An appealing but basic guide to embracing much-needed changes in life.
A spiritually infused self-help book focuses on changing course in finances and life.
“Too often,” Adams writes in this series opener, “as humans, when we get sidelined by life, we fail to reposition and fail to make plans to move into our next level of life.” The author writes that this reality became vivid to her at the onset of the worst of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, when all of life’s usual patterns were upended and people were faced with a choice: stagnate or pivot. Adams draws on her own experiences along these lines. In 2003, she writes, she decided that she needed new goals, a new career, and new relationships. In the process, she learned some fundamental principles about pursuing new visions, challenging old fears, and owning new objectives. The work’s title obviously hints at the author’s personal Christian faith, which she frequently references in these pages. But this guide does not advocate a “let go and let God” approach. Adams lays out many clear and practical suggestions for managing money (controlling impulses; following a budget) and finding and seizing opportunities. All of this is presented very genially, although there are a few impediments. The author tends to write in one-sentence paragraphs, which gives the narrative a droning quality. And some of the book’s sentiments feel overly simplistic. “In life,” goes one such passage, “it is entirely possible to check all the right boxes and still be faced with an unwanted career or life outcome.” A tighter edit would likely fix such things. In the meantime, Adams’ irrepressible optimism and compassionate Christianity will encourage many of her readers to find the bravery and resolve they need to alter the course of their lives.
An appealing but basic guide to embracing much-needed changes in life.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9989625-7-3
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2022
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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