Since there's nothing new or different about this book, how did it become a New York Times bestseller?!
First, this book is sadly mostly hot air, with comparatively little based on research. By way of example, although in a slightly different field, contrast this with "Strengthsfinder 2.0" by Tom Rath, solidly based on an abundance of research conducted by the Gallup Organisation. They tested hundreds of questions across countries, languages, and vastly different life situations and the book is loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, once identified. At the time the first Strengths book came out, almost everyone in business was managing weaknesses: research proved that successful managers actually did the opposite, they worked with strengths. By contrast, there's little in the way of research quoted in Chamine's book, which could just be part of the waves of management/self-help books pointing the wrong way.
An even better and just as solidly researched management book is "12: The Elements of Great Managing" by Wagner and Harter (a colleague of Rath), linking employee engagement to business performance. The insights there are practical and backed by empirical evidence gathered from 10 million employee and manager interviews from 114 countries. Both "Strengths" and "12" exposed the fallacies of decades of standard management thinking and "12" offers specific PROVEN techniques for helping people perform better on the job. Books like these offer much better strategies and tactics on how to "change your life and transform your business" than this book.
Second, the inner Judge dominating this book has been covered in many earlier books. Perhaps the best version was offered in Hal and Sidra Stones' "Embracing Your Inner Critic" (and "Embracing Ourselves") from back in the early 1990s - now classics. I never forgot their hilarious but deeply understanding take on inner critics "we have known and loved". Their book is loaded with many great ideas on how to overcome your inner critic, but the most important is that you will never be able to take him/her seriously ever again - their dialogues showing how your critic will get you coming and going are pure genius. Stones' book opened my eyes to the various "voices" we harbour, including the productive role the inner critic was meant to play. It shows how to get the inner critic on your side, helping you, rather than continually opposing you. A millennia-old Buddhist practice called Metta (loving kindness meditation, including compassion for self) has been shown to create happiness and the ability to bounce back from stress scenarios much faster.
Third, one of the few useful tips I got from this book, although nothing new, was to acquire the habit of wiggling your toes while noticing each one or tapping your fingers together. Both bring you into the present, as does any habit that helps you notice what is going on in your body (below your neck) or externally, rather than getting stuck inside your mind. These and many other tips are essentially about mindfulness, which is also much better covered in other books. Starting points could be: "The Mindfulness Breakthrough" by Silverton and/or "Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world" by Williams & Penman - even "Mindfulness for Dummies". Also, the Metta practice referred to above is connected to Mindfulness.
Fourth, if you are most interested in teams, try "Strengths-Based Leadership" by Rath & Conchie - the leadership strength themes are the same ones from StrengthsFinder 2.0. with the same test, but the results report is different and also gives strategies for leading with your top five strengths, breaks your strengths down into three predominant strength categories, and lets you plot the strengths of your team. Also, "The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization" by Katzenbach & Smith is the result of research into what separates effective from ineffective teams and what makes teams work - a manual for creating high-performance teams.
Fifth, positive thinking, which is meant in this book to be the major way out, is much better covered in the 2009 book "Positivity" by Fredrickson; based on research uncovering the tipping point created by having 3 positive thoughts to every negative or neutral thought, it elaborates on one important aspect within the happiness/health field.
Sixth, willpower has been masterfully covered in "Maximum Willpower" (aka "The Willpower Instinct") by McGonigal, bringing together the newest insights about self-control from solid research in the fields of psychology, economics, neuroscience and medicine. The author is a health psychologist at Stanford School of Medicine where she teaches a course called "The Science of Willpower" that quickly became the most popular classes ever offered by Stanford. Course evaluations call the course "life-changing". Why is/was "Maximum Willpower" not on the New York Times bestseller list? It certainly should be!
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