A short and sweet self-improvement guide.
Debut author Neideffer pens a self-help book that lists 16 tools to help one become a stronger, more positive person.
The author says that when she first tried the energy-healing technique known as reiki, she had life-changing visions: “My heart, now floating above me, looked like a cartoon heart…bright red, with a big, cheesy smile and angel wings. As it smiled at me, I heard a man’s voice say, ‘You are free!’ ” Shortly afterward, she upended her life to learn and practice reiki on her own; she later became a reiki master. Using what she learned, she came up with tools to help others experience the same freedom they include “Creating Safe Space In the Mind,” reframing one’s perspective on life, instituting new rituals, and cutting emotional cords with negative attachments. Many of these tips will sound generally familiar to self-help aficionados, but the author does a fair job putting her own spin on them. Other tools include becoming an observer in one’s own life; reintegrating discarded versions of one’s self; and sound healing; these are somewhat less common, and the author offers them with solid explanations and reasoning. She includes exercises to help readers use and practice each new idea, and these include keeping a tally, tackling writing prompts, and speaking to oneself in the mirror. A few of the exercises, specifically those involving meditation, seem like they might have worked better as audio tracks, as attempting to meditate while continually reading directions may leave some eager students frustrated. Also included are quotations for reflection, along with references and recommended reading in the back of the book. Self-help readers looking for something new to try will likely find a few hidden gems in this toolbox.
A short and sweet self-improvement guide.Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982219-00-0
Page Count: 136
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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