A practical and enlightening guide with a one-size-fits-all approach.
Enman, a spiritual practitioner, draws on meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and spiritual research in this holistic exploration of thought.
The author, who says he can “experience a sense of heaven anytime [he] choose[s]—without needing to change anything in [his] external world” by shifting his thoughts, introduces readers to easy mind hacks that can help them feel more serene. According to the author, meditation can help people connect with their intuition and function more effectively. Rather than constantly striving for more, he encourages readers to stay in the present moment. By realizing they are not their thoughts or emotions, but the awareness that observes them, individuals can begin to connect with what the author calls their “expression of a higher power.” Enman identifies four major destructive thought categories: resentment, guilt, selfishness, and fear. Because these patterns create suffering, becoming aware of and detaching from them is crucial to freedom. He discusses humility, which he describes as the acknowledgment that, “I am one imperfect person living alongside many other imperfect people.” Enman believes this realization allows one to ask for help from others and God. He recommends several practices, like journaling, to cultivate gratitude, as well as a five-step method for prayer. The book concludes with a “30 Day Spiritual Challenge” that provides daily meditations and reflection prompts. Enman introduces readers to easy techniques for handling monkey mind in this accessible, multidisciplinary guide, and the author’s willingness to share his journey to a healthier mindset makes the book relatable and normalizes struggles with mental chatter. The chapters are short and focused, allowing even the busiest readers to reflect on and take small steps toward mindfulness. Instructions are clear and concise; for example, regarding unwanted thoughts, the author advises, “Acknowledge, accept, and let them go.” However, while statements like “we can transform our lives without altering our circumstances” will reassure some readers, others, such as “We only have a problem if we think we have a problem,” ignore systemic, biological, and other factors that influence people’s experiences.
A practical and enlightening guide with a one-size-fits-all approach.Pub Date: April 16, 2025
ISBN: 9798349304767
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2025
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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