What You Can Change and What You Can't : The Complete Guide to Successful Self-ImprovementLearning to Accept Who You Are
Author: Martin E. Seligman
List Price: $12.95
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ISBN: 0449909719
Publisher: Ballantine Books (24 January, 1995)
Sales Rank: 10,704
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
300 pages of old-fashioned common sense.
I don't even remember how I came by this book, I've had it so long. As a former self-help junkie, I can say this book did more to get my head out of my you-know-where than all the others put together. Seligman shows that human beings have a wide range of "normal" in terms of our emotions. He shows how to acknowledge who we are and why we feel the way we do, and then learn how that emotional range helps us. So reasonable, and incredibly reassuring and helpful. This guy is no flash-in-the pan busy preening for the Oprah show. He is a realist. I wish I'd had this book when I was 21. Life would have been so much easier.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Extraordinary - Do yourself a favor - Order this book - NOW
This is a book that everyone should own. In this book, Dr. Seligman wades through the swamp of self-help, psycho-babble,new-age gurus, common-sense ideas that "everyone" knows , medical thought, etc, etc in order to discover- WHAT REALLY WORKS. Not what we wish would work, not what seems like it should work, not what common wisdom believes works but what in clinical trials of real people has been demonstrated to work. What percentage has been helped, what are the side-effects and has this help been long-term or transitory. It is extremely readable, instructive and down to earth. He addresses the current state of treatment for: Anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, obsessions, depression, anger, post-traumatic stress, sex, dieting, alcohol. For most of these topics I learned more in his one chapter than in the several books which I have read on them. If you are on a diet, about to begin a diet, or considering professional help in one of the areas above - please read the chapter in this book first. You will save yourself an incredible amount of time, money and heartbreak in the long run. It will also give you the best chance of actually solving the problem since you will be directed towards the most effective treatment right from the beginning of treatment rather than (hopefully) eventually finding it by trial and error. I only hope that Dr Seligman writes an updated version of this book sometime in the near future in order to keep up with new research findings.
Rating: 3 out of 5
good content, but mostly commonly known information
This is a decent book, however I found a lot of the content to be either common sense, common knowledge, or something you could easily find yourself doing minimal research. However, it is nice to have all of the information presented in one place without having to go looking different places for it. It has a nice summary of everything it covers in the back of the book along with the results of various treatments. If you want to know more about common ailments and their respective treatments, such as dieting, trauma, alcoholism, anxiety, depression, anger, and many more things, then this book would be a good source of information. This book basically briefly discusses these things, and others, and talks about the different treatment options that are available for each and what the statistical data is for the success of the different available treatments. An interesting read, but I wouldn't buy it expecting it to change my life. I would recommend this book for someone who knows they have one of these problems and wants to know what options they have in regards to different treatments and what the typical results of those treatments are. Although you should keep in mind that nothing in this book is anything you couldn't find through your own research. Similar Products
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