110 of 131 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Less than I hoped for..., April 1, 2001
This review is from: Coach Yourself to Success : 101 Tips from a Personal Coach for Reaching Your Goals at Work and in Life (Paperback)
I have read many, many self help books over the past decade. Some of these books are classics, others are not. This book (for me at least) falls in the "not classic" category: just too much fluff for me.
Normally I would have just donated this book to a local charity and moved on to another book. However, I feel that I must add my comments about this book, to add more balance to the other reviews found here.
Many of Talane's tips are common sense, and would be helpful to someone just starting out on the road to self improvement. Some of the tips are just plain wacky. For example, in tip 20: Feng Shui Your Home and Office, we are invited to make sure the front entrance door of our house never opens to face a bathroom. If it does, we are advised to keep the door closed. Great tip, for modesty reasons as well as for Feng Shui. We also learn that we should "never design or buy a house with a bathroom in the center of the house; it will drain out all the energy." She doesn't know why she does these things, she does just does these things because they "work".
One of the other tips that struck me as strange was the advice to identify our needs. As an example, she mentiones that some people are compulsive shoppers because they want to feel needed. If this is our need, we are invited to ask people to let us know how cherished we are for 4 to 6 weeks... that should be enough to stop the compulsive shopping. Much of the book seemed a bit too simplistic for me.
One other personal issue: each tip is prefaced with a quote from some great thinkers... however, some are dialog clips from TV episodes like Rossanne and Mamma's Family. Those types of quotes are not untelling of the level of content you will find in this book.
Like I said, if this is the first self improvement book you purchase, you will find a fairly shallow treatment of many wide ranging topics... most of which should help you begin your self improvement path. Personally, I could not force myself to finish the book: I only made it to page 174.
If you do purchase this book, don't stop with this one, keep going on to deeper, more comprehensive works.
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book for getting yourself moving in life, September 6, 2001
This review is from: Coach Yourself to Success : 101 Tips from a Personal Coach for Reaching Your Goals at Work and in Life (Paperback)
I wish I could give more than five stars. I have a library of over 2,000 self help books, and this is by far one of the best I have read AND taken action on. Usually I read a book and put it on the shelf. This book prompts you to take action. The author walks you through getting rid of energy drains in your life, setting up personal boundaries that may have slipped, and getting your health, finances, relationships - your entire life back in order and in balance. Even if you just read the book and take one action, you will change your life for the better. Give it a try. There is no filler or fluff here - just concise, constructive actions to take to improve your life.
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Changes I can make, January 17, 2000
The best thing about this book is that the authors suggestions not only sound good on paper, but envisioning doing them doesnt seem either daunting nor ludicrous, but in fact, feasible and even, gads, smart. This book is not idiotic pap about 'have a positive attitude' but actually provides manageable steps any human being can take to, at the very least, make living easier and more manageable. The author's advice can be applied at work and at home, and, while it's still too early to tell for sure, I believe some of those quick, easy changes have already made my life easier. On the whole I hate self-help career books because they provide too many platitudes followed by suggestions that my boss would not be pleased to see in his office. TM's suggestions are real-world ideas, for actual human beings with actual jobs and Dilbert bosses. She makes sense on a rational level as well as a functional one. I don't see this book sitting gathering dust on my shelf anytime soon. I see myself rereading it a few pages a day for the next ten years. Thanks, TM, for this useful tool.
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