The Perfect Plan: The Downside to Self-Help

better living leadership organization Oct 02, 2021

(7 minute read)

By Bethany Rees

The Perfect Product

Awe, remember the days of watching infomercials. In these 30 minute informative commercials, we learned all about that one product or service that was going to change our lives.

I mean the testimonies of customers and even that one celebrity tugged at our ethos, pathos, & logos (ethics, emotions and logic). And then we had the sales pitch “for just 2 payments of $19.99” along with the sense of urgency “but hurry, these won’t last long.” Yeah, we’ve all bought a few of “this amazing thing will solve our problem” items in our lifetime.

But now...We’ve come of age. Most of us reading this are probably wise adults. We can see right through those marketing tactics and fallacies they feed us. So we’ve slowed our buying of gimmick-type items because we’re more sophisticated now.

Um, you know what? All my adult friends, you go ahead into wisdom and maturity because I’ve come to realize that I stopped short. I haven’t made it yet. Let me confess something to you…

My Confession

You see, I have always loved reading, analyzing, and self-reflecting on how I can do better because “being better today than I was yesterday” is the right thing to do to win in life. This desire to do the right thing (and “win”) has led me down a path of constantly searching for the RIGHT WAY to do the RIGHT THING because in my mind, if I just follow the RIGHT PLAN I should be successful.

In my arrogance I did at one time think I was too smart for gimmicks. In my “wisdom,” I moved on to pursuing knowledge over gimmick things to solve my problems.

I have come to adore the self-help genre and its promise of the perfect plan for success. With each self-help program, the giver of knowledge:

Told me my problem
Told me with such a sense of urgency why I needed to solve my problem
Gave me the promise that they know how to solve my problem
Described the perfect plan to solve my problem
Gave amazing testimonies on how people with my problem overcame it using the plan
And hopefully - Success! I overcome my problem and win in life!

No matter the problem I was facing, I knew I could always read books and listen to podcasts that offer such great wisdom, insights, and plans to help me solve them all.

BUT...where was I focusing on God?

My own ethics, emotions, logic and allegiance to truth is still flawed.

In my youth, I sought all-in-one THINGS to solve my problems.

And now in my middle-aged years I have sought the all-in-one PERFECT PLANS to solve my problems.

I moved from perfect things to knowledge and perfect plans...and sadly I was still leaving out my perfect God.

So really, I’m no wiser now than I was 20 years ago when I bought that thighmaster, ped egg, Billy Blank’s Tae bo, or when I went on that “free trip I deserved and I only had to listen to that timeshare sales pitch once.” (Side note: Jason was ticked about that trip. LOL!)

The Battle of the Mind

Those that know me personally might say I’m organized, work well with others, and am a high achiever, but the devil has used these things to trap me in my own self-importance.

Oh how the devil loves to use our natural gifts, personalities and preferences to snag us away from God.

Our minds are tricky things and we are fighting a great battle in it. My flawed mind kept thinking that I, a sinner in need of God, wasn’t the problem but that my lack of having the perfect product, perfect situation, or the perfect plan was the real problem.

In my supposed wisdom I came to believe that there was in fact a perfect plan, checklist, and system that I could follow to get rid of chaos and ensure success in: being a Christian, my health, my marriage, my parenting, my leadership, and my business. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

As Jennie Allen says in her book Get Out of Your Head:

“The greatest spiritual battle of our generation is being fought between our ears…

It is almost impossible to navigate through our culture without being bombarded with messages about how we can do better and be better. ‘Experts’ speak directly to our desire for hope through self-improvement books, websites, articles, infomercials, and so on. We feel a surge of optimism - the thrill of anticipation rises within us - when we hear how the right mantra, the right workout, the right financial plan, the right determination will lead us to the better, more fulfilling life we sense should be ours….

For all the good that self-help does, that help always comes up short in the end…

The only true self-help is for us as followers of Jesus to believe who we are as daughters and sons of the King of the universe and to know that our identities are secured by the shed blood of God’s own Son.”

My “Aha” and Progression on how to solve life’s problems:

Only recently did God reveal to me that I’ve been putting my faith in self-help knowledge and plans over putting my faith in Him.

And here’s where I had to allow God to really peel back a lot of layers of “good tools and habits” to find the twist and turn of how thoughts and lies came into play in my mindset and heart.

Where the battle for my mind and heart was lost was when:

I developed a thought that God didn’t care about my “little” situations.
I believed that I could handle them myself because I was smart enough to analyze, read, and execute a plan.

Now don’t get me wrong! Knowledge, reading for growth, making checklists to organize your thoughts, and having a plan are not bad things at all. Again, self-help tools are not bad in and of themselves and I would honestly encourage you to use them as tools...

BUT the love of and belief in anything over God is idolatry.

Whether it is knowledge, money, self, kids, etc, nothing should come before God.

Such a small detail of what my heart and mind trusted in (the perfect plan over our perfect God) led to my slippery slope into idolatry. So the “perfect plan” from all my self-help books isn't so perfect if I leave God completely out the equation.

Man, I really thought I had it all together because I was intentional on being proactive and organized, but it turns out my own arrogance of my knowledge, self-importance, and execution of the plan only led me to lose the battle in my mind and heart.

So What’s Next?

Again, plans and checklists aren’t bad, but as for me, I have believed in them way too much and made them an idol above God. So what’s next for me? How can I shift my mind from focusing on research, best practices, plans, and checklists to now completely trusting in God?

For me, I don’t have a plan or a checklist. It’s time for me to just spend time with my perfect God. I need to shut my mind up and lean into Him. So for the past few weeks I’ve been intentional to get up before everyone else, make coffee, and sit alone with God.

It has been a very humbling experience to learn that no matter how many perfect plans, checklists, or best practices I try, these are the truths I need to know compared to what I used to believe:

Friends, may we be careful with all things that we can put before God. For me it was the promise of perfect plans within the areas of self-help.

So Lord God, help me and all of us to exalt You in our lives. We beg that you will expose the battles of our mind and reveal to us how to truly repent of our sin so we turn away from the world and closer to you. Remind us of who You are and who we are in You. In Christ name we pray, Amen.

Know Better. Do Better. Live Better. Love God over things and plans.

Rocks Before Sand!

Scripture:

You shall have no other gods before me.

~Exodus 20:3 NIV

Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."

~Matthew 22:37-39 NIV

Theme Song:

Best News Every - Mercy Me

References used:

Allen. Jennie. Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts.Waterbrook. 2021.

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