Book Review: The Bounce Back Book by Karen Salmansohn October 29, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Book Reviews.Tags: happiness, Karen Salmansohn, overcoming obstacles, positive psychology, Positive Psychology Center, surviving emotional issues, The Bounce Back Book
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I recently wrote about the current growth positive psychology, the “scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive,” and the resulting growth in self-help books that utilize its research results. These books are more inclined to offer specific, research-based prescriptions — “A well-known research study at Duke University showed that going for a brisk 30-minute walk three times a week is as effective as taking antidepressants to improve your mood.” — than traditional self help clichés — “Let a smile be your umbrella.” Specific steps rather than vague generalizations — That’s the new way. One of the best of this new breed of self-help books is The Bounce Back Book: How to Thrive in the Face of Adversity, Setbacks, and Losses by Karen Salmansohn.
The Bounce Back Book has 75 chapters, or “tips,” each devoted to one technique to help you…well, bounce back. Each numbered tip has a witty catch-phrase, for example, “Tip #39: Turn negativity into nuggetivity,” or ” Tip #8: A Rolling Stones fan gathers less moss.” Following that is a page or two explaining the tip and the research behind it. Other than this numbering system, the book has no conceptual structure and the tips come in no particular order. It is really just a big list, but it works. My only complaint is that there is no table of contents or index to help find a particular tip once you’ve finished reading the book.
Salmansohn has filled The Bounce Back Book with useable ideas. Nothing in here requires you to stick to a large project (one that for most of us would be doomed to failure). Instead you can take your choice of 75 bite-sized tips that you can easily put into practice today. Meaning and happiness are made up of a million small acts. All you have to do is find the one that seems right for you right now.
The Bounce Back Book in covered in red rubber (like a ball – get it?) and has an inconsistent and whimsical style. The fonts are in bright colors, and the book seems designed by someone from the women’s magazines (it doesn’t really feel like Salmansohn wrote this for men), but none of that gets in the way of its purpose, which is to give us the tips for getting through the hard times with our souls intact.
You know what? It’s pretty good. I would gladly recommend it to someone going through a divorce, job loss, breakup, or worse. It is a good resource for someone who’s new to this information and doesn’t have time or inclination to search it out on his or her own. Pick it up if you get the chance.
Make a great day.
The Big Fun House October 28, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Quotations.Tags: life, meaning of life
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I just ran across a great bumper sticker:
The Meaning of Life is to Live It.
NPR this morning told the tale of a couple in foreclosure. 10 years ago she was a CPA with a six-figure salary. Her family had a nice home on the coast, took exotic vacations, and still had money left for their 401k. Then she so severely injured her back that she could no longer work. During the next 10 years her family faced multiple medical issues — a knee replacement, a broken jaw, and complications from surgery. They sold their beautiful home on the coast and purchased, using a sub-prime mortgage, a modest ranch house further inland. Now the mortgage crisis hits…
They didn’t plan for this. They did what they were supposed to do, but life had other plans. That’s a phrase we hear a lot: “…but life had other plans.” And it’s true. What did our couple do? They did what most of us would do — they saved, worked, tried to pay off debts. 10 years later they’re still trying to clean up the mess. That’s what you do.
The excitement of the fun house is that we don’t know what is coming around the next corner. The excitement of our lives is just the same. 10,000 joys; 10,000 sorrows. We create dreams and plans, but when it comes down to it, life is what it is – a wild ride at the fair. We may see success way beyond our wildest dreams or we may face tragedy that would bring the strongest man to his knees. Our job is to stay on this ride until the big doors open and we pop back out into the glare of daylight. We don’t have a choice, really.
That’s it. The meaning of life is to live it.
Get busy, then.
Make a great day.
How Will You Live Your Life Today? October 27, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living, Quotations.Tags: death, Mary Oliver, When Death Comes
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When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~ Mary Oliver, from the poem “When Death Comes”
You’ve read these lines from Mary Oliver. Now read them again. Let them take you wherever they take you.
How do these words affect the way you’ll live your life today?
Make a great day.
The Attitude Shift Pattern October 23, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living.Tags: Angela Loeb, Attitude and Longitude, attitude shift pattern, job search, What You Need to Know to Get a Job Now!
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I had an interesting talk yesterday with Angela Loëb, author of the new book What You Need To Know To Get A Job Now! and the blog Attitude and Longitude. Angela has some insightful ideas about finding the right job based on what she learned during her 16 years in human resources and recruiting. For those of you who are either looking for work or thinking about a career change, I encourage you to buy the book.
I was interested in something Angela calls the Attitude Shift Pattern, an approach for overcoming the negative labels we’ve placed on ourselves. For example, Phil, a middle-aged job seeker who is having trouble finding work, notices during an interview that most of the people in the office were younger than he was. Later after being rejected by another company, he hears from a friend that the company had hired a younger candidate. Phil puts two and two together and concludes that, “no one wants to hire me because of my age.” He becomes hyper-vigilant, watching for signs of ageism in every interview, and starts to doubt whether he’ll be able to get a job at all. He now has labeled himself as “old in a world that doesn’t hire old.”
Phil’s obsession with the chink in his armor – age, in this case – has become His defensiveness and insecurity create a negative energy that comes across in interviews, hurting his chances to get a job. In Angela’s terms, Phil is sabotaging himself by wearing an “invisible cloak” of ageism that limits his ability to present himself well.
Many of us have an “invisible cloak.” Maybe it’s not our age, but our education, or our weight, or our family. We take an area of our lives about which we feel insecure and selectively filter our world to “find” all evidence that the world is conspiring against us. We then react to the world as if this were a universal truth by limiting our actions. Phil doesn’t apply for jobs with young managers. Mary doesn’t try to date because “men don’t like heavy women.” Ben doesn’t try for a management position because he didn’t finish college. Each of these people has selectively taken bits of information, some of which may not even be true, and built a reality around them.
This is where the The Attitude Shift Pattern comes in. Loëb found that many of her clients, stuck in a negative mindset, dragged themselves down until they hit some point of surrender at which they would say “The heck with it. Who cares about my age/weight/education?” It’s as if they realized that there was nothing they could do about their “weakness,” so they moved on despite it. That was the shift.
Suddenly, everything in their worlds would change. Opportunities would open up, interviews went better, and they’d find work. The point of surrender, of giving up, set them free from their self criticism and allowed them to function properly.
In a nutshell, Angela lays out the Attitude Shift Pattern this way:
No results? come up with something to blame ? develop a “chip on the shoulder” (negative attitude) ? still no results ? get to a point of desperation and surrender in some sort of fashion (shift) ? then lo & behold, opportunities start popping up (positive attitude).
~ Angela Loëb, Attitude and Longitude
It reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon in which two scientists in lab coats are standing in front of a chalk board. The left side of the board is filled with complex mathematical formulas, the right side is filled with complex mathematical formulas, and in the middle of the board are the words, “and then a miracle occurs.” One scientist is saying something like, “I like it, Johnson, but I have some problems with the middle part.” Of course, the hard part of the Attitude Shift Pattern is the middle part – the shift.
Angela’s experience was that the shift came spontaneously, a sort of “bottoming out.” But she believes that it isn’t necessary to hit bottom to make the shift. You can force a shift by taking deliberate, positive action: “For example, take advantage of a networking opportunity you’ve been resisting. You can take a class to improve your skills set or finish your degree. You can look into hiring yourself out as a consultant.” In other words, act, do, risk.
You can also let go: “…you could simply say “Que sera, sera” and open your mind to what will unfold.” To get what you want, you must find a way to get out of your own way, stop worrying about what others think, and trust that everything will be okay. As hard as it sounds now, when you’re caught in the negativity, you’ll find that it’s a much easier way to live.
So what’s the chip on your shoulder? Maybe it’s time for you to knock it off your own shoulder and throw it in the trash. Once you’ve done that, you might check to see if there are other chips to dispose of. You’ll be glad you did.
Make a great day.
Book Review: The Little Gold Book of Yes! by Jeffrey Gitomer October 21, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Book Reviews, Positive Thinking.Tags: happiness, Jeffrey Gitomer, Little Black Book of Connections, Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude, Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, Little Red Book of Selling, Martin Seligman, optimism, Positive Psychology Center, The Sales Bible, Tom Peters, University of Pennsylvania
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Although he benefits of a positive mindset seem self-evident, the process by which one develops a positive mindset isn’t. For years the self-help industry has gotten away with admonishing us to have a “positive attitude” and “think like a winner” without giving us any useful tools to help us do that. The recent academic inerest in positive psychology, blossoming in places like Dr. Martin Seligman’s Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has changed all that by focusing on what could loosly be called the “happiness process.” One example of that change is Jeffrey Gitomer’s book The Little Golden Book of Yes! Attitude: How to Find, Build, and Keep a Yes! Attitude for a Lifetime of Success.
Jeffrey Gitomer is a successful author of the syndicated column,”Sales Moves,” and of best-selling sales process books The Sales Bible, The Little Black Book Of Connections, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Red Book of Selling, and The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching. This series of books is branded with bright colors, smaller-than-average cloth bindings, stylish use of font colors and sizes (like Tom Peters’ recent books), and use of the “.5″ list (“Take these 2.5 immediate actions” and “7.5 on-the-job things you can do to keep the focus”). It is filled with frenetic bursts of ideas and lists. The books are a bit tough to read at times, especially when trying to find passages you’ve read, but they are perfect for web-trained readers accustomed to scannable, list-driven information.
In The Little Gold Book, Gitomer aims to create “a total awareness and game plan for you to understand, apply, become proficient at, and finally, master and maintain your attitude.” “It took you years to screw up your attitude,” he writes. “Give yourself a few hours to read and discover why and how to fix it forever.”
Gitomer begins by saying, “You can’t gain a positive attitude by reading a book,” and then spends fifty or so pages explaining what being positive means and why it’s good for us followed by a 150-point attitude self-test — all “book” stuff. Given that a reader of this book is probably well aware of the value of optimism – she wouldn’t have bought it otherwise — the opening section seems to be filler intended to increase his concept to book length. This may not concern all readers, however. To be fair, I have read so many books like this on that when I read a new one, I’m much much more interested in the meat than the potatoes, and prefer to dive right into the main ideas. When he does get to the main dish, however, he provides a filling, if not completely nutrituous, meal.
By and large, we’ve seen the information in The Little Gold Book before, but it isn’t totally unoriginal. Among his list are common approaches — “Decide you’re willing to go for it,” “Read books that will get you going at the start of the day,” and “Start each morning with some positive exposure, wisdom, or expressions” —- mixed with the unusual —- “Get rid of negative people in your life,”Ignore idiots and zealots,” “Turn off the TV,” and “Avoid the violence on TV and in the movies.” It’s these unusual suggestions that lift this book from the pile of all the other books.
Gitomer sees himself as “straight talker” and brings a tough-minded pragmatism to self-help, and this is the freshest part of The Little Yellow Book. While offering support, he’s very clear about just who is responsible for our problems: “It ain’t the rain, the snow, the boss, the competition, the spouse, the money, the car, job, or the kids – it’s you!” He doesn’t mince words with advice, either. His 10.5 Attitude Busters read like a slap in the face: “6. I don’t like where I live. Move” “7. I don’t like my spouse. Make peace. Remember why you got married in the first place. Renew vows. Or if all else fails, get a new one.” “2. I need more money than I have. Make more sales.” He refers to those who make you feel stupid, inadequate as pukers who “puke on you” when they “share examples of failure, make fun of your dreams, or tear you down.” For them he shows no mercy: “The main reason people rain on my parade,” he says, “is because they have no parade of their own.” He’s clearly not touchy-feely.
Something unusual for this type of book is Gitomer’s attitude toward attitude. This is the first self-help book I’ve read that recognizes that half the world thinks that these ideas are hokey. Those of us have purchased a self-help book hoping not to run into anyone we know before getting it home can appreciate that. It’s hokey, he says, but so what? It’s important and it works. Let other people be hip; we’ll be succesful and happy. Gitomer also sees the process of maintaing an attitude as a life-long, daily exercise: “Decide it will take a year to set a new thought pattern. A year of positive isn’t too long, considering that you have had 30(more or less) negative ones.” He even suggests that it will take 25 years to finish the job. We can’t just read a book or attend a seminar and expect to make significant changes. It is done day by day.
It has become common for selp-help authors to attract viewers to their web sites by promising additional web resources, and Gitomer is no different. Throughout his books are GitBits, bonus information available at hist web site. Here is a GitBit from The Little Gold Book: “Want to create an incredible atmosphere in your company? To find out what a client of mine who employed one hundred people did, go to www.gitomer.com, register if you are a first-time user, and enter the word FRANCE in the GitBit box.” Of course, you’ll have to register to get access to them, but it is worth it. The rest of the site is a bit of a mixed bag. He offers Sales Caffiene, a weekly e-mail newsletter, for free, but charges $1.50 each to read the articles on the site. I’m not a supporter of pay-for-content when there’s so much available for free, but you can check it out and make your own choice.
So is The Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude worth your time? Yes it is. Gitomer’s “straight talk” is refreshing, and his belief that keeping our attitude up is a long term, every-day thing is good advice. Pick up a copy.
Make a great day.
Relearning What I Already Know October 17, 2008
Posted by beholdthestars in Life & Living.Tags: change, creek, hiking, Hill Country, Robert Frost, trail, Wagner
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I recently discovered a hiking trail that begins about two miles from my front door. It runs about three-and-a-half miles from the trail head, meanders through the wooded space behind several office buildings and twice crosses under a highway. If I’m so inclined, and I don’t mind fighting the beast of a hill between my house and the trail, I can pass a couple of hours in the “wilderness.”
The trail follows the creek bed so that as I walk I see mostly trees and hills, but is near enough the highway that the whoosh of automobiles periodically invades my awareness — more or less depending on traffic. I want to say that, given its proximity to civilization, the trail seems to be trying to avoid all contact with man,but I know it isn’t the trail that is avoiding man, but the men and women who walk it. I am one of them.
In this dry season I am privy to sights that will be hidden once the rains begin. The shallowness of the creek allows me to cross without getting wet and exposes four or five small waterfalls. At one point, a rotting swing hangs over a shallow swimming hole cut from layered limestone. At another, the creek twists like rope in twin stone channels before dropping into a shallow pool. I imagine a Hill Country Robert Frost writing of the eternal journey of these worn-rock channels — side-by-side, but never touching. This isn’t New Hampshire, but Nature’s lessons are universal.
When the rains do come, there will be no point searching for my favorite spots; the rising water level will obscure them, and I will be forced to take alternate paths appropriate to the new season. I won’t be able to cross the creek bed at will, but will need to search out low spots and large stones for crossing. The small waterfalls will be covered, but the flow over the larger ones will be dramatic. The swimming holes will be deep and pure under fresh ropes swinging from the trees, and the twin channels will be lost beneath the smooth, rushing of the creek.
My days work like that. What seems to be a clear and consistent path changes with the seasons of my life. Things I was so sure of yesterday don’t apply today, and favorite things come and go. We say, “The only thing constant is change,” and snicker at the cliche — but it is true. It took me a long time to really understand and accept that. Learning from experience may be the slow and painful way, but it’s terribly effective.
Walking provides me an antidote to to-do lists, bills, and the other clutter of my life — but only if I let it. It is easy to become the protagonist in my own little Wagnerian opera or waste an entire walk honing the witty, yet cutting thing I should have said in yesterday’s argument. But if I’m careful, a walk in the woods, like meditation, can be lesson in awareness, a chance to turn off the internal dialogue an pay attention to the world as it is, without the endless nouns and adjectives of my busy mind, and relearn what I already know.
Make a great day.
