“Every day is a gift. Open it. Don’t throw it away. Life itself is a gift. Live high. Don’t pass it by.” the same information, found them “at the door”, learned the reason for their presence and surrendered without any charges.resistance.

As he wrote, he got into GADA “due to the late repayment of some obligations of my company, which went bankrupt in 2015 after 18 years of work, and my own negligence.”

He remained in the GADA detention center for eight days, “until the merger process is completed and the sentences cancelled,” in his own words. Speaking, he states, among other things, on social media that these eight days “were by far the most important in my life. I had the deepest conversations I can remember, I felt the strongest emotions I can remember.”

Stefanos Xenakis announced that he had already begun “his new book about this shocking experience, by far the most important of his life.” This book about “self-awareness and humanity written from INSIDE” (sic) is on the way, as people in his circle confirm us. The author seems to live by his self-fulfilling prophecy: “Every day is a gift.”

However, earlier, with the fact of his arrest, two worlds collided: work and man. Because most discussions about the Xenakis case are dominated by ethics. Consistency of work and life – especially when the author presents the “truths” gleaned from personal experience, attitudes and choices, which, by publishing them, he offers.

Either way, Stefanos Xenakis is the link in this huge industry of self-improvement, self-help, and personal development books. Books written sometimes by researchers, sometimes by “enlightened” people, and sometimes by both.

The 1990s were a turning point. This is the decade when a new science is born: positive psychology, where more and more people turn to the Far East: Indian, Tibetan or Nepalese gurus flourish, astrologers become everyday; Kazantzakis is seen as a guide to life, while Paolo Coelho collects the universe. .

Positive psychology appears “with its doctors, self-proclaimed scientists and gurus who are at your side to teach you how to be happy,” say Edgar Campanas and Eva Iluz in “Happiness. How the Happiness Industry Rules Our Lives” (translated by Vasiliki Petsa, Polis, 2020).

In his manifesto, the American psychologist Martin Seligman in 2000 entitled “Positive Psychology: An Introduction” stated: “I did not choose positive psychology. She called me […] Positive psychology named me the same as the burning bush named Moses.

Since then, thousands of volumes have been written that are part of the larger concept of positive psychology and personal development. A wide umbrella, because personal development is not only about inner transformation and spiritual yoga, it’s about business advice, nutrition ideas, fitness solutions. What initiates believe reveals what is within us.

In search of answers to the question “why do readers continue to turn to all sorts of self-help books,” I turned to psychiatrist Sotiris Manolopoulos. “We trust and identify with those who have already been there before us. It makes sense to look for someone with experience to help us,” says Sotiris Manolopoulos. “The world is so complicated, we need gurus to show us the way. Scientists don’t want to be gurus. And it is difficult for scientists to speak in plain language so that knowledge is understandable to ordinary people,” he adds.

For him, self-improvement books “give you simple solutions, eliminate uncertainty. They free you from thoughts. They saturate and close questions. But the real investigation of the truth does not end there. There is always something new to discover.”

“They give you simple solutions, remove uncertainty. They free you from thoughts. But the real investigation of the truth does not end there. There is always something new to discover.”

Sotiris Manolopoulos, of course, sheds light on the opposite: “Using self-improvement books can show contempt for others and the fantasy that you can do everything yourself.”

A continuation of this psychiatrist’s thought is what Edgar Campanas, a research professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study and co-author of the book Happiness, wrote to me. “Gurus, pseudo-scientists and merchants of happiness are rushing to offer simple and individual solutions to complex structural problems. The thought that there are quick and easy solutions to our difficulties and that all we need is a little willpower and determination to deal with them on our own is comforting and empowering. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. The problems are social, not individual. They are also complex and multifactorial, and not just psychological.”

The eternal pursuit of happiness or the pursuit of certainty in a changing world? I’m passing the question on to Edgar Campanas. “The more fluid the world becomes,” he writes to me, “the more disoriented we are and the more uncertain everything seems, so everything that promises us solid certainty, whether simplistic or deceptive, turns out to be attractive. We strive to stick to solid and objective truths, and the happiness industry is tapping into this need by offering us bold statements about how to overcome our doubts, face major challenges in our lives, and achieve happiness.”

The search for a better self, a different life, motivation make up 5% of the Greek book market, Yiannis Pliotas, marketing director of Dioptra publishing house, told K. Vassilis Vardakas and Vlasis Maronitis, the heads of Key Books, are more optimistic, as the publishing house is almost entirely devoted to non-fiction books on personal development.

Despite this, both sides argue that in Greece we lack data on the book market – quantitative, not qualitative. A recent OSDEL survey, as reported by Vlasis Maronitis, for the period 2017-2019. showed that the broad category “university/scientific” accounts for 23% of publishing revenues.

Yiannis Pliotas and Vardakas-Maronites point to the widespread belief among those who do not prefer the category of personal development/self-improvement that all these books should be “the same”. “Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about a part of non-fiction books called self-development books, self-improvement books, popular psychology books, personal development books, nutrition books, spiritual quest books, etc. This category is broad and especially difficult to define. In fact, for a reader of the genre, the differences in each book are clearly visible, but for an outside observer, they may seem “all the same,” says Yiannis Pliotas.

“There are books on creativity, business, personal development, psychology, real stories. There are many subcategories,” Vassilis Vardakas notes in our conversation. “And there is a great need for support, guidance, inspiration,” he adds. Key Books executives, in fact, also talk about prejudice: “There are those who lie to those who are looking for ways to live.”

Dioptra’s publications note that there is “an audience that is either looking for motivation to achieve goals, or does not have time to go deep, or wants to take examples from individuals. Many times we have noticed that it is the public that wants to take the first step in order to look for a more specialized title later.”

Vlasis Maronitis, however, counters that “the reader will be interested not so much in whether the author is an expert or not, but in whether what he holds in his hands can be a tool that will guide his thinking”, to Vassilis Vardakas complements him : “However, they are not enough by themselves – they only give ideas, sparks, motivate.”

Are they all valid? We were looking for the ultimate beneficiaries of this category of books: readers. Dora Anifanti, 48, lives in Corfu. He is a preschool teacher. “I came across these books after a scavenger hunt. I was negative, I thought these books were manipulative. When, out of fear, I stopped flipping through the pages that said “about me,” I realized that this was not so.

As, of course, everything in life, these books, if they fall into the eyes of others, can cause harm, and they may not do anything to others. They popularize the “situation”, but you have to be ready to look at yourself. I say again and again that we are a generation that knows everything but learns nothing,” he tells me over the phone.

I also reached out to next generation Sophia Papastefan, 27, PhD student in Athens. “I saw this not as a way to solve my problems, but as a rest in difficult everyday life. I didn’t regret it. They just end up giving you absolutely nothing. What these books promise, the psychologist offers you. Not a life coach, not a book, even if it’s an award-winning and the talk of the town.”

“I hope that those who have at least some need will “hear” in these books a call to visit someone special,” Dora Anifanti tells me in conclusion.