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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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