Get Over Yourself! How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life You Deserve [Hardcover]

Tonya Pinkins (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Hyperion; First Edition edition (January 1, 2005)
• ASIN: B0028GDTQ6
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I am very blessed. I have four extraordinary, healthy and happy children. My life has many challenges and I hope that my testimony about them can uplift, inspire or just remind someone that it has all come to pass.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never get over the Passion, January 9, 2006

By 

Sim Delagramma "Sim" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get Over Yourself!: How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life You Deserve (Hardcover)

"Get Over Yourself" is not one of those self-help books that really should have been a single paragraph. (You know the type: example after example tells you the same story until you feel that perhaps the author mistrusts your ability to understand the point.) This book is radically different from that genre. Every chapter delivers more, and newer, and different.

The book represents a world of work on the part of the author. If you have ever seen Tonya Pinkins on stage, you know that she works! The energy she generates in performance fairly explodes out of her and acts like a depth charge in the audience. Now, through some kind of magical alchemy, she's been able to impart that quality to the printed page, and you should be ready for a genuine mental work-out when you crack the book open; reading it is an audience-participation activity.

Don't let that scare you off, though. I found that some chapters went slowly and others went quickly, depending on how familiar I was with the feelings they evoked and the requirements they placed on me as a reader. In the first chapter, Pinkins starts giving assignments. I got my pen out when I saw three blank lines after her advice: "write it down." Feeling a little silly, I wrote down my response, and then I kept reading. At the end of the chapter, I realized how important it had been for me to physically write those words. Several chapters later, it dawned on me that I had used every prior bit of my "workbook" writing to gain mastery over the ideas and techniques presented. I no longer felt silly about it, either.

Whether or not you use this book in the big parts of your life (after all, you might not want the same things this particular artist/performer/celebrity-mother wants), you will probably find yourself using some parts of the book in smaller parts of your life. I hear myself say (to myself and even others), "don't give it any energy," or "figure out what you want and try to get it," and I understand how profound an effect Pinkins' book has had on me. Perhaps the reason is that she wrote it with real passion, with that special Pinkinsian passion that emanates from her as she sings or acts. Some call it magnetism; some call it charisma; some call it leadership. I think it's the quality of a real teacher. So, some call it love.

I am not a religious person. Yet I could appreciate in this book an almost religious quality, a certain cross-cultural faith-tinged feeling, if you will. Pinkins is a prototype open mind. She seeks out gurus and soaks up knowledge. She has been an avid student, over the years, of many fine teachers, and she seems, finally, to be a disciple of all sorts of universal "ways." Anyone traveling through any of the ways she has lived will love this book. Buy it, read it, see for yourself.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars She Makes You Work For It, June 14, 2006

By 

Intuition_Gal - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get Over Yourself!: How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life You Deserve (Hardcover)

Really, really fun book. Read this book with a pen in your hand. Tonya Pinkins asks you to write all over it, to get to the bottom of you, and to get you to act on certain things in your life in which you need to be taking actions.

My favorite thing about this book is that she walks you along - asks you to answer a few questions, and then inerprets your answers for you or has you interpret them once she gives you some clues. Very thorough. I'm surprised that she has so many topics in here in regular language (but if you were to look through any chapter, the techniques she uses to ask you questions have been studied to make results in your life!... wiring the brain towards remembering and towards action, what you'll be when you grow up, banishing debilitating attitutes, forgiveness, action, goals - even these words that I'm using to summarize her book are dry). Her book is active, and that's what makes it effective.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book surprised me, October 28, 2006

By 

Reading my way thru life "Sharing what I read" (VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get Over Yourself!: How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life You Deserve (Hardcover)

I must admit, this book caught my eye in the bookstore, and I skimmed over it.

I subscribe to "Science of Mind" magazine, and a few days later, when the issue came, there was Tonya on the front cover. -I read the article and ran back out to the store to buy the book! So many of the spiritual/Universal teachings I've read before are rolled up in this one book.

Some of the things she proposes in this book may be hard to grasp or even think about doing. This lady's "expenses outnumbered her income by about 1000 percent" and she still stuck with her "paper bag" system while on welfare. Are you "over yourself" enough to be willing to do something like that? -Well, honestly, I must say that I'm not there -yet, but this book definately has me thinking about it and wondering if I can take a chance like that and make it work. I am wondering if one must get to the place where they have nothing else to lose, to be able to take a chance like that?

This lady has faced some very challenging situations. When she was involved in a custody battle w/her ex, she gave in instead of resisting. She decided that her old patterns weren't working for her any longer, so she chose differently. This, in a situation that would be heart wrenching for any mother, she chose differently. -"I was not reacting, but responding, proactively, to achieve what I wanted, rather than giving in to the fear that dominated me in the past. No longer did I believe that I had better take "something-anything!" rather than risk ending up with the very thing I did not want." ...."You are so sure that no other option is possible that you react against your own best interests." -from the book.

There are real life examples of why and how the principals she proposes work. She's lived/experienced them for herself. The chapters end with a review and spaces to write in your own thoughts and answers to the questions. There are lots of very helpful/inspirational/relevant quotes throughout the book.

This book is overflowing in helpful advice, not only pertaining to finances, but in how to change your THINKING and begin living the life you really want to live.

I have to say that the "ice cream cone" analogy was very helpful for me in putting the financial freedom system in perspective. -It's about "demonstrating your ability to handle a single scoop so you can move on to the double and triple."

Also, the birthday gift that she gives to herself every year...I loved that.

A few excerpts from the book:
"You are free to choose to do it differently at any time."

"Keep doing what you've always done and you'll keep getting what you've always gotten."

"I've been an avid reader my entire life. But whenever I changed what I was reading, that didn't change my life. My life changed when I changed what I was doing. I changed what I was doing with practice."