Has anyone actually improved their situation by reading a book?

Book are little gateways to knowledge man. Every book I read I walk away learning something about myself, these are the ones that effected me the most.
Musashi
Grapes of wraith
Crime and punishment

>>18152969
Yes and yes. Very much so.

A self-help book helped me manage an anxiety disorder better than any doctor or medicine.

/adv/ had gotten me through several very tough times.

The key to both is knowing what questions to ask.

>>18152969

yes to both, though with advice I usually dont have to post, i learn more from reading other peoples advice to other peoples problems, or typing up my problem and finding the answer before i click 'post'

>>18152969

no. in the enture history of the world not a single person has ever improved any situation ever by reading a book or taking advice.

>>18152969
Machiavelli has me wanting to backstab people

Descartes has me thinking about consciousness as detatched from physicality and the implications on empathy when defining people by their minds rather than physical beings. Then I think about the idea of embodied cognition which challenges that.

>>18153146
Writing your problems generally provides transparwncy and insight that you may otherwise have been blind to.

>>18153179

yes, thats what i said.

>>18153122
>>18153148
Post like these is the reason why is /adv/ so good. The general good will which clashes with sharp irony and shitposting and sometimes creates wisdom.

Never change /adv/!

Reading books strongly influenced my life from Nietzsches unermench to the great writings of carl Sagan

>>18153199
How do you read Nietzsche before Kant and the Greeks?

>>18153239
I read them too learned about it when taking world history I would read philosophy at home

>>18153097
First post best post

>>18153122
>A self-help book helped me manage an anxiety disorder better than any doctor or medicine.

Which book?

>>18152969
Very yes, that's how I finally stopped being a pushover and getting with girls worth being with.

Check out No More Mister Nice Guy, Models, and Owning Your Own Shadow. All three are in the self-help catageory.

>>18153356
>No More Mister Nice Guy
I liked that one.

Have also read books about being assertive and problem drinking, both of which helped me.

>>18152969
Reading some works by Camus was a great help to me. I was very sad and suicidal, but his ideas of radical freedom and absurdity naturally appealed to me. I had been overly shy and withdraw for most of my life, but mostly good-natured, so as I started acting on my impulses more life got better. I really think Camus kept me from killing myself.

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>>18153097
>>18153294

>>18152969
I found The Enchiridion of Epictetus and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius particularly helpful for me.

My boss just gave me a buddhist book from Rinpochè called 'The Places That Scare Us', but I've yet to open it.

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>>18153378

If you're into space, Carl Sagan's books are always good for a change of perspective.
Cosmos mang

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>>18153406
>doesn't get the post
>mobileposting
>fpbp

>>18153174
Descartes is stupid, because it's not.
Spend two weeks not leaving the house, then spend the next two exercising, spending time outside and with other people and you'll notice the difference.

Alternatively, read Spinoza, who had the much healthier and accurate view of consciousness and physicality as an inseparable unit that will suffer if either side is overemphasized.

>>18153544
Rationalism is best ism

>>18153544
What's a good book you would recommend by Spinoza?

>>18153644
The Ethic following the geometric method

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>Reading a book:
All the books I've considered worth-reading have improved me for the time I spent on them. Even if the story was depressing, it taught me at least a little tiny bit about life and everything when I draw connections between the story and the world which inspired the story. You see someone who's exactly like a nightmarish villain, and you end up less surprised by this person's behavior than everyone else who deals with that guy.

Novelists often pull characters from their own long time observations of specific people; this almost always ends up more believable than 'inventing' one out of your ass.

>Visiting /adv/
I come here because SOMETIMES people have actual conversations, instead of just 24/7 memegun fights. It's probably the closest thing I can find to an internet social outlet; "social media" is just one giant TV commercial with admins robodeleting anything they don't like while promoting what they do like. 4chan is almost as bad, but not quite.

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>>18152969

Its not the book that improves your situation, its you.

The fact of the matter is that the mind mind goes through a wild array of leaps and bounds to create universes for itself in which it is comfortable. One way or another, we convince ourselves of things and rationalize and project and perpetuate any amount of paradigms or stereotypes necessary to protect us from trauma and discomfort.

I'd venture to say that 90% of the time when we read books like this we're not absorbing new information. 90% of the time we KNOW what we need to do to improve our lives and achieve our dreams we've just cultivated a mindset within ourselves that prevents us from accepting the actual reality of our situation in comparison to the reality we've created to justify our failures and negative traits.

Visual reminders and narrative representations of ideas can be helpful tools of being mindful of these things but the the words themselves hold no power. We could read every self-help book on the planet and if we don't have what it takes to apply the information and be honest with ourselves about what needs to be done then it'll all just go in one ear and out the other.

So, I would say, inherently, no. Books don't improve our situation. We do. The words and encouragement of others are merely just another tool we utilize to motivate the parts in us that we've always had to do the things we already knew had to be done.