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
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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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