20 Minutes
embarked on a quest for happiness with the series “Like a Monday”.
The principle ?
Experiment each month with a different method to try to approach inner peace, and observe the benefits, or not.
At the heart of this second episode,
Self-love: the notebook to finally accept yourself!
, the adaptation of a bestseller that has "changed the lives of more than 200,000 readers".
The American author Megan Logan distils her advice on benevolence, gratitude, self-love and other “self-compassion”.
“The bestseller that changed the lives of more than 200,000 readers”.
Looking into
Self-love: the workbook to finally accept yourself!
, is to turn to a method that has proven itself.
In any case, this is what the banner that adorns the book says.
Released last February, it is the adaptation of a sales success in the United States, by Megan Logan, an American therapist “specializing in the care of trauma, abuse, eating disorders and bereavement”, explains the press release.
No more protocols for the method tested last month.
Here the author offers a series of exercises to be carried out in writing to “free ourselves from our doubts” and “love who we are”.
A playful approach?
It necessarily speaks to the fan of sudoku, quizzes and personality tests that I am (like most of us, right?).
However, from the first pages of the book, a detail calls out to me: a feeling of deja-vu or, rather, of “already read”.
“Self-love”, “gratitude”, “kindness”, “benevolence”, “compassion”… So many terms that are legion in the personal development sector.
I quickly realize during my reading that my mind is caught up in this whirlwind of sweet marshmallow-scented words, appearing and reappearing on a loop over the chapters.
Magical terms that act like spells?
I asked Laurence Brunet-Hunault, lecturer in linguistics and semiology at La Rochelle University, to help me decipher the images and lexicon of
Self-love
.
The exercise book
Let's start with the shape.
The book leaves no one indifferent.
The blanket is full of fun colors and shapes that grab attention.
The promise of fresh and entertaining reading.
Inside, the advice of the author mingle with the famous promised exercises.
There are tests and quizzes (bingo!), lists to be drawn up, breathing exercises or even fill-in-the-blank texts to complete.
It has the merit of varying the proposals and attracting attention.
Laurence Brunet-Hunault's opinion:
“There is a slightly artistic side to the composition of the cover, but also very childish in the drawings.
The background is black and everything else in color: it will allow you to get out of the darkness of your soul!
Inside, all the colors are light, pastel, it's the world of softness.
The layout is reminiscent of the holiday homework book.
It's just if there weren't thumbnails to stick… This playful aspect is somewhat infantilizing.
Since it's an exercise book, we can't help thinking that, one way or another, there are going to be scores that will tell us if we're right or wrong.
There is an evaluation, it takes us back to when we were in school.
»
“The best version of yourself”
It's the title of Blanche Gardin's very funny series, but it's also an expression that finds its place several times in the book.
"The energy emanating from self-love will give you the motivation to become the best version of yourself", it is written, for example, on page 22. But what does that actually mean?
That currently - and even for several years a priori -, I move forward with an average version of myself?
That there exists somewhere (stuck in a space-time fault perhaps), a much more interesting and successful self?
Laurence Brunet-Hunault's opinion:
“It's true that we have multiple personalities.
There are days when we are in phase, others not… It happens to everyone.
But this way of saying it, I think it goes above all with the spirit of the times and with this performance society where we are always rated.
We can improve, it's not negative, but it evokes the management where we are always trying to improve ourselves.
»
“Free yourself” and find “inner peace”
These two expressions squat the methods of personal development, including
Self-love
.
Rightly so, right?
Who hasn't dreamed of “breaking free” and finding that damn “inner peace”?
But when you think about it a bit, what do these words mean?
What do we want to free ourselves from?
From what jailers or what hindrances?
Does “war” really swarm in the depths of our beings to justify this unexpected quest for peace?
Laurence Brunet-Hunault's opinion:
“During therapy, these expressions remain intimate.
When it appears in books like that, we take them out into the public square and that empties the words of their meaning.
This is a current trend: a lot of words are used wrongly and through, like "war" to talk about the virus and the pandemic.
These are strong words but, by force, we end up integrating them into expressions like "It's war with my neighbors" or "I'm waging war on my children" to transcribe the aggression side.
Above all, I find that these words of peace are quite contradictory with what people are going through.
In the world of work, for example, we are not at peace, we are often harassed,
“Self love”
This is the title of the book and the central concept around which the method revolves.
In the text, this "self-love" is sometimes translated into French as "love of oneself", or even transformed into action with the expression "practicing self-love".
But why leave it in English if it's so easy to translate?
Laurence Brunet-Hunault's opinion:
“Perhaps 'self-love' for a Frenchman can also be the height of selfishness.
Even, narcissism: I love myself, I look at myself and only I am beautiful!
But loving yourself shouldn't be taboo.
Or else it's to make it a marketing trick.
It's like the term "self-compassion".
"Yes, but it's not my fault" is still a very popular speech with this idea of stop telling ourselves that it's our fault.
Is this self-indulgence?
I do not know.
»
Repeat the magic words
Love, benevolence, gratitude… What is striking in the use of these words is as much the promise of happiness and lightness that they contain as the cadence at which they are repeated.
We are even offered to say some of these terms aloud to ourselves, as on page 109. "I am worthy of being loved" and "every day I learn to love myself" phrases to repeat to become "[his] first fan".
But does it work?
Is hammering a word enough to give it magical power?
The opinion of Laurence Brunet-Hunault: “
It is made to create a sphere of well-being and a bubble.
That is to say, if you practice this, you will finally "love yourself".
We will be able to drive away the clouds around us, prioritize anxieties, be open to others… We are only in the positive and that erases our dark side!
They are like mantras that we repeat.
It's done to inscribe things in our psyche.
Looking at myself every morning, telling myself "I'm beautiful, I have confidence in myself" and taking this time for yourself, it will give these moments and these words a power over you.
We are assigned by words.
If little one tells you "You won't achieve anything", you will end up believing it.
That's the pragmatics of language, words can assign people to functions, they have an active weight.
»
In conclusion, do I have more self-confidence after reading and practicing
Self-love
?
No, because I was much more obsessed with the scope of the words than with the practical application of the method.
And other questions push back this unbridled search for happiness: do we necessarily have to adhere to this gentle, somewhat soft and benevolent state of mind to be happy?
Are irony and sarcasm entitled to inner peace?
Case to follow.
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