Trillium flowers in bloom at Dinosaur Hill, Rochester Hills, MI, photo by Donald M. Schwartz

Background

Many trace the beginning of the modern self help or self improvement movement back to the 1956 recording of "The Strangest Secret," by Earl Nightingale He originally produced the recording for the salesmen working in his insurance company.  The recording was so well received that it went on to be the only gold record of its type.  Better Ways¹ Learn more about Earl Nightingale's philosophy of ""we become what we think about" and listen to "The Strangest Secret" [audio sample]

An earlier pioneer of the self-help movement was Christian D. Larson, of the "New Thought" movement, whose most famous work was the "Optimist Creed." Better Ways²  Recite the "Optimist Creed" each day.

Of course the self-help or self-improvement root go back to ancient times as outlined in this Wikipedia article.  In the U.S., the seeds were planted, in the Nineteenth Century by former patients of mental asylums for what would later become the modern self-help movement, as reported in the article titled "History of the Mental Health Self-Help and Advocacy Movement," by the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse.

Getting Started

Better Ways⁶ Using Creative Writing
As Road Toward Self-Improvement

Better Ways⁵ To learn about high tech meditation resources, you could go to  Synchronicity.

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