Sensible tools to help achieve your dreams.
A well-articulated guide to identifying and mastering personal goals.
In her concise, straightforward and encouraging new book, Laser outlines the key—and acronym-ready—steps toward the achievement of any reasonable goal. S.M.A.R.T.E.R., for example, describes the characteristics of a “good task,” one that is likely to be completed: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Tested, Exclusively under your control and Researched. Also peppered with nuggets of timeless wisdom from the likes of Lao Tzu, the Dalai Lama, Cicero and others, the book blends practical advice with an inspirational energy that will give readers an extra boost of motivation. Unlike the authors of many chirpy, overenthusiastic self-help books, Laser doesn’t shy away from describing the pitfalls of aiming high. Nor does she deny that there are a thousand more pleasant things to be doing than working diligently toward completing the series of smaller goals that add up to your ultimate aim. As a counter to these temptations, Laser emphasizes that the pleasure of accomplishment and the feeling of mastery one achieves are greater than any temporary distraction. (For good measure, she also offers handy, concrete anti-procrastination tips for when the going gets tough.) Additionally, she suggests examining the practicality of your aims—can you really become a star athlete?—and encourages readers to not only attain their objectives at a personal level, but also tailor the process to business endeavors. The book could benefit from including worksheet sections in order to facilitate the completion of its exercises, as well as clearer numbered steps for breaking a goal into subgoals. Nonetheless, this guide will help jump-start the reader’s self-reflection and action.
Sensible tools to help achieve your dreams.Pub Date: June 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468163414
Page Count: 50
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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