Laura B

Not quite

Revisado: 05-04-25

I must admit I felt quite cheated with this title. You Will not Recognize your Life promises after all something pretty grand. Yet you are following the author’s short term transformation which she didn’t quite play to the end and to the fullest, meaning, we don’t know if it would or could have worked had she gone full on, and then her slow regression backwards. So what exactly was the point of this book, other than her desire to share her journey with the public? Multiple times I wanted to stop, yet I felt I already invested this much time, I might as well find out about the grand conclusion that would give justice to the title. Other than it never came. So the best part is in the beginning third and then nothing more. I think it might make for a 15min podcast but not for a book with this title.

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So simple and so perfect

Revisado: 01-28-25

This story is great. It’s not trying to be fancy and complex, but rather so simple you can listen to it with your child or anyone for that matter. Anyone will get it. Because it makes so much sense and every lesson is completely practical. I look forward to sharing it with my daughter and creating our energy bus version together.
Thank you for sharing your simple and powerful rules for happiness in the personification of Joy the bus driver. Imagining her makes me smile and helps me remember to drive that bus.

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I expected Oprah’s level of wisdom but will need to keep waiting until she writes her book on happiness.

Revisado: 02-17-24

I was really excited when I came across this title. The topic is up my alley and I’ve read plenty of studies and taken courses on the science of happiness. I was even motivated to teach a class on the subject to elementary and middle grade students, seeing how much it is needed. I also personally don’t mind the academic tone of Brooks. But what I mind is the superficiality of his advice, his prescriptive tone and how narrow his life experience feels to me.
I kept waiting for Oprah to come back on and share her own insights. Sadly that amounted to very few little nuggets, to my estimate no more than 10% of the book.
For the rest the book, Brooks basically told me this: make yourself happier by strengthening your relationships with your friends and family, including significant other, find work that satisfies you and find faith.
Great! When it comes to the how, he should have told you, by finding your faith first and then finding the people who align with you that way. Because it seems pretty clear between the lines, that it’s what he did. Instead, his advice is for you to find your mate with the most differing DNA (based on a sweat sniff study) and not worry about such trivial things as who they voted for on last election. Wonderful insights! Especially from someone who hasn’t lived it. Who hasn’t tried raising children with a partner with wildly different world views and cultural backgrounds. I’m sure Brooks has some good insights, otherwise I doubt Oprah would have become a fan of his work. But in this book I found nothing other than the desire to read her book on happiness instead, a book that I hope she will write one day.
For starters, how can you write a serious book on “happier-ness” and omit any mention of trauma? He may be oblivious to this theme, but certainly Oprah isn’t.
Which, amongst many other reasons, is why she should be writing the book. Hopefully she will soon :)

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Important book

Revisado: 09-20-23

Even if you’ve done plenty of shadow work, this is a very accessible book and so very helpful.
There is always more… DeVor’s personal and relatable accounts helped me unveil another layer in my own journey to embracing all of me. Thank you DeVor!

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Historic overview on money attitudes of America over the last century

Revisado: 09-02-23

So, the advise given in this book, on how to accumulate wealth and freedom is pretty simple. It comes down to this:
1) start early - compounding is the key to wealth
2) keep it simple - buy stock of the index type since on the long run people rarely outperform that, even the pros.
3) be consistent. Save as much as you can without exaggeration and put a good chunk of that savings to work in the stock account.
4) leave your stock untouched no matter the ups and downs.
5) wealth happens in the gap between what you earn and what you spend. Don’t get caught up in the race for bling.

This is all good advise. One I wish my parents had passed down to me, particularly the part of compound effect of money. But they didn’t. I grew up in a household where spending everything was a necessity and also one in which you didn’t take on debt because that was considered scary. And it was not in America. So my culture of money grandly clashed with the American one, and since no one explained it to me properly, it was more like an ghost in the background I misunderstood all along.

Which leads me to my favorite chapter in this book - the last one. This is a very brief and insightful historic overview of the culture of money in America. Whether you are born American or not, I believe you will get insight and clarity out of this last chapter.
That quick explanation would have made a huge difference for me to understand the culture of money, and with that, how to play the game of money.

For the rest of the book I appreciate its simplicity. However, I feel like he’s left out all other avenues of accumulating wealth but the road of stock investment. And I get that’s what his expertise is and it does seem like a simple enough solution to work for anyone when you understand his simple rules.
I still think it would have been good to include other ways of compounding, even as a mention. After all it is a book on psychology of money and not just stock. Real estate for example never even got mentioned. And when I came to think of it, I would say roughly the same rules apply. And roughly the same compounding percentages could also apply. Maybe it’s more nuanced by geographic location and I understand he shouldn’t give advise on something that isn’t his expertise. Still, one is kind of left feeling that if you didn’t start investing in stock when you were very young your hopes of ever amounting any wealth have slipped by you. The best you can do is take the advise and share it with your kids… which of course is still motivating if you have any. Anyway, overall I think it’s a book everyone should read, as young as possible… if you have teens, make sure they do…

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Very enjoyable debate surrounding some of the greatest minds

Revisado: 07-02-23

I liked both the content and delivery of this book. The narrator’s voice is soothing and the debate set in its historical context keeps you on the edge of your seat quite often.

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Enjoyable, uplifting and funny

Revisado: 04-23-23

Jennifer managed to create a book on serious subjects, such as living your life’s purpose, listening to your intuition, stepping into the unknown, etc, both funny and entertaining. Usually these books tend to be heavy, sinking I’m the weight of their own seriousness. Whereas her take on it makes you smile often, so much so that my 13 year old daughter asked frequently to put it on as a good night story.
Also, her spirit really comes through and she starts feeling like a friend and companion. I’ve listened to plenty of books lately in which authors, including scientists and scholars, used street talk to get their messages across. But in those cases it felt contrived and annoying. It felt like they were trying so hard to be relatable and it made the otherwise interesting content almost undigestible and unreadable. Jennifer however never for a second feels contrived. It just feels like she is talking to her dear friend. As a listener, I feel honored to be trusted to be her friend.
Plus, her attitude and life path aren’t just likable and funny, she’s badass inspiring and fierce, on top of being humorous.
I recommend this book to everyone, but especially to those of us who’re single moms. And I recommend listening to it with your child!

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A breath of fresh air in the insomnia literature

Revisado: 01-17-23

I recommend this series of interviews combined with his free emails and YouTubes to anyone with serious, chronic insomnia. Especially if you’re so sick and tired of hearing the same advice over and over about sleep hygiene and taking melatonin and valerian or any other number of herbs and pills. I’ve you’re like me and most people with a chronic sleep problem, you’ve tried everything and nothing worked.
I always sense that the authors of those other books actually have no clue about serious insomnia and just write those same books in repeat because it’s a big market that hasn’t been served. Well, they all do people who need help a disservice and Martin Reed actually busts through a lot of those myths that keep getting perpetuated by every regular “sleep expert”.
I’m very grateful to Reed to put this work out there and find his advice applicable and helpful. It won’t fix insomnia overnight, nothing will, but after a week of listening to his work and doing his exercises he suggests on the emails, I feel like I’m on the way to improving an issue I’ve struggled with for my entire life. In fact, I’ve mostly slept better this week since I started on the Reed journey, and most importantly, I’m changing my relationships with what it means to have insomnia. This is really the key and why I appreciate his work so much. Thank you Reed.
I wish I had found his work decades ago! I guess it’s new work and he’s relatively young, so that wouldn’t have been possible. Again, it speaks of how fresh and also profound his work is, even if totally simple in the end.

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Must read

Revisado: 10-22-21

This book breaks down so much life wisdom in the simplest of terms. Invaluable read for the whole world, frankly.

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Helpful and reassuring

Revisado: 09-20-21

I much agree with the general premise of this book and have been following that philosophy with my own child in a mostly intuitive way. This book however helped me clarify and very quickly improve in some places I’ve had a long term struggle with my child, and I’m very very grateful for that.
The chapters I didn’t really relate were the ones about test scores and college admission and all the stress that surrounds them. But it was also a reaffirming bunch of chapters because I’m more sure than ever that we made the right choice to exit the regular school system early in my daughter’s schooling. Also, it explained to me why my daughter did surprisingly well on her standardized test this year, despite of never having taken classes in entire subject matters and never having done even one test sample question. When I thought about her peers in school stressing and practicing for these exams for months and her taking them in two days in 92 degree weather outdoors with a not so great internet connection and several other non-ideal test taking factors and doing much much better than average, I realized, after listening to this book, this was due to one simple factor: she was not stressed about it. She did her best at the moment and under the circumstances and to her it had no more meaning than a test you need to take once a year to keep your standing with the system (and not have to return to it).
It almost made me feel like we cheated the system, if things could work just so fine without all the stress and the too-much work and too-over scheduled life practically all her peers live. Do you mean all those late nights of assignments and studying they did compared to her very light schedule did nothing to improve their academic test scores? And not even the dozen of practice tests they all did? And no, my daughter didn’t do particularly well in her initial public school beginnings. In fact, her kinder teacher made her conclude she “wasn’t smart”, which is something we are still working to eliminate from her consciousness.
I just thought I’d share this story because maybe other people who are wondering about alternative routes can be encouraged by it. My daughter is the prof, if one was needed, that yes, there are many ways to educate, and that stuffing your child’s schedule with school and homework and extracurricular activities to the max is often counterproductive. Let them have some time to do what they love and also, to do nothing. To explore and find out what they love. How can they do that when they never have any unstructured time?

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