A sometimes-rambling but always upbeat and optimistic treatise on positive life change.
In this how-to guide, Hawkins (Building a Strategic Plan for Your Life and Business, 2012, etc.) offers personal improvement ideas for aspiring entrepreneurs.
People who feel stuck in a dead-end job can escape their rut, writes the author, a life coach and consultant. Having a specific goal is the first step, he says, whether it’s opening a cupcake shop or moving up the ladder at an office job. For busy people, staying committed to a goal is sometimes easier said than done, but Hawkins believes that making incremental lifestyle changes, encompassing 15 to 30 minutes a day, at least three times a week, will produce lasting results. He urges readers to become more strategic with their spare moments, and to “Defend your personal time as if your life depended on it.” One positive change that he recommends is keeping a regular journal for self-discovery. As a big fan of coaches and/or mentors, he also suggests studying the examples of successful people. This expansive manual begins each chapter with the same black-and-white photo of the author and ends with reflective questions that vary from the practical (“Are you technically skilled?”) to the more personal (“What from your past should you let go?”). Hawkins’ prose is accessible, and his voice is consistently enthusiastic: “By finding your passion, you can unlock unlimited motivation and the energy to drive you toward what you desire.” Sometimes, though, chapters meander through several topics, making it easy to forget the main points. For example, one chapter about “mind, body, and soul” touches on a particularly wide range of concepts—from staying in “the zone” to drug reactions to how to properly chew food. The manual is at its best when it gives specific, hands-on examples, as when Hawkins’ advises readers to get involved in company social activities to expand their business opportunities.
A sometimes-rambling but always upbeat and optimistic treatise on positive life change.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-3267-7
Page Count: 242
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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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