through all kinds of digital holes, for we are always distracted… And because being online takes up so much of our time, it distracts us from activities that might be more beneficial for our well-being… It is not a coincidence that what has been described as a “teen anxiety epidemic,” and as the worst mental health crisis in decades, corresponds exactly to the moment when in America smartphone ownership became universal… The full story of the role of technology in the post-COVID-19 world still remains to be written.
CHAPTER SEVEN - Use Your Imagination
Our imagination is crucial in the process of self-improvement in many ways. First and foremost, if we want to change the status quo, we need to be able to imagine what could be rather than merely what is. We need to have the ability to generate a positive vision of our future selves that differs from our present condition.
Neuro-linguistic programming is discussed in some detail in this chapter.
And I learned an interesting fact about someone I had never heard of.
It was Samuel Smiles (1812–1904), the Victorian founding father of the self-help genre as we know it today, who pioneered the systematic use of inspiring mini-biographies of great men to motivate his readers.
But not new to me were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Friedrich Nietzsche.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Romantic shift in values for the history of self-improvement. The British philosopher Alain de Botton holds Romantic philosophy responsible for many of our current problems. Because the Romantics celebrated the “untrained intuition,” they refused to apply any reason to our emotional life. Instead, they allowed themselves to be driven by spontaneous and unmediated feelings. According to de Botton, it is for this reason that progress in the education of our emotions has stagnated. He believes that in order to counterbalance the Romantics’ harmful influence on Western culture, we need to return to Classical ideals. Instead of intuition, we should cherish rational analysis; instead of obscurity, we should reinstate an appreciation of clarity. Education is to be privileged over dilettante spontaneity, realism over idealism, politeness over honesty, and irony over earnestness. But de Botton arguably goes too far...
I have admired Alain de Botton for years but I do not disagree with Schaffner’s perspective on this point.
CHAPTER EIGHT - Persevere
We might now describe this quality as perseverance. Perseverance denotes our ability to continue with a task even in the face of obstacles or setbacks. We might also speak of resilience, tenacity, drive, and resolve. Grit and growth mindsets are other more recent framings that capture our capacity to keep going in spite of repeated disappointments.
According to the Values in Action (VIA) Inventory of Strengths, perseverance happens to be my own forte.
Self-improvement, too, requires perseverance, for the fantasy of fast and flashy magical transformation is just that—a fantasy. The older notion of self-cultivation, which entails a slow and steady approach to growing and nourishing our finer qualities, acknowledges the importance of persevering in this process. So does the Japanese concept of kaizen, meaning “good improvement,” which perfectly encapsulates the idea of gradual and incremental long-term change for the better.
The most reasonable conclusion is arguably that we should take a measured and humble kaizen approach to our own improvement, valuing gradual and incremental change for the better, however small that change may be.
Angela Duckworth, M. Scott Peck, Dale Carnegie and Jordan B. Peterson are among the characters in this chapter.
CHAPTER NINE - Mentalize
WE CAN SEEK TO IMPROVE ourselves in three main domains. We may choose to work on our inner life, by trying to control our thoughts and emotional reactions or by cultivating specific qualities and virtues. We may focus on enhancing our physical bodies—for example, by improving our appearance, diet, exercise regime, or general health. Or we may wish to improve our social relations by working on the way we interact with others. All are of course interrelated.
In the Western world, we are… witnessing unprecedented levels of depression, narcissism, and loneliness. Many of us find it increasingly difficult to establish meaningful and lasting relationships with others.
… on the concept of mentalizing—that is, our ability to understand our own emotional state of mind and that of others. Only if we grasp our own emotions can we imagine and react appropriately to the needs, feelings, beliefs, and motivations of others. Mentalizing enables us to project ourselves into somebody else’s mind, and to envisage the world as they might experience it. It is related to empathizing, or becoming cognitively aware of others’ feelings and even experiencing those feelings ourselves. If we do not understand our own and other people’s feelings, we are very likely to find it hard, if not impossible, to form meaningful relationships. Instead we may well misread others’ feelings and make false assumptions about their intentions, causing us to respond inappropriately... Mentalizing is difficult, however, and very few of us master the art.
The fictional worlds conjured up by great writers are thus magnificent training grounds for honing our ability to mentalize, and to engage with ways of seeing the world that may be profoundly different from our own.
Niccolò Machiavelli, Baldassare Castiglione and Anthony Robbins join the self-improvement party in this chapter.
CHAPTER TEN - Be Present
ONE OF THE MOST ubiquitous recent self-help trends is mindfulness... its methods have become a cliché. Mind-fulness has now peaked, and the self-help market has moved on... At the height of its popularity, mindfulness clearly addressed an urgent collective need.
Mindfulness is often presented as part of a package that includes loving-kindness and compassion, which appeals to those of us who are tired of Western-style individualism and its neoliberal “greed is good” values.
There is nothing wrong in acknowledging that other cultures might simply be much better than we are when it comes to living in the present moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is prominently featured in this chapter, supplemented with Eckhart Tolle, Russ Harris and others.
Conclusion
WHAT WOULD HISTORIANS OF the future make of our current self-help landscape? No doubt they would remark on the sheer diversity of the books that populate the bestseller lists. Our self-help literature ranges from the rigorously evidence-based to the wildly esoteric, from performance enhancement–driven approaches to manuals telling us simply to do as we please.
As much as I liked this book, I was mildly disappointed in the Conclusion. It was brief and did not add much value to the book. I was hoping for more of Schaffner’ personal perspectives and experience. But that probably belongs in a different book.
I was hoping for a call to action in the Conclusion and for something forward looking and inspirational. In fairness, however, in her book she does advocate for a balanced, middle way approach.
Notes
The Notes are as comprehensive as the book itself. They are an excellent resource for digging more deeply in any direction. Scanning them left me personally overwhelmed and greatly impressed by the work done by Anna Katharina Schaffner.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my daughter, Helena, who is my opposite in so many ways and therefore my perfect teacher.
Interesting and insightful!
Index
Also comprehensive.
About the Author
There are short biographies of Schaffner and her colleagues at Perspectiva on its website.
https://systems-souls-society.com/origin/people/
Schaffner publishes a blog on Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-art-self-improvement
And she is...
Professor of Cultural History, University of Kent
https://www.kent.ac.uk/european-culture-languages/people/1613/schaffner-anna-katharina
I have written an essay, About Self-Help and Self-Development, about my personal journey with these aspects of life.