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A review by daisymoon
59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot by Richard Wiseman
1.0
DNF at 50%.
I'm not into self-help books. I find them to be mostly stating the obvious and/or acting like they can help people deal with complicated aspects of their lives by oversimplifying them, which ends being at best a lie, at worst very dangerous.
What got me into reading that book is that the author said he did not like self-help books, mostly for the same reasons I did not. He presented this book as kind of easy/fast fixes in our day to day lives inspired by real psychology. He also seemed to say that for more deep stuff people should not look for easy/fast fixes, so I was all for it.
And yeah, the author did talk about psychology studies, and it was interesting. And his tips on how to increase happiness and such, the first couple chapters, seemed okay. I mean, he basically was saying we should write a journal and spoke a little about grattitude. They are not things people with mental illness can do as easily as the author was saying it was, but for neurotypical people, or people with mental illness that have already done 95% of the work to understand their illnesses, it seemed okay.
But the issue is, when Wiseman tried to do the same thing about other areas in life, it felt more and more like other self-help books. I personnaly stopped reading when he touched on dating advices. I mean, no. Just no. His advice of lightly touching someone on the arm while giving a compliment has NOTHING to do with psychology, it's basically what every self-help books already tell us to do. The other "tips" on dating are just as bad. Also, they are very hetero-centered... And seem to be adressed to men (which is weird, I'm pretty sure there are more women reading that kind of books than men, right ?). He grossly generelized women and what they are supposed to love and... Yeah, no, that was as bad as any book he was destroying in his introduction. I felt cheated to be honest. I stopped reading.
I'm not into self-help books. I find them to be mostly stating the obvious and/or acting like they can help people deal with complicated aspects of their lives by oversimplifying them, which ends being at best a lie, at worst very dangerous.
What got me into reading that book is that the author said he did not like self-help books, mostly for the same reasons I did not. He presented this book as kind of easy/fast fixes in our day to day lives inspired by real psychology. He also seemed to say that for more deep stuff people should not look for easy/fast fixes, so I was all for it.
And yeah, the author did talk about psychology studies, and it was interesting. And his tips on how to increase happiness and such, the first couple chapters, seemed okay. I mean, he basically was saying we should write a journal and spoke a little about grattitude. They are not things people with mental illness can do as easily as the author was saying it was, but for neurotypical people, or people with mental illness that have already done 95% of the work to understand their illnesses, it seemed okay.
But the issue is, when Wiseman tried to do the same thing about other areas in life, it felt more and more like other self-help books. I personnaly stopped reading when he touched on dating advices. I mean, no. Just no. His advice of lightly touching someone on the arm while giving a compliment has NOTHING to do with psychology, it's basically what every self-help books already tell us to do. The other "tips" on dating are just as bad. Also, they are very hetero-centered... And seem to be adressed to men (which is weird, I'm pretty sure there are more women reading that kind of books than men, right ?). He grossly generelized women and what they are supposed to love and... Yeah, no, that was as bad as any book he was destroying in his introduction. I felt cheated to be honest. I stopped reading.