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Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way
 
 
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Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way [Paperback]

Rick Carson (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews) |
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Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2003

A completely updated edition of this classic, explaining the author's laid-back but stunningly powerful methods for taming self-defeating behaviours.

Your gremlin interprets your every experience. He has nothing good to say about you or anything you do, not to mention your dreams and aspirations. Just when you feel you've out-argued or overcome him, he changes his disguise and his strategy. Grapple with him and you become more enmeshed. What he hates is simply being noticed. That's the first step to his taming. This and many other straightforward and powerful techniques await you in Taming Your Gremlin: A Guide to Enjoying Yourself.

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Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way + A Master Class in Gremlin-Taming(R): The Absolutely Indispensable Next Step for Freeing Yourself from the Monster of the Mind + Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives
Price For All Three: $46.35

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Rick Carson is a genius at exploring our inner conflicts in novel ways. ...And there’s a bonus: it works.” --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review

“Rick Carson is a genius at exploring our inner conflicts in novel ways. ...And there’s a bonus: it works.” (Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words )

“I loved Taming Your Gremlin(R). . . .this book led me to a very profound awareness.” (Virginia M. Satir, author of Peoplemaking, about the first edition )

“I have found ‘Gremlin-Taming’ to be a unique, imaginative, and effective tool. . .I highly recommend it!” (Joan Baez )
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Quill; Revised edition (July 8, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0060520221
  • ISBN-13: 978-0060520229
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.8 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Richard David Carson Page
Richard David Carson
This is Rick Carson's fourth book for HarperCollins. His seminal work, Taming Your Gremlin®, has had a remarkable track record. Translated into several languages, Taming Your Gremlin has been a consistent seller since 1984. For thousands in a cross-section of cultures and circumstances, the Gremlin-Taming Method serves as a foundation for responding to everyday challenges and for living a satisfying life.

For over thirty-five years Rick has been a counselor, personal and executive coach, and trainer for mental health professionals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. His work is used in the training of psychotherapists, personal and executive coaches, substance abuse specialists, corrections personnel, teachers, corporate executives, clergy, and others. He is a former faculty member at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and a clinical member and approved supervisor for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Rick is the founder of the Gremlin Taming Institute in Dallas, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
70 of 73 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a simply written book that contains very powerful and useful ideas about managing your inner critic. It focuses on mindfulness of your process and disidentifying with the voices in your head that undermine you on a daily basis.

Some of the keys to this approach are being curious rather than critical about what is happening in the moment. This leads to an awareness that allows one to penetrate old conditioned patterns and achieve a state a heightened state of awareness that leads to conscious choice rather than unconscious acting out. It also encourages a playful and experimental approach to playing with new options which is helpful for people who take themselves seriously and have difficulty trying on new behaviors.

This book is fun to read, but like some of the other reviews, I agree that the metaphor of the "gremlin" is pushed to its limits of usefulness. On the other hand, the book is quite entertaining. I must admit at times I found myself annoyed by the recurring gremlin analogies, but I know other people who have read this found it to be a strong point.

The exercises in this book are very good and like that the author included space in the book to record observations and written answers from exercises. In short, this is a great tool for self inquiry and a good companion to combine with counseling or life coaching.
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218 of 248 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I heard Rick Carson on NPR some time ago and was impressed with that he had to say. I had never heard of his book until then and I immediately wrote down the title so that I could buy it at a later date.

Now that I've read the book I'm trying to figure out why what I heard him say is so different than what I'm reading.

My problem with this book started right at the beginning with his "trademarked" Gremlin-Training Method (all caps, just as he does in the book). This seemed contrived to me, absolutely false. It was like reading a book talk about the author's patented passive solar windows as their own trademarked "Sun Energy Capture Device." In other words, like an infomercial. This intial reaction was confirmed as I continued to read. The tactics and topics Carson raises are extremely simplistic. Practical perhaps, but hardly worthy of a "trademark."

The other problem I had with the book is that Carson uses his metaphor to excess. This is a danger he should have been aware of. A Gremlin is a workable metaphor for most people as long as you make it abstract. That is, that voice in your head which puts you down. As soon as you start describing its supposed physical nature (the minister, the coach, the monster, etc.) the metaphor starts losing its audience. Not everyone wants or needs to describe that nasty voice in such terms.

I wished Carson had backed off the metaphor somewhat, backed off from from the hard sell on his "trademarked" method, and just gave an in-depth analysis of people's internal negative voices, where they come from, how to control them, etc. I don't want to read something that makes me feel like I'm buying a used car or the next TV control clapper.

This book, based on many previous glowing reviews, works for many people. No doubt that is true. Criticizing this book is rather subjective - if it works for you, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. You can't debate it. My recommendation is to really look at the text before buying and THEN decide if you want to purchase. You might find that you like it, or you might not.

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39 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the best book on the behaviour of the human mind I have ever read. Witty, clever and decidedly wise, it has more relevance for the everyday life of the person on the street than any other modern guide to awakening or personal psychotherapy I have come across. Richard Carson marries the serious with the witty in unprecedentedly simple style, and manages to convey that enjoying yourself as you are now is the real key to positive change. This is just the "medicine" that the overly causeandeffect dualistic mind of the west really needs. Jung called logic the greatest thorn in the side of western thought, and Carson's book is a prime example of this way of thinking.

If you want to enjoy your life ever more each day, and let your own light shine to set others free too, read this book and laugh your way back home.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
very good condition, interesting read
This book was one on a list for an additional required reading for my 7 week sociology of fear class. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Krista
More inner control than ever
I love the inner control I have. I used to think that I needed to manually get rid of every insecurity I had. Nope. Every insecurity is simply my gremlin. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sean Connelly
Excellent!!!!
One of the best books I have ever read. I think this is the kind of stuff we should be taught when we are very young.
Published 7 months ago by c
Shep's Self-Help book
I've just started reading this book, so that I can stop the thing that's blocking or preventing me from achieving what I need to achieve in several years: weight loss, getting... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Shepard C. Willner
Self Help Always Works -- (When You Do It Yourself and in your own...
Self-help is the ONLY thing that works, but there's no substitute for finding your OWN path (not this or any author's) and pursuing it in your own way.
Published 21 months ago by James A. Seaton
AWESOME BOOK!
This book gives such a clear picture of the damaging thoughts our mind creates. It's humerous, yet real. Love it!
Published 22 months ago by Sarah P
Cute Title, Powerful Book
This book is a great one, and well worth your time. The title and even the picture on the cover may be a bit misleading, making it sound as if the author doesn't take the subject... Read more
Published on May 19, 2010 by Akira Dawn
a must read!
this book is amazing. it's SO simple but that is why it works. looking at our own negative thoughts as a little "gremlin" monster, instead of believing that they are stone cold... Read more
Published on May 1, 2010 by tracy ann
Stay out of the way
I read this on a friend's suggestion. It was ok. Just a little too simple for me and the constant reference to the gremlin every few sentences was kind of irritating. Read more
Published on March 26, 2010 by Annette Neeley
Transformative
I found Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson to be transformative. I journaled as I read this book. In doing so, I discovered much about myself, and as I followed the processes and... Read more
Published on October 24, 2009 by Stephanie Harnack
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
It'your life. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
taming your gremlin, playing with options, play with options, habitual behavior patterns, simply noticing, very own life
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Gremlin-Taming Method, Options Being, Zen Theory of Change, Coach Don Ledup, Big Dog, Grim Reaper
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