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
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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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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