An inviting and uplifting call for positivity and empathy in all kinds of communication.
A guide offers a comprehensive plan for improving communication.
Whether an interaction involves someone’s boss, family member, or friend, communication specialist LeCompte insists that the core issue is always the same: “How can you make sure you don’t end up with another painful relational conflict or loss?” In these pages, the author lays out the blueprint he’s developed from countless sessions with clients, and the central underlying idea is to remind his readers that they’re in control of their own thoughts and responses in any potential conflicts. Every one of those skirmishes, according to LeCompte, will involve a judge, a figure who’s setting the stakes, often wrongly: “It is a psychological fact that our judge always speaks first. He judges before we know it and his judgments are frequently inaccurate and negative.” The only way that most people become aware of the judge element in their interactions is when they realize it has made them angry, an undesirable outcome that could have been avoided. Discovering this point is crucial. As LeCompte puts it, “In this instant, we can become conscious.” This approach makes the author’s prized “conscious communication” possible, in which both parties learn to be more aware of what they’re actually saying and how it connects to what they’re feeling. Several of LeCompte’s contentions will strike some readers as odd (“When we say, ‘I feel abandoned,’ we are really saying, ‘It was your intention to abandon me.’ ‘Abandoned’ is not a feeling”). And many readers may doubt the optimism of his core claim: “Everybody has one hope that you can count on—to help other people get their hopes met. This generosity of spirit is hard-wired in each of us, part of being human.” But his repeated examples of breaking down specific interactions to get at the root of what’s really being said are unfailingly intriguing. They will cause readers to indulge in some bracing thinking about the nuts and bolts of how they talk to people.
An inviting and uplifting call for positivity and empathy in all kinds of communication.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798988748304
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Connections Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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