MASTERING YOUR EMOTIONS

A no-nonsense guide to helping readers learn more about their feelings.

How well do we know our own emotional makeup? According to Ogbonna’s debut self-help book, not well enough. The guide strives to help readers understand their moods so they’re more likely to stay in control when life is at its most stressful. Reading like a glossary, the book defines a variety of human emotions one by one, including romance (“intense emotional attachment”), enthusiasm (“a positive emotion”) and hope (“the feeling of expectation”). Each chapter is punctuated with a stock photo of a wide-eyed person experiencing an emotion: Excitement! Greed! Revenge! But instead of offering tips to help readers stay calm during times of emotional turmoil, the book reads more like a long encyclopedia entry. In a sea of definitions, two out-of-the-blue anecdotal examples are offered: One is a short quip about an enthusiastic man with a stutter who finds success selling door-to-door encyclopedias, the other’s a Bible story about Jesus and the Woman of Samaria. Even at its most straightforward, the guide’s phrasing feels distractingly disjointed: For instance, in a passage about desire, “Why would someone bear false witness to get (sic) promotion at the place of work? Why (sic) they climb over people to get ahead?” Unfortunately, Ogbonna doesn’t delve into his own personal experiences in these pages. Instead, readers are left to navigate laundry lists of emotions separated into “good” and “bad” feelings. The guide does eventually offer one piece of concrete wisdom—“Let this be your motto: Leave people better than you found them.” It’s sound advice but not original; the quote is attributed to Mormon author Marvin J. Ashton. While Ogbonna’s book strives to be a useful guide for keeping emotions in check, readers aren’t likely to learn much they don’t already know.

Human emotions are dissected in great detail, but few new insights are revealed.