The new breed of no-nonsense self-help book could bring you a step closer to a better you, writes Kate Holmquist
As Irish holiday travellers stuff their carry-ons with last-minute airport book-buys this summer, there will be a few guides to better living squeezed in among the Maeve Binchys, Dan Browns and Sudoku how-tos.
In the 1990s the self-help book industry put its money on helping us find our inner children while we learned to stop being 'co-dependent' along 'the road less travelled' while imbibing 'chicken soup for the soul'. In the no-nonsense 'noughties', self-help has been rebranded as 'mind, body, spirit', and top sellers are teaching us to find our inner adults.
Make more money and ascend to the higher state of first class by reprogramming your brain, eating and dressing better, while all along becoming a better human being.
There is still plenty of searching self-analysis on the shelves (not quite marked 'loser'), but the big sellers are pragmatic, quick fixes that promise to make us winners in an increasingly competitive business world.
And, if not that, better dressed and thinner at the least.
The Mind Gym (Time Warner, UK £12.99)
It used to be workouts were for the lycra-clad body; now they're for the fit mind.
The top-seller in the airport bookshops comes complete with a secret code for accessing online workouts developed in workshops with 100,000 participants.
Everyone who is anyone in business seems to be talking about this book, so it's no harm reading just to be able to hold your own.
"This is the perfect intelligent and intuitive guide for everyone who wants power, wealth and influence - without bloodshed," Simon Sebag Montefiori, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, is quoted as saying on the flyleaf.
The book takes all the best psychological research of the past 50 years and translates it into a user-friendly guide to letting go of negative thinking and behaviour and replacing them with healthier, positive coping mechanisms.
Optimists live longer, achieve more and have happier relationships and you can become an optimist by reprogramming the way you perceive situations which, in turn, leads to others perceiving you positively.
Mind Gym is crammed with tried and tested ways of achieving a state of serene confidence, while managing stress in tough situations.
Rating: 10/10
Change Your Life in 7 Days, Paul McKenna (Bantam, UK £6.99)
Without using the term "neurolinguistic programming" once, Paul McKenna has put his name to a do-it-yourself guide to neurolinguistic programming, known in business consultancy as NLP.
It accompanies McKenna's TV series on Sky One, in which he has been seen curing Tourette's syndrome, agoraphobia, panic attacks and broken hearts by teaching sufferers how to 'rewire' their brains.
There's no doubt that it works, the question is, can you make it work for yourself without the one-to-one guidance of an NLP practitioner?
Using much of the same research mined by The Mind Gym, McKenna states: "Success and happiness are not accidents that just 'happen' to some people and not to others. They are predictable results created by deliberate ways of thinking and acting."
The book comes with a CD that you're supposed to listen to every morning for seven days, making a holiday the ideal time to try it out. The aim is to change the way you perceive the world outside you and to alter your self-perception from that of victim to doer so that you can achieve your goals in manageable steps. One of the best chapters advises dealing with enemies and trouble-makers by putting yourself in their shoes.
Rating: 8/10
What You Wear Can Change Your Life, Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall (BBC, UK £9.99)
The claim in the title couldn't possibly be true, unless the wardrobe in question involves a crown, handcuffs or some facial tattooing.
Changing your attitude can change your life, though, and Susannah and Trinny have the sense to take seriously the issue of self-image for the imperfect majority of women who want to live happily with their bodies as they are, since being slightly overweight is healthier than being too thin.
"Blow the diet and exercise regime and invest in some good underwear," write the style gurus, gone mega in the US following their appearance on Oprah.
The girls advocate modern versions of corsetry as the key to inner confidence.
If your super-strength knickers still don't hold your stomach in, then mask it with a quality handbag every time you sit down, suggests Susannah (looking like a suicide bomber in the boardroom may not go down too well, though).
This is a good book to bring into the changing room when buying that swimsuit and wardrobe, and ideal for planning a new working wardrobe for autumn.
First buy a new bra, or several.
Rating: 6/10
The 8th Habit, Steve Covey (Simon & Schuster, UK £17.99)
Steve Covey is one of the most highly respected thinkers in the corporate world where his psychology of good management has become textbook. His previous international best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon & Schuster, UK £10.99), is a must-read for anyone in business, not just because his management ideas work, but because his humane approach to getting the best out of oneself and others involves reacting positively to stress. You can be successful while also practising values of integrity, honesty and human dignity, he argues in an evangelical tone that can be irritating at times.
The 8th Habit cashes in on the success of the previous book, adding what Covey sees as the tools for being an inspiring leader in the 'knowledge worker age'.
A Mormon who honed his communication skills while plodding door to door in Dublin as a student, Covey's writing still has an evangelical sincerity.
His 'eighth habit' concerns the achievement of peace of mind without sacrificing lifestyle and relationships, building relationships based on trust rather than 'what's in it for me', and teaching managers to get more from employees who themselves want more for less time and effort. In other words, teaching people how to be humane bosses while still increasing their employees' productivity.
Rating: 6/10
You Are What You Eat, Gillian McKeith (Michael Joseph, UK £12.99)
Flying out of the bookshops, but worth a health warning - especially if you're going on holiday with someone who has bought it. Expect anguished tongue examination (theirs and yours) as well as pensive gazes into the toilet bowl, which is where you may want to draw the line, if you haven't already with those meals of sprouted aduki beans, kohlrabi and sugar-free, fat-free carob and flaxseed brownies.
McKeith's Channel 4 TV series, You Are What You Eat, is a masterpiece of entertainment, mixing new age pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo with the opportunity to look with scorn and astonishment at the junk food diets of 'Britain's worst eaters' as the white-coated McKeith oohs and ahhs over their excretions.
Qualified nutritionists have been quick to poo-poo many of McKeith's claims, such as her belief that eating green leaves is like eating oxygen, that eating cooked food swells the brain and other organs, and that regular enemas clear facial acne.
The jet-setting Australian has a BA in language and linguistics from Edinburgh University, an MA in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from the long-distance learning internet school, Clayton College of Natural Health, which entitles her, one imagines, to wear the white coat. The book that this amazingly thin and tiny show-woman should write is How to make millions as an international health guru. Her advice to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, less fat and get more exercise is absolutely sound.
Rating: 1/10