Melanie
Well written on extremely difficult topic. Perhaps not the best bedtime reading, but captured some very true psychological experiences, and I appreciate the validation. I kinda hate the town(sfolk), but love the HECK out of Ramona. I hope to see a lot more of her in the next books.
Reminded me in some senses of Dogville. Partner complained about lack of attention on goalies. I just worry a tad whether the book gives the sport in general a bit of bad reputation. (I play a lot and live in towns with leagues, but not too personally familiar with small towns or “clubs”. Write in sport of your choice, basically. Aside from touching on the expense of great for the sport, it was pretty light on hockey.
I appreciate the candor, although it definitely started to sound repetitive (more than necessary to get the point across, imo). The benefit of listening to the audiobook, my husband overheard parts so it's had some influences there as well!
My overall takeaway from this book is a reminder of Atomic Habits power, with a clean house focus. Ive figured out some of these pieces on my own, and others bits I don't fully relate to as I don't have kids, but the reminder was good, and she definitely caught me with the project mindset. Even though functionally I've shifted my efforts, the idea of adjusting the mindset also helps.
I was expecting humor, not biography. Not that it wasn't amusing...and as a business owner I appreciate his discussion of social media usage.
Ironically had a hard time staying focused on it. Lots of tips felt too far off. Appreciated the research and concept and there were a few good tidbits.
Links to the website videos didn't work. He says to go slow, 2 bars at a time, and then keeps talking about the next ones, with no indication where to actually find the bars I was supposed to be practicing before moving on. Finally found the sheet music at the end but that wasn't clear....maybe this works better as a physical book? The sheet music image was also super tiny, I had to take screen shots so I can expand enough to read it. There's also a sentence “And bankers.” (To pay attention to) with no definition what bankers are in a musical context. I searched the internet, my piano playing partner looked it up...just confusing.
He says hand placement is super important, which is partly why I wanted to start with a book. But he doesn't really talk about how to identify hand placement for any new pieces. A little orientation to bass clef was helpful but generally all I learned from this was a suggestion of a good piece of music to start my learning.
I will say, in looking it up on Goodreads I am quite surprised to see it say guided meditations. Meditation topics, sure, but..well, I guess because guided meditations are hard to follow in written format. Close your eyes...yes, then open them again to read the next prompt, I don't stay meditative. But the topic prompts were useful, had me thinking of things in renewed ways, and places I still have some work to do that I wasn't aware of. I love the overall concept of living in the mental space this would mean and would love to be more like that. Sounds very familiar to a lot of stuff a friend tells me about Course in Miracles but perhaps more accessible. The idea of justice being a stance of greater forgiveness, rather than punishment, definitely feels novel and needed in this society.
I can definitely see why people don't like this one as much as Four Agreements, and I probably won't recommend it as much, but it was definitely a useful read for me to staying connected to these topics/mentality and how to live it more consistently.