An action-oriented manual for success that might have benefited from streamlining.
Polastri presents a motivational self-help guide on empowered decision-making.
The author, a ski coach and the founder of EnterSki ski schools, draws on his experience as both an instructor and a business professional in this book about unlocking potential. Its foundational metaphor is a skiing skill called the “edge control,” which involves “applying and letting go the amount of edging (tilting the skis) to produce a desired outcome.” In decision making, he says, this manifests as taking a stance, overcoming obstacles, and adjusting one’s path toward a goal. The framework has three components: “Discovering Your Edge,” “Tuning Your Edge,” and “Dancing on the Edge.” The first involves inquiry into one’s instincts, habits, and beliefs, Polastri says, and exploring the liminal space between the known and unknown, where one may either progress or regress. Intentional action, such as defining one’s goals, is also key, he notes. Regarding “Tuning Your Edge,” Polastri advises getting out of one’s head through breathwork, a centering practice, and grounding exercises; he also recommends finding a “practice buddy” for mutual encouragement, support, and feedback. “Dancing on the Edge” involves navigating uncharted terrain with grace, knowing that challenges are manageable. To that end, Polastri advises seeing the world with “soft eyes” (a relaxed and open demeanor), rather than with “hard eyes” (an analytical, closed-off perspective). Such receptivity, he asserts, may result in seeing signs, becoming “a conduit for divine guidance,” or experiencing increased intuition. Polastri’s ski-inspired approach is appealingly uncommon in the self-help space, and his framing of change as a catalyst for adventure may inspire readers. However, the book’s focus feels too broad; concepts such as intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are well-trod territory in the genre and could have easily been omitted. Still, his supportive tone enhances suggestions such as self-talk, creative expression, and gratitude to ease liminal space discomfort. Exercises such as creating an “embodied goal statement” (declaring “I am,” followed by a commitment, a specific outcome, and a deadline, all while moving one’s body) make manifestation seem easy and accessible.
An action-oriented manual for success that might have benefited from streamlining.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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