by Amanda Terry Hamm ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 2023
Inspiring and actionable advice to help readers envision and achieve desired goals.
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A self-empowerment guide offers a framework to develop an abundance mindset that will “make you a magnet for the things you want most in life.”
In this book, Hamm details her four-step system—“Say It, See It, Write It, Do It”—to “teach your brain how to think with a mindset of abundance.” The author shares how the framework can be used in “nine types of abundance that can affect every area of your life...abundances of self-worth, wealth, health, time, energy, love, joy, creativity, and career.” The “Say It” step requires saying out loud and with a smile both “I do” and “I am”–type “affirmations (programming statements)” and “I don’t” and “I am not”–type “cancellations (deprogramming statements),” with samples for each area. “See It” and “Write It” involve creating vision boards and journaling to explore abundance using these tools. For “Do It,” Hamm provides “a series of exercises that will help you behave in a manner favorable to your mindset goals,” such as having “Mindset Money” (keeping but not spending cash in your wallet to motivate saving and the envisioning of future wealth) and writing a “Love List” of worthy qualities in people. “When you appreciate the people around you, they subconsciously reciprocate,” the author asserts. Hamm acknowledges upfront that hers is “not a new concept” and refers to authors Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and others for further reading. But her system stands on its own merits as a practical and powerful method, having been road-tested by Hamm’s own mindset shift to build a thriving martial-arts business with her husband and transform their turbulent relationship. The “Do It” exercises, for example, are among the ones that she and her husband implemented as they “reprogrammed our thinking to stop avoiding failure and, instead, envisioned our success.” Her book delivers an array of useful prompts, examples, and exercises for readers to chart their own “path to abundance” journeys.
Inspiring and actionable advice to help readers envision and achieve desired goals.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9798988635338
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Mad Muse Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Anne Heche ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 24, 2023
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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by Matthew McConaughey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 2020
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
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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
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