A self-improvement recipe with plenty of ingredients worth nibbling on their own.
A smorgasbord of positivity and wisdom drawn from the author’s personal experiences.
The contemporary self-help movement has produced a raft of guides for personal improvement. This latest serving from life-coach Brooks (Choose Happiness Now, 2012, etc.) stirs her own opinions and experiences into a base of “universal laws,” including the teachings of Esther and Jerry Hicks (authors of The Law of Attraction, 2006), and other concepts common to the self-help genre. The result isn’t a mere rehash of ideas and techniques, however, but a stew of intriguing insights, with suggestions that aim to make them relevant and accessible to readers. Brooks attempts to include something for everybody, throwing in movie scenes, song lyrics and literary excerpts alongside tales from her own life, as she outlines and explores a five-step recipe for getting what you want out of life, including “Mix Your Ingredients (Take Action and Visualize What You Want to Manifest).” She has a penchant for anagrams that crystalize concepts memorably, such as “D.I.E.T.” for “Do I Enjoy This?” and “W.A.I.T.” for “What Am I Tweaking?” Her enthusiastic commentary, however, often wanders away from the five-star kitchen analogy that serves as the book’s framework; sometimes, she speaks in terms of stocking and running a kitchen, and at others, as if ordering a meal in a restaurant. Likewise, the subsections could serve as stand-alone inspirational talks, but they don’t consistently relate to their chapter titles; “Failing Your Way to Success,” for example, appears in the chapter titled “Telling a Better Story.” However, her unflagging exuberance and you-can-do-it attitude will encourage readers to remain at the buffet. This persistence pays off with nuggets of wisdom about turning one’s thinking around; for example, Brooks tells of how she learned the importance of rule-breaking by drinking from a “Coloreds Only” fountain as a child. Wisdom like this can change lives, and Brooks’ book serves up plenty.
A self-improvement recipe with plenty of ingredients worth nibbling on their own.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1452586656
Page Count: 372
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2014
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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