Gear up and get ready; you’re about to enter the chaotic and unique workings of my brain as well as book reviews you didn’t ask for and don’t want.
I have this very wonderful quality of myself that lacks any motivation or follow-through on anything beneficial, but I am stubborn and determined for things that don’t matter or provide any growth. Take, for instance, my inability to jump ship on tv series or book series. I can, under no circumstances, stop watching a tv series or stop reading a book, no matter how much I don’t enjoy it. If I am two episodes or two chapters into a show or book, I am fully committed to watching all eight seasons or reading all six books. There is an added season or book(s) a couple of years later? A spin off show or series? You guessed it; I now have a task that has rose to the top of my to-do list. I might hate every minute of it, but it’s a rule that my brain made years ago and there’s no going back.
The good news is that I have probably spent less than 20hrs watching tv in the past three or more years, so I have exonerated myself from getting entangled in the tv spiral. Books, on the other hand, are still problematic. I have recently dug myself a deeper hole by decided to introduce myself to audiobooks. This is where it gets extra tricky. I don’t want to listen to any books that I would really enjoy reading, so I need to find things that are semi-interesting but not amazing. And that’s how I have found myself into the self-help audiobook realm. I meshed my Amazon ‘saved for later’ cart with the free Audible library and have come up with the perfectly boring recipe of self-help audiobooks (because, let’s be honest, there’s really nothing worse than taking the time to actually read these books when you could be reading about murder, revenge, and relationship issues).
So here I am in life, bettering myself (er, torturing myself) one audiobook at a time. Listening at chipmunk speed playback to get to the end and not focusing on enjoying the content. Choosing books I know I will, at best, only moderately enjoy and saving the good ones for physical reads. Writing pseudo book reviews that no one cares about. You’re welcome.
Book 1: No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline for Success in Your Life, by Brian Tracy
Reaction: What. The. Eff. This book is supposed to be about self-discipline, and it took all the self-discipline I have not to find a way to block this book from getting into the hands (or ears) of anyone ever again. And the misleading tagline of the book ’21 Ways to Achieve Lasting Happiness and Success’. What a crock! Let’s break it down a bit.
Chapter 8: This is where I stopped giving the book a chance and completely wrote it off (but don’t worry! I still saw the book through, complete with notes of everything I disagreed with. Refer above for my broken brain cycle). It’s basically telling people that to do better at work, make more money, or open yourself up to more employment opportunities that you need to sell your soul. Go into work an hour early, work during lunch, stay an hour late, don’t socialize with colleagues. Focus, focus, focus! Eat, breathe, and sleep work. Sure, Brian, this seems super healthy.
Chapter 9: Focus on leadership. Okay, okay. I’ll give the book a little bit of credit here but ONLY because my town is a giant cluster, and the first selectmen and other leaders could benefit from the notion that what you model is emulated around you. This includes your values, how you interact with others, visions, and more. This snippet would have been beneficial for the first selectman to know before he got massacred at the polls because next to no one in town shares his values of publicly shaming others and being shady as f*ck.
Chapter 16: So, this part is fun. Let me grab you a quote so you can get an idea of how delusional this author is and why you shouldn’t take the advice he gives in his book. “To lose weight permanently, you must change your set point to a lower number. To achieve this, the first thing you do is to create a clear mental image of how you will look when you are at your ideal weight. Get a picture out of a magazine of someone who has the body you want to have, and then paste your photo where their face appears.” This guy isn’t serious, right? I just double checked to make sure this book wasn’t written during the dark ages. I confirmed that it was published in 2010. I cannot imagine this being advice that would be generally accepted during my high school, college, and graduate school years.
Chapter 21: I’m pretty sure this guy has never heard the term ‘mental health’ or heard about this obscure thing called therapy. My dear friend Brian advises that “when you discipline yourself to stop justifying your negative emotions by continually rehashing what happened and what the other person did or didn’t do, and when you instead calmly accept that ‘stuff happens’ in life, your negativity accompanying the other person or situation dies away.” Thank you, Brian, I’m now confident that anyone can just have traumas, abuse, depression, anxiety just whittle away with a bit of acceptance and self-talk of “welp, stuff happens. So I guess I’m over this now. Not sure why therapists are even a profession. How useless.” He has found the cure to mental health! All hail Brian!
Book 2: Duct Tape Parenting, by Vicky Hoefle
I’ll give this one a thumbs up. Sure, not all of it is for everyone, but a lot of it did resonate with me. I’m not going to comment too much on this book, but I do recommend giving it a fighting chance. I have spent the last couple of days implementing the ‘do nothing say nothing’ notion in the book, which has been a very hands-off experiment and evaluation of how my kids and my family interact and take on responsibilities. It started off with some early morning texts from my 10yo telling me, “Thanks for the new rule. I’m already crying,” followed by “This will be the worst rule ever. Thanks, Mom.” I later found out that it was my fault that he missed his reading time at night because I’m a terribly mom and didn’t a) remind him to set a timer after initially suggested it and b) didn’t set the timer for him, despite him being right next to Alexa at the time of said suggestion. It was also somehow my fault that I didn’t tell him to get off the electronics that he’s not supposed to be using on school days anyway, hence leading to the no timer set and missed reading time. I really am the worst. Flash forward a couple of days and this same kid cleaned off days’ worth of dishes from the kitchen table, wiped it down, pushed in all the chairs, and then went up to his room and cleaned everything up. All without being asked. I count that as a win. Granted, we are only a couple of days into me not yelling and them having any responsibilities at all, so circle back in a few weeks and ask me how the blame game is going in my household.
Overall, I recommend giving this book a try. Important side note: definitely do not listen to this book at 1x speed. I accidentally did for twenty seconds of the book and hated every second of that seemingly ten-hour ordeal. I also just gave myself a three second trial of 1x playback to make sure this was solid advice, and the cadence and emphases are rooouuuuugggghhhh. I’m almost positive that this book would have been put into the suffer through it category of my life if I didn’t automatically default to chipmunk speed playback.
Book 3: A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD, by Sari Solden, MS and Michelle Frank, PsyD
Fun Fact: the chronological order of how I listened to these books provides a reverse compliment sandwich for reviews. Book 1- Hard pass, but big entertainment (and cringe) factor. Book 2- worth giving it a go. Book 3- a flop.
The irony was not at all lost on me that this was the hardest of these three books to focus on or care about the content. Some of it seemed basic and obvious to me, but that could be because I have had a lot of support with ADHD strategies and treatment and have been diagnosed from a young age, so I’ve had time to adapt (I’m not saying I’ve done this successfully, but hey, at least the opportunities have been there).
During the first half of the book I frequently found myself thinking, “Gee, thanks for the advice. But just *how* do you plan on people doing this?” It would have been beneficial for the ADHD audience that this book is intended for to tell us somewhere in the first half that they don’t provide any actual guidance until the second half. Pretty hard for an ADHD brain to stick it out to connect those dots without the warning and motivation. For instance, there is a section talking about “duh” moments in which people might recommend someone with ADHD try something, as if the person with ADHD has never thought of that idea, but then the next chapter goes on to making overarching statements without breaking it down into steps or giving ideas of how to accomplish these things. Basically, they contradicted themselves and the authors were the ones bringing forward the “duh” moments. Similarly, it recommends differentiating an ADHD symptom of action/inaction from what is anxiety related to action/inaction, but doesn’t give any guidance as to *how* to identify this. Not super helpful to have the what to do without the how to do it skills to accompany. Speaking of action/inaction…shall I mention how long I’ve told myself I will be getting this blog back up and running? Hint: I just discovered while posting this that my blog photo is from before I was even pregnant with my now 4.5yo. Do I intend on updating that to be more reflective of my current family? Not looking so good. Maybe next decade.
The book definitely called me out when it came to verbal impulsivity, saying, “it is important to remember that people don’t have to get the entire backstory or justification”. Well, rude. How else am I supposed to communicate? There’s no such thing as making a long story short with me. You can have the long story or the longer story. And about ten other long stories intertwined on our way from Point A to Point B.
I disagree with the Amazon 4.6-star review because, if for no other reason, the authors had the audacity to share that “if you aren’t hydrated, nourished, rested, or given hugs, your brain won’t have the fuel to show up for you.” Guess my brain has abandoned me for good, because ain’t nobody regularly touching me and giving me hugs.
I think this is where I’m supposed to insert a label. Let’s go with In Conclusion
There you have it. I did the suffering through these books for you and provided you with the highlights that you didn’t want or need. I feel as if I have done my good deed for the day. Next time you want a synopsis of something that you don’t feel like engaging in yourself, just let me know and I will torture myself on your behalf because there’s no one as stubborn (or dumb) as me.
P.S. I haven’t yet figured out how to adjust my well-trained and miraculous brain to not put two spaces between sentences when typing. I apologize for in inconsistencies, but there’s not a chance I would ever go back to fix this, even under a ‘find and replace’ situation. Oh hey look, here I am doing that whole verbal impulsivity thing. Guess it’s not limited to just a verbal outpouring. I also just realized that I picked up fundraiser pies this morning and they’re still in my trunk. I was doing pie stuff from 7:45am-9:15am. Do normal people forget things like this? And do normal people then immediately go do what needs to be done, or do they set an alarm reminding them to take the pies out of the trunk? And then keep snoozing the alarm until they are either done with what they’re currently doing or feel motivated enough to follow through? Not asking for a friend.
Moroch: Party of Boring 