An intriguing but uneven manual that focuses on eradicating negative thoughts and feelings.
A guide offers step-by-step instructions for how readers can cure their harmful emotions through writing.
Ildikó, a researcher from Slovakia, has written a short manual for readers wishing to heal what she calls “information cramps”—“a phenomenon that directly affects the human central nervous system.” She claims that these cramps overload readers’ brains with stimuli, causing “depression, anxiety, and personality disorders.” To cure these cramps, she provides the following remedy: “write as much as possible about things that are bothering you,” crumple, tear, throw the paper away, shower, take a break, and smile. In Slovakia, the author felt judged by society for being a young widow, so she used her knowledge of cognitive processes to develop this guide to eliminating negative emotions. For the first step of this process, she recommends that readers write down everything: “sadness, pain,” and feelings of failure. The author claims her simple manual will heal cramps faster than other guides, which are “incomplete and incorrect.” Ildikó delivers some useful tips in this well-intentioned and thought-provoking book. But her instructions are a bit repetitive, urging her readers to “Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Draw. Scratch. Write. Write. Write.” There are also a lot of platitudes in these pages. For example, “Smile and laughter are the best medicines. Don’t forget to laugh. Laugh a lot. It’s medicine. Have a wide smile at this guide. Well done. Smile is your medicine.” And: “You are a strong life. Remember it, and believe in yourself. Believe in yourself, and remember all the nice and beautiful things.” The book would benefit from the author’s expanding the instructions with prompts and presenting more information on how writing helps the central nervous system.
An intriguing but uneven manual that focuses on eradicating negative thoughts and feelings.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72834-064-7
Page Count: 62
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2020
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 very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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