A clear and intensely useful overview aimed at improving your life.
A psychologist offers a guide to transforming your life.
In his nonfiction debut, Ruggiero, who’s been in private psychological practice for over 30 years, breaks down the natural processes that govern everyday human life. The author then lays out clear and logical programs for understanding those processes and aligning them to the ultimate goal of better, happier living. “Who we are is the product of the interplay between our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual attributes,” he writes. In a sequence of chapters, he presents each of the processes to be addressed, ranging from honesty and emotional transparency to a variety of ways to deal with others. Each chapter begins with a heading revealing which process will be employed before moving to Ruggiero’s explanation and expansion on the subject, followed by a “Time to Take Action” section that lays out some clear, numbered approaches to improving that area. He finishes up with a “Driving It Home” conclusion designed to give readers one parting shot of clear instruction; for example, “By keeping our emotions at a minimum, staying close to the facts, and using a warm, respectful approach, you will see that you are able to express your concerns, and that you won’t lose your sanity in the process.” Ruggiero’s prose is bracingly clear and robust, and his insights into the normal crosscurrents of life are simultaneously simple common sense and powerfully innovative thinking about how his readers can sharpen and enhance their control over their own lives, balancing self-care with empathy. “Understand that you will never, ever please everyone all the time,” he writes. “Make sure that whatever you choose to do is something you feel comfortable doing, and that it’s the correct action to take.” Readers will find these clarifications invaluable.
A clear and intensely useful overview aimed at improving your life.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73438-300-3
Page Count: 258
Publisher: FYHB Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2020
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
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
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