A helpful, well-illustrated plan for dealing with setbacks and blossoming into a better person.
A guide offers readers a collection of helpful hints on how to evolve into the best versions of themselves.
The key to “the treasure hunt of the self,” according to Sievers, is to stay curious and remain mentally flexible so that the discoveries of the future aren’t obscured by the insecurities of the present. Some people seem to know from a very early age who they are and what they want; the author aims her book at the rest of humanity, the people who may not be sure. The manual includes worksheets with prompts like “When I learn, I am challenged by ___.” There are spaces for younger readers to list their favorite things—even a blank page for them to attempt self-portraits. The volume is well designed for maximum interactions, with plenty of exercises and prompts for discussion. Sievers stresses that one of the best ways to gain perspective on one’s sense of self is to be interested in others, to find out how their worlds differ. Readers are cautioned to watch out for negative feelings (the author calls them “ANTs,” for Automatic Negative Thoughts, and many of Cline’s illustrations depict them that way). But readers should also acknowledge these feelings, and Sievers reassures her audience that “balanced, realistic thinking can stop…ANTs in their tracks.” The author uses this and other directly worded affirmations (aided by the volume’s varied pictures) to reinforce her overarching message of positivity, encouraging her readers that they have the potential to do something amazing with their lives by figuring out how to be the best versions of themselves. Along the way, she gives clearly worded explanations of different aspects of the brain’s neurochemistry and touches on such psychological problems as depression and anxiety, which she refers to as two sides of the same coin (sharing an overestimation of risks and an underestimation of the ability to cope with them). Even older readers will find many of these tips useful, and younger ones will find the counsel invaluable.
A helpful, well-illustrated plan for dealing with setbacks and blossoming into a better person.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9964013-0-2
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Imaginal Discs Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2022
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 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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