An insightful and encouraging guide to adapting to change.
Reynolds offers a self-help guide for navigating any kind of change.
In this nonfiction work, the author, a business consultant, addresses the unsettling nature of change and provides readers with strategies to understand and embrace it. “Change is a distinct phenomenon taking place all the time,” she writes. “However, despite change’s pervasiveness and constancy, the change process itself is largely unseen.” To better comprehend change, one must first understand the content (what the change is about), the context (where the change is taking place), the reach (how many people will be affected), and the time frame (how long-lasting the change will be). By analyzing these four aspects, one can assess the scale of change. Reynolds introduces a framework called “Thresholds of Change” to help readers move through changes. The four thresholds include Instigation (an inciting event that leads to disorientation and destabilization), the Liminal (a gestational period that “takes place in the dark of the knowing mind” and involves letting go and processing grief), Metabolization (the state in which individuals acclimate to change by integrating and practicing it), and Manifestation (when the change is finally complete and fully embodied; euphoria, pride, and a sense of accomplishment are high in this phase). Eventually, the cycle begins again. Reynolds’s framework successfully simplifies a complex process into manageable parts: Her model, which emphasizes owning one’s power and taking a proactive role in the change process, is practical, easy to apply, and will be accessible to a wide audience. However, the book may be overly optimistic in its scope; Reynolds claims that her model “can be universally applied to all change, no matter what is changing, how lasting, the number of people involved, or the setting; no matter how minor or profound the associated loss, or whether the change is invited or foisted upon us.” Additionally, her model’s efficacy is purely anecdotal; those seeking research-based methodologies to approach change will not find scientific support here. Still, this book is a solid primer for those seeking a “Change Companion” in literary form.
An insightful and encouraging guide to adapting to change.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798990298309
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Connolly Fox
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2024
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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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