An approach that may be overly complex for some but life-affirming for others.
A psychologist explains how “Stage Climbing” can result in a happier life.
Formulaic approaches for achieving maximum potential are common in self-help books. Broder (Positive Attitude Training, 2019, etc.) offers one, as well, but his seven-stage concept is a memorable one. This often engaging book begins with an overview of these self-actualizing stages (“Overcoming Dependency,” “Taming Your Primitive Self,” “Living Life by Your Rules,” “Becoming Fearless,” “Taking Charge of Your Life,” “Follow Your Passion” and “When Benevolence Takes Over”) as well as a description of the “hooks” that “can propel you forward or hold you back.” Chapters fully explore each stage, using numerous anonymized examples from the author’s practice or counsel in the form of “action steps” designed to lead the reader through self-examination. Many steps require serious thought and even deep reflection, such as the third-stage advice to “Examine what you have always wanted to do with your life but have resisted because you were afraid to leave behind that comfortable state of discomfort.” Each stage logically builds upon the others, culminating in the final one in which “the forces of gratitude and passion work together.” The stages generally progress from birth through adolescence and adulthood to old age, but they’re not exactly related to chronology, the author says; people may go through stages at different times, he asserts, and not everyone will go through all the stages. This explanation may cause confusion for some readers, but Broder aims to clarify his formula in the last chapter, in which he focuses on how stages relate to such areas as conflict management and problem-solving. Broder aptly describes this final chapter as “a calibration” of the stages, suggesting that readers can employ the Stage Climbing system in different ways depending on the goal. This chapter effectively acts as a road map of sorts, but it’s entirely up to the reader to implement it, which some may find to be a challenge.
An approach that may be overly complex for some but life-affirming for others.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-72251-013-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: G&D Media
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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