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She had decided that day to make herself over, and this being 2014 to blog about it.
Her plan was simple.
Every month she would choose a different self-help book and follow it devotedly.
Instead, amid a spiral of self-obsession and self-doubt, her life threatened to fall completely apart.
Her book,Help Me!
Before embarking on her self-improvement quest, Power treated self-help books like comfort food.
When it came to their potential effectiveness, she was as skeptical as any Londoner.
Most of Powers chosen titles promise big, sweeping change.
She tried communicating with angels and saying f**k it to all her anxieties.
And the genre wasnt played out; it was bigger than ever.
And among younger, cooler people, formerly fringe elements like crystal healing are moving to the mainstream.
All the witchy-bang out things are very popular at the moment, especially with young women, Power notes.
Around Hackney you cant go to the supermarket without hearing someone on the phone talking about their ayahuasca experience.
And her solution, ultimately, was old-fashioned therapy.
In the U.K., thats a bigger leap than you might imagine.
There is still this British and Irish thing of keeping your feelings down, stiff upper lip.
Or drinking our feelings away.
Although she couldnt help raising an eyebrow in her book a therapistwouldsay that, wouldnt she?
Power eventually realized that she needed a check on the all-absorbing focus on herself.
I thought the more I thought about myself, the more I would get answers, she says.
But it didnt happen like that.
Then there was the problem of connecting to others on the most intimate levels.
She dutifully began approaching strangers and arranging excruciating Tinder dates, but hers was not a romantic odyssey.
Today, she talks passionately about the perception that being single represents a flaw or affliction.
It goes much deeper than that.
Feeling yourself to be worthy of love is the project of a lifetime, not just a year.
Were meant to help each other.
The books shes looking for now are more generally geared toward understanding life.
While Power recognizes the value of self-help books, shes grown wary of their suggestion that perfection is possible.
So perfection may not be possible in life, but is there a perfect self-help book?
But Eckhart TollesThe Power of Nowhas pride of place at her bedside.
Such boring wisdom at the end, isnt it?
