An earnest and straightforward, if familiar, guide to transforming one’s routines.
Better habits are the way to a happier, healthier lifestyle according to Antonenko’s debut self-help book.
Many people feel stuck when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight, remaining fit, and achieving other life goals. They want to change but lack the motivation to do so. The author, a professional health coach, reassures readers that transformation is possible, no matter how bleak things may seem at the present moment. She knows this from experience, having faced many challenges on her journey to happiness, including the suicide of her first husband and chronic health problems of her own, such as ulcerative colitis. The author draws on this personal experience as well as her career as she outlines a multistep process for eliminating “patterns of destructive thinking” and developing healthy habits that she promises will lead to lasting, consistent improvements in one’s life. It begins, she says, with focusing on one’s momentum and “harnessing energy” so that one can get unstuck from old habits. Subsequent steps address one’s diet, mindset, and physical movement. The final step is “mastery,” in which repetition leads to “uncovering new patterns [that] can release us from lousy past behaviours and stop us from being tainted by our past mistakes, failures, and setbacks.” Throughout, Antonenko offers a supportive voice that enthusiastically urges the reader to “design the life of your dreams.” The advice is largely a mix of generic tips for healthy living (such as getting enough sleep, embracing mindfulness, eating a balanced diet, including minimizing consumption of sugars and processed food) and common self-help bromides about visualizing success and ignoring what other people think. However, Antonenko wisely focuses on permanently changing behaviors rather than promoting expedient solutions that may be harder to stick with in the long term. The book includes links to supplemental material on the author’s website, such as printable affirmation cards, a meal planner, and a separate exercise guide. This work stands well enough on its own, but it’s also intended as an introduction to Antonenko’s life-coaching offerings, which include follow-up courses, fitness accessories, and nutritional supplements.
An earnest and straightforward, if familiar, guide to transforming one’s routines.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5043-2079-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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