How to help hapless you…

You can do anything. Yes, you – eating the dry oats … and you with the green gong dangling from your moustache … and yes, even you stirring your coffee with your fork … you can do it all – with the right book or magazine in hand, of course.

The world of DIY encompasses so much more than just building your own greenhouse or upholstering a sofa.

Nowadays there’s a DIY solution to everything. Just the other day I saw an article on how to eat yourself skinny. Really?

Logic dictates that nothing you put in your mouth and swallow will make you lose weight – bar laxatives perhaps. But no. Apparently there are hundreds of different ways to eat yourself skinny, including having at least six meals a day. I don’t know if I’m going to swallow that one.

For the bargain price of just R160, you can order a book titled Sleep Yourself Fit. I kid you not.

Here I was for four decades under the impression fitness comes from exercise? Obviously not.

Maybe I should stay in bed until June next year – just in time for the Comrades. I could be a medal contender by then.

Another self-help article that caught my eye recently was How to breathe yourself healthy. The benefits of breathing mentioned in the article include better sleep, better sex, more energy and less stress. Whoever wrote that article must be on to something.

In all my years as a journalist I’ve come across many people who had stopped breathing – all at the wrong end of the health scale. Some DIY articles also offer more practical advice.

The Guardian, regarded as a bastion of journalism, in 2013 published an article How to complain in a restaurant. Obviously complaining isn’t quite as ingrained in the DNA of the English as it is in ours.

Maybe Spur can use copies of that article as a cover page for their menus.

Fact of the matter is that journalists and writers and life coaches and psychoanalysts are churning out self-help and advice guides faster than a cold drink production line. I could write a few. What about Drink yourself rich? Or Fart your way to a happy marriage?

Danie Toerien