Customer Reviews

Stop Being Mean To Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I am writing to all of you who have written a review about this book, and especially to Melody Beattie. To the person who mocked about Melody's inner civil war, or you're already a god or you will never ever hope to KNOW what an inner civil war is. And to the rest of you, this book is not about traveling through Nothern Africa, it is about INNER travel, if you were trying to read an action-packed James Bond or Indiana Jones story, you guys picked the wrong book. This is not a fiction book, it is a book about how to find your inner deamons, your fears, face them and come through truly successfuly. This is a "self-help" book, and should be rated accordingly. I lived an inner civil war myself, and Melody greatly helped in making me understand how everything lies in subtleness, awareness, in trusting the universe. In trusting yourself, in listening to yourself for once! Hence the name of the book. This certainly was one of the pivotal steps in helping me change my life. This book is for people WHO needs it, otherwise you'd be bored to hell, of course. Every kind of book, song, movie, painting, etc... has a porpuse and is meant for certain kind of people. Just stop for a moment and THINK before you rate a book...before you rate anything. It is NOT about "if I liked it or not", it is about "does it work?" This book is not a novel, it is a tool for those who need it. It didn't work for you because you didn't need it. I needed it, and guess what, it worked. It really did. THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH MELODY, YOU REALLY HELPED SOMEONE BE MORE CONSCIOUS, MORE AWARE AND A BETTER PERSON. I ONLY WISH I COULD CONTACT YOU TO TELL YOU THIS PERSONALLY. GOD BLESS YOU, AND YOUR DAUGHTER. -Rafael Romo, Mexico City.

It's interesting how things/situations "speak" to some people and don't to others. Books are this way. Some reviewers found Stop Being Mean to Yourself a waste of time, but I found it an inspiration and an adventure that made me WANT to stop feeling sorry for myself, to KNOW that I should listen to my higher self and to BEGIN being good to myself. I felt I was led to this book - I read it in one day, with verve! It's true that it seems to be a "story" about Beattie's adventures and her personal quest for enlightenment, but that's what I liked about it! I was looking for something different, something interesting - a "story" about life and what others have experienced that I want and need (whether it is fact or fiction!). Plain and simple, it touched me with its simplicity. I related to Melody's struggles - her questioning and searching and uncertainty. ... I've read plenty of spiritual awareness and self-help books with daily affirmations, etc., (from wealthy, educated doctor types! - does it make a difference who's actually doing the writing if it speaks to you?!) but they have gotten old - Melody intrigued me. She re-engaged my creativity and my interest in myself - not necessarily on fixing myself, but in being loving and nurturing to myself. I felt understood reading this book, because I felt that Melody is "one of us." She's on the same spirtual path (but maybe farther ahead ;-)) as the rest of us who read this book and any of the thousands of others that exist on similar subjects. I was brought to this book - as other people may have come upon it for their own personal reasons - if you weren't touched by this one, there will be another book out there that WILL get to you. As Melody makes clear, we all have our own journey - no two are the same - and that's what stood out to me. I may feel comfort in hearing about someone else's journey or struggle, but mine is my own and I will forge my own path. Thank you Melody for putting me back on that path and helping me to realize that no one guru or doctor or person can tell me what's right for me! That's for me to find out in my own way.

The title of this enlightening read caught my eye, for the very fact that there have been times when I've treated myself with less kindness than I show others. In Stop Being Mean to Yourself, Melody Beattie finds a unique way to unravel the reasons why this may be so. The sensitive solar plexus (the pit of the stomach) is an area of her body of which she becomes quite aware, as she recounts her 1996 journey through Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. Her descriptive "leap of faith" in those exotic locales helped me to vicariously experience her inner transformation, which is really what this book is about.

Cairo and Giza are areas of the world wherein the ancient rubs shoulders with the modern. While being guided through the "souk" or marketplace, Beattie observed a man using a stick to hit thieves within the crowd (thus identifying them for the benefit of others in his vicinity.) It occurred to her that she had been "walking without a stick" all these years; she had never been able to shield herself from those who would do her harm, much less identify them. She yearns for the intuition that would protect her in the future. Beattie makes the case that an underdeveloped capacity for self-preservation is what fuels her low self-image.

Symbolic verbiage permeates her tale. There are references to living in a psychological "box" and being tossed about as in a "vortex." She makes good use of these images in describing some very disturbing episodes in her journey. What emerges, in the end, is Beattie's realization that her pain-filled life has had a greater purpose after all: a newfound self-awareness. Through writing, she discovers that her insights can potentially help others in their quest for meaning and fulfillment.

I loved this book on many levels. As a travelogue it carried me to Algeria, Morocco and Egypt in a way that had me tasting the dust and feeling the sweat. As a symbolic journey, I need to re-read it to capture it all. There were countless moments of "Ah-Hah" that I want to remember, but, as befits a truly spiritual, moving book, I couldn't stop reading long enough to take notes!. Finally, this was a story of Melody Beattie, who I feel I got to know on some level. Although I read many books that can be labeled "self-help," this book stands out as the best I have ever read. It's title does not do justice at all to its complexity and depth. This should be a classic

This is not "Co-Dependent No More" Part II. This is not a book in which the author actually gives step-by-step instructions on how to stop being mean to yourself.

Melody Beattie wrote "Co-Dependent No More" not from the prospective of a therapist, but from the prospective of a co-dependent.

This book isn't written from the prospective of someone who has found something. It is written from the prospective of someone who has turned over every rock looking for it, and not in a systematic way. It is an intuitively-interpreted story about how she eventually looked back on a remarkable, unpredictable trip taken for entirely intuitive reasons. Had she known the trip she was taking, I kind of doubt she would have talked herself into taking it.

The book won't give you answers. It will give you Melody Beattie very honestly telling you about how she went looking for them. And yes, it is one woman's interpretation of the direction in which to look for the meaning of life.

If you want a "How to" book, this is NOT it. To be honest, I could not possibly take many of her interpretations at face value. Still, I think she believed her interpretation, and hearing her interpretation was not a bad way for me to arrive at mine. And wow, did she learn some stuff by just being open to learning some stuff. Just the bare facts she turned up and the bare facts of her life that she is willing to share are very much worth listening to, even if you don't buy the box she wraps it up in.

If you buy this as a self-help book, though, you're not likely to be happy with it. It is not that kind of a book. On the other hand, if you buy it as sort of a personal sharing from someone who HAS written some worthwhile self-help books, well, then, I think you'll find a thing or two to think about.

Oh, and if you are a member of an organized religion who is driven nuts by people who pick a little of this religion and a little of that one, or if you really need to look at your life's questions in something like an organized and predictable way, at least right now, this is NOT your book. It is more impressionistic than that, more open-ended than that.

It is often difficult to internalize the concepts discovered by others in their search for enlightenment. Although there were (often creepy) parallels between her experiences in North Africa and my own, as well as similarities in the lessons we have learned, I often found it hard to resonate with Ms Beattie as she told her story. I do appreciate her analogy of spiritual growth to that of a computer game...we just keep going to higher levels.
Although I will probably never re-read this book, I will keep it in my office for my clients to borrow. Perhaps it will strike a chord with someone.

To say this book is a follow-up to Co-dependent No More is hype. It is an interesting travelogue and probably a tax write-off. She writes that when she told her daughter the title her daughter said, "Oh, you're writing a mystery." I'm midway through this book and the purported subject is a mystery. I had to stop when her sage advice to an Islamic teenage woman "living in a box" in Gaza is that she could leave this cloistered life and "become a movie star, a model, work in an office." What a great disappointment after a serious work on co-dependency.

Melodie took me to places I have always wanted to visit. I was fascinated that she would undertake such an adventure alone . There were some details of her visit that were left unanswered at times but I felt myself holding my breath and wondering what might happen to her next.There were some very insightful passages about toxic relationships and self-discovery that I felt were directed right at me. I needed to be reminded how quickly and how subtly we give our power away and how we need to get it back. Life is worth living.

While the book is relatively well-written and I found her travel adventures interesting, I kept finding myself trying to find the point of the book as conveyed in the title. As another reviewer noted, the book really isn't about how others can stop being mean to themselves - really not at all - it's really about how the author has found things about HERSELF through her travels in Algeria and Egypt (and being detained at the airports in Cairo and Tel Aviv). Admittedly, I don't read self-help books so I did enjoy the stories of her travels but overall found it disappointing because as the first self-help book I have read, I didn't find it at all helpful, I just "learned" the obvious: how not to be mean to yourself, love yourself.

I've read many Melody Beattie books in the past and have appreciated them, but this one is just awful. This is the first review I've ever posted but felt strongly enough to do so to save others time and money. The writing style is poor and I found it condescending versus helpful. My reaction wasn't because her words hit too close to home or I wasn't ready to face the truth, not at all. Reading it was just an aggravating experience and I felt foolish for assuming this author's reputation and this particular title would be helpful. I couldn't get beyond the first couple chapters. The thought of subjecting someone else to this work was too distasteful that I actually threw the book in the trash, something I've never done before. My suggestion to others is to look somewhere else for guidance and comfort. Perhaps a different book by Ms. Beattie or look at other suggestions from readers. But avoid "Stop Being Mean to Yourself." This book will insult your intelligence.