Great new review by Becky Hoffman on her website, Educating Petunia, posted today:
“When the book arrived in the mail it was tiny. Teeny tiny. I didn’t believe that it could contain everything I would need to increase my joy. But this is about trying something new since my current way to joyfulness is drowning in emotional chaos. What I found within these 125 pages was potent.” Read more….
10th December, 2008 - Posted by gail - No Comments
Reviewed in http://mudsmith.net/bobbing.html
by Dr. Bob Rich http://anxietyanddepression-help.com
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With my background of counseling, meditation and positive psychology, I have found everything in this book to be familiar. The author herself says in the introduction that she is presenting age-old wisdom, and so she is.
This also means that her message, the tools she teaches, are valid.
That’s the first requirement for a self-help book. The second is to present it in a way that will induce the reader to read on. This book’s language is clear, chatty, amusing in parts, inspiring in others. Because it’s an instructional, you are not supposed to read it from cover to cover, but point by point, thinking about each. I found that even though I did this, going on to other things in between, I kept coming back to it. Test passed.
The third, and most important criterion is that the reader should be motivated to do more than read and think: to ACT, to DO. On this criterion, the book is excellent.
Even though I already routinely practice many of Gail’s recommendations, I found myself doing them while reading. Were they new to me, they would lead me to a sense of wonder and joy, a liberation.
10th December, 2008 - Posted by gail - No Comments
In Pay Attention, Say Thank You, Gail Woodard explains seven techniques for leading a more joyful life.She combines clear, down-to-earth language with her own experiences—as one of ten children; as vice president of a major bank; as the mother of three sons; and as a decades-long yoga student and now a yoga teacher—to distill and impart the wisdom of various cultures in ways that will benefit readers from many walks of life.
Reminders to practice the first three techniques—Pay Attention, Say Thank You, Be Quiet—kept coming to mind as I went about my days after reading the book, and I quickly began to enjoy more of the little things in everyday life.Woodard’s advice to practice positive feelings and learn to control how we feel is akin to cognitive behavioral therapy:Both can, literally, change our brain chemistry for the better.
The four advanced practices—Releasing Resistance and Fear, Heart-Centered Living, Creating Your Own Reality and Changing the World—are bigger challenges with bigger rewards.Woodard provides step-by-step instruction for ways to deal with the “pesky demons” that we all have so that we stop “feeding them with drama, which is how they survive.”The result is a healthier, less stressful, more joyful life; a life in which we learn to let go of things we can’t change; get over injustices; and get on with the good stuff.
Woodard’s examples of turning her own problems and painful life experiences, big and small, into a joyful life are valuable.An episode in which she did not get what she ordered at a restaurant may seem trivial but proves powerful as she uses it to teach us how to “help people provide you with what you really want” in life.Describing her own fallibilities [“I suffered with this anger all day and overnight (as did anyone who came in contact with me).”] and how she’s worked on them reveal her warmth, understanding and humor—traits that come across readily in the book and make us feel that we, too, can succeed in making our world a more joyful place.
Playing the “What if…” or “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” game offers a wonderful technique for seeing yourself in a new way and for realizing a desired goal.Reading this part of the book, I kept thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if our world leaders played the ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if…’ game?”Like the reader, they could “examine the beliefs that hold you in unhappy, unproductive or unsatisfying places.”
Pay Attention, Say Thank You offers many options for achieving joy and fulfillment in your own life, and for spreading that joy to others in small ways that can make a big difference, whether you end up using Vipassana Meditation or going fishing (just two of several ways that Woodard recommends to Be Quiet).This is a great book to read quickly and make rapid, small changes in your life; to re-read a few times in order to make even more profound changes; and to keep on the shelf for times when you might question your job, relationships, money issues or other important parts of your life.
Jean English - Editor, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener
