Customer Reviews

How to Simplify Your Life : Seven Practical Steps to Letting Go of Your Burdens and Living a Happier Life

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People turn to books for advice on many issues, but the most successful books that fall into the self-help category deal more often with weight loss than self-actualization. That makes it all the more surprising that "How to Simplify Your Life," now in its 13th printing in Germany, has achieved a feat most German books, let alone those focused on self-help, so rarely accomplish: It has been published in English.

The German author duo comprised of Werner Tiki Kustenmacher and Lothar J. Seiwert is a formidable team of self help gurus, the former a trained Lutheran minister and free-lance cartoonist, the latter Germany's most sought-after professional coach. Since their book was first published, the "Simplify Your Life" brand has developed into a complex brand of lifestyle books and products - and a perennial bestseller at home and abroad.

Kustenmacher and Seiwert outline their vision for a simpler life in a seven-step life pyramid that starts with the charge to purge oneself of unnecessary objects and ends with the lofty goal of embracing one's life dream. The steps in between - and there are hundreds of them - stem from both men's private practices and from the over 600 American and German self-help books the authors analyzed while creating their own book.

Money isn't the object in their pursuit of happiness, but neither is an austere lifestyle. Readers are encouraged to weed out the clutter at office and home, which, the experts say, mentally blocks your personal development. If that doesn't scare the packrats to action, they offer ample evidence that having too much stuff in your life can actually make you obese.

Finance and time management form two further tiers of the pyramid, and here as well, the authors' advice is sound. Going far beyond their initial sections on how to unblock the flow of money and reduce debt, Kustenmacher and Seiwert have a collection of valuable tools for preventing interruptions at the office and at home, unlocking more free time. For the technically savvy but punctually bereft, they offer quite a few helpful hints for managing that ever-growing email deluge.

Its section on untangling family ties and building a good life partnership could be a book in itself. Here, the authors' advice ranges from using networking to end isolation and how to be a good guest and hostess to dealing with envy and learning to accept your partner's differentness.

The "Last Steps" section is perhaps the most nebulous section of the book - and also the most uninspired. Few will be reassured by short paragraphs on how to develop one's life dream, and the fill-in-the blank greatest strengths test only detracts from the other practical information in the book.

As for the success of its translation, "How to Simplify Your Life" is laced with fun facts about modern German life, but seems an appropriate tool for Americans as well. It has earned its place alongside that other great self-help book for our times, "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Do you ever wish that you were born with an owner's manual? Well, Tiki Kustenmacher, simplicity expert, and Dr. Lothar J. Seiwert, professional coach, offer a digestible life guide that reads like an operating primer for the human spirit. Livened up with Kustenmacher's cute illustrations, each chapter tackles a different facet of life, such as managing clutter, taming finances and establishing goals. The practical tips from these bite-size chapters are easy to digest and implement. Their recipe for a simplified life includes valuable suggestions for handling difficult emotions (jealousy) and life events (marriage, death). Although the text is fun to read, the authors skip around and circle back to different subjects in each chapter. Tighter organization would have made the book's counsel easier to track. And, each chapter begins with an unnecessary, somewhat annoying "dream of simplicity" visualization. Just skip those little appetizers and dive right into the main course. Also check out the excellent reading list at the back of the book. We recommend this manual to pack rats, workaholics and all those who would welcome simplicity as a relief from life's chaos.

Modern life is stressful and complicated, we are torn between working life and private life, we are pressed for time constantly, we are swamped with outstanding tasks - sometimes our everyday life is nothing but chaos. Fortunately, a friend of mine gave me this brilliant book. It shows, how to clean up your life and throw off unnecessary ballast. The practical advices are very easy to implement: after reading the book, I started immediately to clear up my room, and, believe it or not, it was fun and gave me a feeling of rearranging and organizing my life. Of course the book deals not just with tidy rooms. You'll find out what really matters, in your job, your relationship, in your life. Recommended! It works!

This is a very useful and practical approach to organization. Starting with your living arrangement, desk and closets, you progress upward in importance to organizing more important things like free time, work, relationships with others, and with yourself. I find myself carrying this book around and referencing it regularly. My wife and I reread certain chapters and we then tackle another organizing project. I highly recommend this book. There is even a web newsletter run by the author with new tips and suggestions.

Author touts this book as a way to live to one's full potential. It'll get the reader closer to that, but there are a few problems in the philosophy behind the methods.

The PRACTICAL tips for simplifying are the best part of this book, as it outlines methods for dealing with mail and other important possessions, whether at home or while traveling.

I concur with the review before me, in which the reader says he uses the book as a reference. And that is because most of the book's practical tips and methods of dealing with emails, debt and savings, the garage, closets, and even friends, are certainly workable. And they do take WORK. You'll need to crack open the book often, just to get back on track. Nothing wrong with a user's manual, no sir.

But there is an underlying philosophy that I find objectionable and I'll get right to that. The author is suggesting ways of doing away with stress which are, frankly, disempowering. I can totally dig that an angry, stagnated, confused, and hopelessly disorganized person is in dire need of sweeping changes... but this book has more than one section in which "letting go" is promoted to the point where readers see a choice of either staying obsessively stressed on the little things or else going into a virtual / mental rabbit hole. Without tools for dealing with many things that can be confronted and easily resolved.

I was aghast to find in the book a kind of encouragement for giving up on the problems of the world. Yeah, you will experience less short term stress if you stop thinking about global warming and the children starving in Africa, but people who involve themselves in small ways in these kinds of global issues will tell you that it does wonders for stress about our puny concerns in the rat race. Talk about simplification! That wonderful expansive perspective of the giving soul, the humanist, the global citizen, is not part of Kustenmacher's method. His vision is limited to a small scope.

There are some lovely self-affirming nuggets in the book like thinking positively and ideas on how to express yourself in positive ways. Plus a great section on ending TV addiction. These are things that do give a person an enormous boost in self worth. But many of the how-to-make-a-decision tips are ridiculously poor, and some of the relationship tips would be very, very difficult for most marriages to apply without supervision. Scant true knowledge of the workings of relationships, false data in the book will lead some astray.

The only thing really useful about this book is that it helps the reader paint for themselves some very real, very healthy goals. The book's little nudges toward a less wasteful life, a more healthy life, and a less messy life, are definitely nudges in the right direction. But this book is not the be-all and end-all to why the average person's surroundings are so complicated and yet meaningless.

Some good tips for your personal realm, but doesn't help anyone reach Nirvana.

Recently discovered Problems of Work by Hubbard, avail here at amazon in both DVD format (very entertaining) and book form (full of tips, tools, and help); I'd enthusiastically recommend that one over the Kustenmacher one, as it undercuts most problems people are having with a life too complicated.

This is a life changing book. Clear away all the self-help books and cds and make way for this. Very simple, direct and clear. The pictures in themselves are very emotive. I am a bit of a self-help junky so very critical now of anything that comes my way but this simply is top dollar.

Excellent book! Very well outlined, nice graphic interpretation with added humor. Very first book I bought from Amazon and I will buy more! Fast shipping too! This is a book that will keep you busy reading and makes you think that you can do much more to improve your well being.
RECOMMENDED!

Author's point of view is very interesting in many aspects. I considered myself an organized person until now...after couple of days, I threw away pounds of papers and unusefull objects, old clothes, and so on, following the levels of the "pyramid of simplification". It works. More important and relevant principles are commented in the book, all of them very interesting, and I liked many of them.

Of all the organizational books out there this is to best. If you are looking to really change your life this book shows you in small steps how to do it and it really works. If you are going to byuy any book on organization make it this one you will not be disappointed!!

Do not waste money on this book. First, the emphasis of this book is on simplifying your work place with limited references to simplifying your home or social life. Secondly, I did not find any new or revolutionary ideas in this book: It just took several pages to present ideas that take only one or two lines in other books on simplification and decluttering.

Elaine St. James' "Simplify Your Life" on CD, as well as any of the Don Aslett books on decluttering, are superior to this book, especially for motivating you to actually begin decluttering and simplifying your life. I also recommend Rita Emmett's "The Clutter-Busting Handbook."