An appealingly manageable and practical self-help book.
Consultants Saj and Smith present cognitive behavioral therapy techniques for those seeking more meaning in their life.
The authors write that having a firm sense of purpose bestows many benefits, including longevity, better health, more rewarding relationships, and greater happiness. However, finding one’s purpose isn’t easy. People are accustomed to looking outward for answers and seeking gratification through social media or consumption. Saj and Smith aims to show such searchers ways to take a more active role in finding their reason for being, pointing out, “You are the expert of you.” Their guidebook uses techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy, employing the “cognitive triangle” as an illustration of how it functions: The tip of the triangle is thought, and the bottom two vertices are behavior and emotion. They’re all interconnected, the authors write, and an improvement in one area helps to strengthen the others. To foster positive thinking, the authors suggest creating a vision board of images that personally resonate, and taking pride in what one sees as defining character traits. One may acknowledge unhelpful thoughts, they write, but one can reframe them or visualize them as floating harmlessly away. They also show how one can get in touch with one’s emotions by cultivating awareness of them. Techniques include identifying feelings on an emotional awareness wheel or creatively assigning colors to emotions and adding them into a “cup-o-feelings” drawing. The authors also helpfully show how to build an action plan with clear-cut steps to take toward one’s end goal. Overall, Saj and Smith’s book is clearly written and down-to-earth in tone. It unquestionably covers similar ground as many other self-help books, but it may appeal to those who eschew more spiritual self-help methods and are unfamiliar with CBT. Its goal appears to be to win over skeptical readers, and it provides extensive references to that end. The authors occasionally insert a few accounts of their own personal experiences, but they generally stay in the background, giving CBT principles a starring role.
An appealingly manageable and practical self-help book.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781038300225
Page Count: 174
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
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