Self-esteem is a term used to a wide extent nowadays. Teachers consider it part of education training; parents instill confidence in the hope of better handling life’s challenges. It has become a mantra for life coaches, as though self-esteem is a magical potion, an elixir for happiness.

But what is self-esteem?

The Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale is a set of questions used to measure both positive and negative feelings an individual has about themselves.

Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, and Vohs (2003) set out to see if having a high self-esteem, based on the Rosenberg Scale, produced better performance, success, happiness, and a healthier life.

The answer was not straightforward. For one thing, many with high self-esteem overstate good things about themselves, and inflate their own success.

Overly confident individuals are quick to defend against criticism. Their ‘good’ qualities are framed by haughtiness and boastful swagger.

Many would regard someone with high self-esteem as vainglorious.

However, this is not the end of the story. As Mark Twain once said, “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is your-er than you! Shout loud, ‘I am lucky to be what I am’…”

According to the Dr. Seuss allegory everyone is unique. To know that you are a one-of-a-kind is a constant joy.

In a study by Gray-Little, Williams, and Hancock to determine if the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale indicates those who will be successful over those who won’t—the findings were not what you expect.

Self-help, self-improvement, call it what you will, zeros in on human insecurity, “you are not reaching your full potential and falling short of the success you deserve.”

They proclaim that through repeated adherence to their ‘coaching’ methods, a follower can increase success and overall satisfaction with their lives.

If we could filter down various publications to a single word to describe the common thread, it would be self-esteem.

But what is self-esteem, and why must we read self-books to get it?

Bruce Springsteen has a career that spans five decades. He is considered one of the world’s best- selling music artists.

Springsteen, however, was no child prodigy. His teachers described him as a loner, and outsider, and a recluse. He was always in trouble at his Catholic elementary school.

He recalls, “In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that’s where I belonged.”

Although such a humiliating experience could have marred many, Springsteen takes a light-hearted view of his former days. “I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.”

Feeling alienated, Springsteen skipped his school graduation ceremony. He dropped out of Ocean County College. He failed his physical examination after being drafted into military service because of “crazy behaviour”.

Given his formative years, it could be said, Bruce Springsteen was a kid unlikely to succeed.

Ninety-year-old Priscilla, in going to school for the first time to learn to read and write, proves it is never too late to learn. But will her story inspire change to the lives of those who read it?

The answer is, probably not.

In a quest to discover if the self-help industry is a blatant money-pit, or supported by science, it is vital to look at arguments for and against.

Most readers to this blog will be decades younger than Priscilla Sitienei, not to mention that in reading this, you can read and write.

According to Shawn Callahan, author of Putting Stories To Work, stories similar to Priscilla’s will not inspire change because, “there is too much of a gap between the sender and the listener.”

Callahan goes on to say motivational speakers may create a momentary burst of inspiration that does not give people a specific set of behaviours to focus on creating change. An audience will find themselves saying things such as, “what a wonderful story, and a fantastic outcome, but it’s not me. They have no idea of what it’s like to be me.”

Bobby Hoffman, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Central Florida outlines the problem of the well-intentioned “coaches”, when he says, “Ironically, when a motivational huckster’s ‘proven formula’ fails to work, the user is often blamed for not following the prescriptive formula or chastised because they are a ‘non-believer’.”

Triumph and prosperity outlined in the often-repeated stories by self-help authors could be down to a single state of mind, self-esteem.

For centuries, the prevailing opinion was that an old dog can’t be taught new tricks.

This notion started with the Ancient Greeks. Aristotle’s “tabula rasa” likened human memory to a wax tablet. As we grow older, the wax hardens, making it impossible to etch new impressions.

The “critical period” for learning is during childhood. After childhood, the density of neurons in the brain’s circuits becomes stable. Learning a new skill is harder, if not impossible.

Against this backdrop of folklore comes an individual who takes on all that was assumed to be true.

Priscilla Sitienei spent her life in Ndalat, Kenya. Her story was uncovered by science writer David Robson for the BBC series Future.

Priscilla yearned to write about her ninety-years living in Kenya so that generations coming after her would know her story. But more importantly, she wanted to inspire them. There was one major problem getting in her way.

While most children in Western countries start in their fourth or fifth years of life and continue over the next decade to refine skills in grammar, spelling, increasing their vocabulary to forty-thousand words or more, Priscilla never learnt to read or write in Kalenjin, the local language.

Inspired by Kimani Maruge, another Kenyan who holds the Guinness Book of Records for the oldest primary school student, Priscilla went for the first time to school.

The students call her “Gogo”, or grandmother.

Gogo finds children who will not go to school and demands to know why. She says, “They tell me they are too old. I tell them, well, I am at school and so should you.”

Learning to read and write is one of the most complex human tasks: recognising the sounds called phenomes, is the first step. This is builds to fluency and comprehension—understanding the vocabulary in context of the text to interpret the entire meaning.

Priscilla Sitienei is proof that even at an advanced age, learning complicated tricks is not beyond our pliable brains.

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD and author of Making Habits, Breaking Habits, states that “the dark side of hope is that claims about potential improvement can, and are, grossly exaggerated in order to prise open our wallets.”

Hope, those feelings of expectation and desire for good things to happen, has a dark side? Fortunately, it’s not all dark news for those hopefuls seeking to improve themselves.

Self-manuals seem to be effective in changing the way individuals think about themselves because, in part, it is due to that sugar-coated pill called a placebo influence. People believe the practises or steps outlined in the books changed the lives of others whose stories are retold within the pages.

If it worked for them, chances are it will work for me.

However, there’s always a killjoy in the crowd to point out the obvious. Comedian, author and social critic, George Carlin observed, “There is no such thing as self-help: anyone looking for help from someone else does not technically get “self” help; and one who accomplishes something without help, did not need help to begin with.”

If you have scrolled through several self-help books as I have, it becomes apparent that the authors follow a certain method of imparting their wisdom. Self-help writers are often accused of being “simplistic and repetitious, they are also banal and unoriginal, merely offering their readers platitudes on behalf of the best parts of folk wisdom.”

But is this the end of the story?

At 90 years of age, Priscilla Sitienei could not write her name, much less read a self-help book. After a lifetime of poor education, she tagged along with six of her great-grandchildren to the local school. But it wasn’t to carry their book and water bottles. What she Priscilla did was astounding.

“You trail from street to street, smelling of beer…like a broken rudder, good for nothing…you have been found preforming acrobatics on a wall.” Possibly, one of the first guides to everyday behaviour found in the Egyptian “Codes”. In recent times, the self-help phenomenon has soared in popularity.

Chances are, if you are reading this, you will have at onetime read a self-help book. The fact is, people desire to be better: a better golfing handicap; move to an upmarket location; retain a youthful complexion through advancing years, and so on.

If you found yourself “smelling of beer” and “performing acrobatics on a wall” maybe it’s time to break some old habits and start afresh.

It could be said, aiming to improve oneself is part of the human condition. The US$11 billion industry is proof Mr. and Ms. Average is eager to become, well, above average. The need to gain new skills and knowledge to become a better version of themselves is a worldwide industry ranging from millennials to boomers.

Stars such as Jennifer Love Hewitt, Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Cher have endorsed self-help books.

Surely, there must be something to the self-improvement “intelligence”.

But the self-help spectacle has its fair share of detractors.

When Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich asserted that repeated positive thoughts attracts wealth, political satirist, Christopher Buckley in his novel God Is My Broker claims, “The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one.”

Right up until the 1970s, neurologists were of the opinion that the brain you have as an adult is the one you are stuck with.

So, where did the notion that brains can change come from? Back in the eighteenth century a lecturer, John Brown, at the Glasgow School of Medicine believed all illnesses could be cured by two simple treatments, opium and alcohol.

Around the same time, Vincenzo Malacarne, a professor of medicine in Turin, Italy, made important discoveries in anatomy.

Malacarne was the first to describe the human cerebellum—the back part of the brain which regulates muscular activity in all vertebrates.

The professor spent several years training one of each pair of animals to perform new tricks. Upon dissecting and comparing the brains of each animal, the skilled creatures had larger cerebellums than the untrained ones. But his work was largely ignored for almost a hundred years.

A Polish neurophysiologist, Jerzy Konorski, continuing the work of Ivan Pavlov on “classical conditioning”, was the first to use the term neural plasticity.

Today, one of the pioneers in this field of research is neuroscientist Michael Merzenich. He said, “The brain’s powerful ability to change itself and adapt — and ways we might make use of that plasticity to heal injured brains and enhance the skills in healthy ones.”

What does this mean for the average Joe and is it of any use in improving his or her life?

Cheryl lost her sense of balance because of damage in the semicircular canals of her inner ear, called the vestibular system.

We maintain our ability to stay upright is via a combination of senses giving information to our brain.

Vision tells us where we are in relation to things.

Proprioception, or touch, gets signals from joints and muscles to say whether we are upright or upside-down. It also lets us know where our limbs are in relation to our centre of mass.

The vestibular system tells us when we move, or when we lose our balance.

When one of these is not working, it also affects the other senses.

Neurologist Paul Bach-y-Rita told Cheryl he could teach her brain new tricks and gave her a hat to wear.

Built into the hat was an accelerometer to register movement. He placed a grid on her tongue with information from the hat sent to the grid. All Cheryl had to do was keep a tiny circle in the middle of the grid to keep her balance.

The result was amazing.

“I had forgotten what it was like to see clearly and what it was like not to stagger,” Cheryl said. “It was like the hand of God coming down and touching me.”

Even Paul was shocked to see Cheryl’s progress. “Within half-an-hour she was standing without assistance.”

Cheryl Schlitz had retrained parts of her brain to take over from those areas damaged by the aminoglycoside, gentamicin.  

Miraculous though it was for Cheryl, does the ability to change brain functions have any use for otherwise healthy people?

Apparently, it does.

Cheryl Schlitz joined a support group located in Alabama calling themselves The Wobblers. The members had one thing in common, none could maintain what is called equilibrioception, or a sense of balance.

She said of the condition, “It’s a living hell.” Cheryl suffered from dizziness, tinnitus, memory loss, and blurred vision. She could no longer live the life she had before. Her vestibular system, which keeps things that we see around us steady and not bounce around like a video taken on a phone, was out of whack.

Even though our heads move when we walk, things around us appear still.

But not for Cheryl. What she saw jumped and jiggled making her stagger like a drunk.

Cheryl suffered dreadful side-effects from the antibiotic drug gentamicin.

She was referred to neurologist Paul Bach-y-Rita. Paul told her he could train her brain by using her tongue to keep a sense of balance.

Cheryl didn’t believe him. But she went along with the experiment because she had nothing to lose.

What Cheryl discovered was astounding.