Monk, Ferrari & Sivana

I recently read another, so-called, self-help book. It is called The Family Wisdom.

I don't really grasp what all these self-help authors are trying to achieve in their lives. First, there are so many of them. Second, every alternate book seems to be trying to tell you the same. Only one thing changes -- the story or the tale of the fable. Even authors from HBS has turned to this story telling exercise. If you don't know what I am talking about, do read Our iceberg is melting.

Anyway, I am not here to scold these guys. They are doing good job in telling stories and minting hell lot of money by having *one monk travelled to India and publish many books*. What I wish to talk about is story-telling business.

I think the entire self-help business is turning out to be - "I am a better story-teller". There are 2 key elements in these stories. It has to be simpler (like a children story) and it has to be interesting (like a fiction).

I think it is working like a charm as proven by the fact that all these books are selling like hot cakes across the world. There are 2 reasons to this..
1. Life, professional or personal, is getting complex day by day. Last thing they want is some heavily worded, complex dose of discourse to show them a way to come out of the grind.
2. People like stories.

Stories are fun. Stories are touchy. People tend to link themselves to one of the characters in the story. That helps people to remember the story for long. How may stories do you remember that you read in your childhood? Now, compare that to number of theorems, formulas, geography lessons. Bingo!! You GOT it.

Now, if someone comes across some problem; it is intuitive for human mind to link that to the knowledge base he has already acquired through previous learnings. If a person remembers a story, probability is very high that he would also remember "how that character in that story handled that situation".

So, in nutshell, all these authors, who are evidently more close to basic human needs are making hell of money by telling stories to those, who have somehow got rapidly booted in complex, high flyer lifestyle, but still found themselves unhappy.

--Navjot Singh Sohanpal