FIND YOUR INNER GOLD

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.