A thorough, sometimes overoptimistic tool kit for overcoming self-sabotage.
An unflinching self-help guide urges readers to actively guide their own stories.
Daniel, the director of the Center for Cinesomatic Development, wants readers to acknowledge that they are stuck. The software entrepreneur and author doesn’t mean physically; rather, he believes that life’s experiences are shaped, even burdened, by the mythologies and excuses we create for ourselves: “Your story is a filter of perception itself. It distorts what you see because you’re looking through the world through the lens of the story. All the problems you see are seen through the beliefs of your story.” His intention here is to help readers rewrite their scripts. There is no coddling; Daniel lays out in 18 chapters split into two parts—“How You Got Here” and “Moving Forward”—several methods for not only changing bad habits, but also for serious self-examination. He uses psychology, spirituality, and even mathematics to force readers to confront various mental obstacles—narcissism, self-delusion, etc. There are refreshing suggestions that challenge self-help tropes and include ways to counter the darker side of self-love and to rethink the value of failure. Daniel encourages annual rereadings of the book, which is useful; at 400 packed pages, it may require some note taking. The weakest aspects of the book are Daniel’s own anecdotes of victimhood and self-growth, which don’t read as inspirational: Daniel, a White, cisgender, straight man, was bullied for having warts on his fingers as a child, and, for a while, smiling fully made him “feel gay.” Readers of marginalized identities who face structural or systemic obstacles may not always agree with his rationale nor escape their suffering as easily as he suggests.
A thorough, sometimes overoptimistic tool kit for overcoming self-sabotage.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953617-03-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Metaheal
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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