When did Australians move from 'she'll be right mate' to 'needing to be set on the right path to fulfillment'?
Source: Supplied

WITH so many self-help books on sale, are we going to see our children drowning in snake oil, asks Ali Carle.

----------

DO you think our kids will be able to grow up happy without having to undergo some sort of spiritual or psychological "awakening"?

I don't ask this flippantly; rather it was something I started mulling over during a recent drive down Prospect Rd to a kid's play date.

Channel surfing, I came across an interview with a bloke called Dr Demartini.

It should be stated while I call him a bloke, he proclaims himself as one of the world's leading experts on personal development, the founder of The Demartini Institute which offers 72 different educational courses, and he has produced a gazillion books, DVDs and CDs.

If you want to improve your financial, physical, mental, spiritual, familial, social and/or working being, he is apparently your guy.

While I have always held pop psychology at arm's length, I have still managed to dip into the occasional book and like 19 million others in 44 different countries, actually bought Rhonda Byrne's The Secret , which also featured Dr Demartini.

Fair to say this "worldwide revolution" wasn't really for me.

I could never grasp how just wishing for something and imagining it so, was going to radically alter my life, considering I still haven't received my pony, didn't get to kiss Robert Brown at the Year 7 dance and haven't won the lottery.

I'm certainly not denying that a good mindset is necessary to live a fulfilled life and there is also something to be said about setting and achieving your goals.

But I always try to imagine my grandfather handing over cash for a self-help guide. Firstly, he was as tight a Scotsman as you've ever known.

But I know deep in my gut that if I tried to sell him the idea of lying back and imagining what I wanted in life and expecting it to land in my lap, the only thing I could be guaranteed of was a swift kick up the backside.

He, like many of his generation, worked hard, saved harder, didn't spend beyond their means and if you could wake up in the morning next to your wife, fit enough to fight another day, you were pretty damn happy.

So when did this fascination with self-improvement take hold and how have we gone from a self-sufficient nation of "she'll be right mate" to one that sees our lives as incomplete, unsatisfactory and "needing to be set on the right path of fulfillment"?

Is pop psychology now the new, abridged version of religion or is it just that we are living in unhappier times?

Monty Python's Four Yorkeshiremen would attest we have never had it easier and, while a set of guiding principles, ethics and morals are important in shaping our decisions, a lot of it seems to be good, old common sense.

So how about we stop paying smooth-talking Americans big bucks to tell us how to feel better?

I'm certainly not panning this new self-awareness movement as a whole, but rather the "faddism" which seems to sweep periodically through popular culture.

So I return to my opening question: Where will this all end up for the next generation, given that our grandparents saw none, our parents saw a little, but now we can't swing a cat in a bookshop without knocking over some esoterically penned tome telling us why we really aren't happy?

I guess I can only hope that all of our kids are joyful, no matter how they get to be so.

But I just worry some could run the risk of drowning in snake oil.