Autobiographies
Do We Learn Anything From Them?
Many of us enjoy reading famous people autobiography or their memoirs whether it be a sports personality, a movie star or a reality TV star. We feel we already know something about them through the media but have this interest to read more about their lives and want to know more about their back story, their achievements and their private family life to get the whole picture. But, do we learn much from them? Let’s delve further.
- Many personalities often describe the trial and tribulations that they have had to overcome in their lives and their brutal honesty allows us to sympathise with them and what they have gone through. Our sympathy and understanding can help us to deal friends and family who may have similar experiences in the future. By learning how others cope can also aid our coping mechanisms to deal with stressful situations in our own lives when they arise.
- We can learn how to achieve our goals just like the person we are reading about. We may set our owns goals and be driven by the knowledge that this person is sharing with us. ‘If they can do it so can I’ attitude which allows us to be more positive about ourselves.
- We learn about the history of the time and place of the personality enhancing our knowledge about a local area or country that we didn’t know about before.
- We can recognise our own flaws when reading about somebody else’s and critically examine our own and how we dealt with them and learn to accept how we handled them and forgive ourselves if we did things differently.
- Having read several autobiographies you learn what is important in life and what isn’t and start to shape your own life around the important things and pay less attention to the unimportant matters.
Traditionally, people who read autobiographies were aged over 55 years old. The most read one was The Diary of Anna Frank which was read by many school children around the world. Older people tend to already have many life experiences of their own so have a greater understanding of life. Today, younger pop stars and social media influencers and such tend to write their autobiography in the 20’s and 30’s so it natural that younger people will read these. These younger generations may gain more from aspiring to be like their icons whereas older generations just want to delve deeper into the persona and their back story. Therefore, for certain elements younger people may achieve a better understanding of how they ca move forward in life from reading an autobiography whereas older generations may have less drive to gain inspiration to further their career but can learn more about accepting their past decisions, especially if they made a similar decision as the writer. The reader may have toyed with whether or not they ever made the right decision but now they feel comforted after reading the book.
The more autobiographies a person reads, especially from a variety of arts, science, sports, tv and film etc then the more a person can benefit regardless of age. Just taking in how the book is written help us all sequence our lives into chapters to compartmentalise our lives so we can cope better when our brains have so much confusion that stress, bereavement, loss of job, divorce etc. which can impact our logical thinking.
Try to start with somebody who you like and would like to know more about as you are more likely to enjoy and finish the autobiography. Upon completion if you chose say sport for your first one try a film icon for your second and royalty for your third and so on until you have covered a wide spectrum to enhance your knowledge and thinking and coping capabilities.
Here is a list of 10 random autobiographies for you to start your learning journey from a variety of fields:
The Diary of a Young Girl – Anna Frank. A young Jewish girl and how she hid from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Spare – Prince Harry. His life as a young royal living in the shadow of his brother and heir to the throne.
Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela. His life, his imprisonment ad his battle against Apartheid.
The Woman in Me – Britney Spears. A discussion of her life as a child to stardom and her battle over her conservatorship and reclaiming her life and her finances.
Me – Elton John. A review of his musical life and influences and personal struggles along the way.
Kardashian Konfidential – Kim, Kourtney & Khloe Kardashian. A self-help book with insights into their lives.
Open – Andre Agassi. An account of his life with a demanding father and his struggles with fame.
A Life on Our Planet – David Attenborough. Reflecting on his career of filming wildlife for over 70 years and the changes he has witnessed about our planet.
My Story -Cheryl Cole. Her life story in and out of the public eye and her relationship with her girly bandmates Girls Aloud and The X Factor’s Simon Cowell.
Life – Keith Richards. One of the members of the Rolling Stones he discusses his life, his music and his addictions.