A useful collection of physical and psychological exercises designed to promote happiness and self-awareness.
A personal development coach’s handbook of 21 tools for evaluating your self-worth and improving your emotional outlook.
Modern culture often discourages people from feeling excited about themselves, instead focusing on their worst feelings or most troubling tragedies, Hood-Caddy (Leatherback Blues, 2018, etc.) believes. That pattern can hide what makes a person vibrant and healthy, or what makes someone “shine.” This self-help guide offers 21 tools intended to help you rediscover your own shine, gleaned from psychology and Eastern teachings and using such things as meditation, Emotional Freedom Technique, kinesiology, and more. Hood-Caddy aims to help you identify good and bad behavior, probe painful experiences for lessons, and shift your focus to a healthier self-scrutiny that can inspire happiness, positive thinking, and self-respect. More complicated tools are paired with helpful tips and in-depth analyses of techniques; her comments about stimulating acupressure points via touch is accompanied by a diagram of these points while the daunting notion of self-hypnosis is broken down into suggested scripts and how to use them. In addition to explanations of recommended strategies, most sections of the book include suggested further readings or other resources. Hood-Caddy explains how she used tools she recommends and describes the experiences of many of her clients who have faced challenges like hypersexuality, anxiety, and sexual dysfunction. In addition to familiar methods of personal growth, she discusses alternative therapies, such as the neuroscientist Ronald Ruden’s “Havening” techniques—which involve recalling disturbing events during touch therapy—and Byron Katie’s “turnarounds” exercises, which encourage people to reexamine their beliefs by coming up with sentences expressing the opposite of what they see as true. Hood-Caddy describes her exercises in clear, easy-to-use and -revisit lists that have an upbeat and nonjudgmental tone. She also encourages journaling and provides space after her prompts for copious notes, requiring heavy engagement from readers even in its most abstract exercises.
A useful collection of physical and psychological exercises designed to promote happiness and self-awareness.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982231-86-6
Page Count: 140
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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