An inviting and uplifting call for positivity and empathy in all kinds of communication.
A guide offers a comprehensive plan for improving communication.
Whether an interaction involves someone’s boss, family member, or friend, communication specialist LeCompte insists that the core issue is always the same: “How can you make sure you don’t end up with another painful relational conflict or loss?” In these pages, the author lays out the blueprint he’s developed from countless sessions with clients, and the central underlying idea is to remind his readers that they’re in control of their own thoughts and responses in any potential conflicts. Every one of those skirmishes, according to LeCompte, will involve a judge, a figure who’s setting the stakes, often wrongly: “It is a psychological fact that our judge always speaks first. He judges before we know it and his judgments are frequently inaccurate and negative.” The only way that most people become aware of the judge element in their interactions is when they realize it has made them angry, an undesirable outcome that could have been avoided. Discovering this point is crucial. As LeCompte puts it, “In this instant, we can become conscious.” This approach makes the author’s prized “conscious communication” possible, in which both parties learn to be more aware of what they’re actually saying and how it connects to what they’re feeling. Several of LeCompte’s contentions will strike some readers as odd (“When we say, ‘I feel abandoned,’ we are really saying, ‘It was your intention to abandon me.’ ‘Abandoned’ is not a feeling”). And many readers may doubt the optimism of his core claim: “Everybody has one hope that you can count on—to help other people get their hopes met. This generosity of spirit is hard-wired in each of us, part of being human.” But his repeated examples of breaking down specific interactions to get at the root of what’s really being said are unfailingly intriguing. They will cause readers to indulge in some bracing thinking about the nuts and bolts of how they talk to people.
An inviting and uplifting call for positivity and empathy in all kinds of communication.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798988748304
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Connections Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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