Don't Let Others Rent Space in Your Head: Your Guide to Living Well, Overcoming Obstacles, and Winning at Everything in Life [Hardcover]

Gary Coxe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2005

Praise for Don't Let Others Rent Space in Your Head

"Gary offers rich advice for anyone who wishes to succeed in spite of his or her failures. Four simple steps may be all that stand in the way of your dreams becoming a reality. Here's to the good life! Cheers!"
--Robin Leech, TV host

"Gary has developed an uncanny ability to take people to the next level. A must-read for everyone, whether you want to improve your life, your sales, or your business. Gary definitely has it figured out. Well done!"
--Harvey MacKay, New York Times bestselling author of Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

"Gary's thought process is one to admire and to achieve. Handling big business means changing your mindset, and Gary leads the way. An enjoyable book with great concepts for everyone in business and in personal life. A book you'll want to read twice."
--Gordon "Butch" Stewart, owner of Sandals Resorts

"A powerful and practical approach from someone who truly knows what he's talking about. You will be unstoppable after reading Gary's no-nonsense ideas on never giving up and becoming more successful."
--Ron Rice, founder, President, and CEO of Hawaiian Tropics

"Gary's book will take you beyond positive thinking and change your life for the better."
--Ron Garl, President of Ron Garl Golf Design

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this argumentative, sometimes counterintuitive self-help book, first-time author Coxe declares that "positive thinking is a lie and it doesn't work!" It doesn't create lasting results; it is very difficult if you're emotionally spent; and when it fails, you just feel worse. Instead of avoiding negative thoughts and emotions, he says, you should acknowledge and manipulate them to attain success. The key to using negative feelings constructively is learning "to play games with our minds instead of our minds playing games with us." Coxe, who rails against other "pop-psychologists" and attributes his own expertise to life experience, offers a few basic tools, such as scenario planning, emotion control techniques and the book's centerpiece, "The 4-Step Process," a series of reframing exercises that identify readers' "empowering beliefs and thoughts" and their "limiting" ones. (Explaining why his 4-Step Process includes a step on positive thinking, Coxe does some reframing of his own, arguing that "it's not so much positive thinking itself that's the hoax, it's the way it is presented.") Coxe declares that his process can cure people of longtime phobias "in less than an hour." Readers intrigued by his multiple appearances on television's Maury Povich Show may want to pick up this book. (Dec.)
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Review

In this argumentative, sometimes counterintuitive self-help book, first-time author Coxe declares that "positive thinking is a lie and it doesn't work!" It doesn't create lasting results; it is very difficult if you're emotionally spent; and when it fails, you just feel worse. Instead of avoiding negative thoughts and emotions, he says, you should acknowledge and manipulate them to attain success. The key to using negative feelings constructively is learning "to play games with our minds instead of our minds playing games with us." Coxe, who rails against other "pop-psychologists" and attributes his own expertise to life experience, offers a few basic tools, such as scenario planning, emotion control techniques and the book's centerpiece, "The 4-Step Process," a series of reframing exercises that identify readers' "empowering beliefs and thoughts" and their "limiting" ones. (Explaining why his 4-Step Process includes a step on positive thinking, Coxe does some reframing of his own, arguing that "it's not so much positive thinking itself that's the hoax, it's the way it is presented.") Coxe declares that his process can cure people of longtime phobias "in less than an hour." Readers intrigued by his multiple appearances on television's Maury Povich Show may want to pick up this book. (Dec.) (Publishers Weekly, October 10, 2005)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (December 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471746932
• ISBN-13: 978-0471746935
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars ho hum..., April 8, 2006

By 

jazzgirl (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't Let Others Rent Space in Your Head: Your Guide to Living Well, Overcoming Obstacles, and Winning at Everything in Life (Hardcover)

If you suffer from insommnia, I would recommend this book by Gary Coxe. About all it did for me was put me to sleep.

What interested me in this book was that I wanted to see what the author had to say about positive thinking. I was hoping to read something enlightening but I didn't find anything new or even motivating here AT ALL. Mr. Coxe puts down other self-help authors, "self-styled experts" as he calls them by claiming that they merely have a magnetic personality and have "mastered the media". Their words only give us a quick fix and don't help us in the longrun. While I agree that this can be true for SOME, I have read many a self-help, success book that has helped me and changed my life tremendously in many different ways.

I don't think he believes that we, as self-help seekers, realize that positive thinking is merely the foundation upon which all else is built. It is obviously not an end in itself. He goes to great and I mean GREAT lengths, to point this out.

All in all I found this book to be a rambling, confusing, condescending disappointment!! Save your money on this one.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful, January 8, 2006

By 

Grace Harley "Grace" (Detroit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Don't Let Others Rent Space in Your Head: Your Guide to Living Well, Overcoming Obstacles, and Winning at Everything in Life (Hardcover)

I have had the privilege to be in the Maury Povich Show audience and see Gary Coxe transform multiple people in a short time from life-limiting phobias. To see the relief on these peoples faces is fantastic. Gary shows how we can change our lives so very quickly with the right tools. These tools he gives us in his book, and I have already read it 3 times! He knows what people have been through in their lives as he has had many tragic things happen in his. But he has learned from it and has progressed to help others to try and improve theirs. The tools are there in his book, we just have to apply them.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't Let Gary Cox Rent Space In Your Wallet, March 15, 2006

By 

Jerry R. Rosen - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Don't Let Others Rent Space in Your Head: Your Guide to Living Well, Overcoming Obstacles, and Winning at Everything in Life (Hardcover)

I just struggled in getting through Don't Let Others Rent Space In Your Head. I suggest, in my opinion, Mr. Coxe had a deal with his publisher to provide a 250 page book in exchange for his "unconventional wisdom". The problem is, Mr. Coxe comes off like a self grandizing "been there did that" first time writer that talks down to his audience and really has nothing concrete to offer. He rambles and repeats, endlessly, making the reader wonder where he is going, and, why. I have also just read two other books in the past month, Think Like A Shrink by Emanuel Rosen, M.D, a Psychiatrist, who keeps his material short, to the point and provides excellent tools to his readers. Don't Sweat The Small Stuff, by Richard Carlson, PH.D. also provides more direct help, in short, to the point chapters. Neither rambles on about their own personal lives or history nor do they talk down, endlessly to their readers. I have sent both of these books as gifts to friends and family. I was going to put Mr. Coxe's book on my bookshelf, but, it's higher and better use is to hold up one leg of a table that is wobbling in my office. I don't want it to rent space on my bookcase.