Concise messages packed with meaning that can be readily applied using well-crafted self-assessment questions.
A debut self-help workbook focuses on balancing the mind, body, and soul.
The goal of Morgan Duzoglou and Robert Duzoglou in this manual is to offer readers greater clarity, direction, and control in their life odysseys. The first realm they cover is the mind, encouraging people to identify their positive and negative thought processes and analyze their effects. By becoming more aware of thoughts and values, readers can turn their minds into powerful tools as they journey through life. The second topic the authors discuss is the body. They emphasize the amazing things that the body is capable of doing and suggest ways to amplify its energy, such as meditating and recognizing the center of energy. Finally, they expound on the soul, helping readers identify “soul experiences,” unexplainable moments of connection with God and others. Embracing the idea that “what you measure you can manage,” the authors include several useful “checkpoints” throughout the book that provide deep self-assessment questions and space to record answers. For example, “Write down one predominant thought that repeats itself daily. Try to get to the root of this thought.” Most chapters also have a “Caution Bubble” of something to watch out for, like the warning to stay away from paths “fueled by selfish or egotistical needs.” The brevity of the authors’ insights makes their advice very easy to comprehend and remember, even when exploring abstract concepts like the soul. Creative wordplay also makes the lessons memorable, such as using the word “in-sight” to describe the discernment of thought processes because “your mind is quite literally in sight.” Most of the wordplay is natural and illuminating (for example, “in-sight” and “limit-less”), but some examples seem stretched beyond obvious interpretation (“come-pass” and “identi-fly”). The book is evenly balanced between reading material and writing opportunities, and the self-assessment questions are creative, enlightening, and highly beneficial. This guide is an excellent resource for getting to know yourself holistically through examining and improving the mind, body, and soul.
Concise messages packed with meaning that can be readily applied using well-crafted self-assessment questions.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9909-8
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
