Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters

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Summary: Want Answers, You'll Get Answers
Review: This book has helped me think through all the garbage in my life to get to the answers I needed. I've had several things to deal with from childhood through to my adult years. This book has helped me to examine all of these inner issues. Which, some of them I didn't realize were my issues until I read this book. It all makes sense now. You need to keep an open mind when you read this book. You'll be surprized on how things can change just by changing the angle of the looking glass your looking through. Thanks Dr. Phil.

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Summary: What a refreshingly real outlook!
Review: I have just finished Dr Phil's Doing What Works, Doing What Matters. Before I began reading this book, I was hopeless and seemingly helpless. But Dr. Phil showed me the way to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get going on the kind of life I want and deserve. I am SO READY for a change, and thanks to Dr. Phil, I know what I want, and EXACTLY how I am going to get it. If you are tired of blaming everyone else for your problems, and want to start living your life in a way that leaves you peaceful and content, GET THIS BOOK!

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Summary: Responsibility and Reality
Review: McGraw's pragmatism in "Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters" is an old truth, but when applied, can change how you see everything you do.

If you read something new here, I'm sorry. Your partents should've taught you these principles; they are that basic.

Too often, we ignore the resource to fixing our problems: Us. We blame, or push the responsibility to fix our personal problems onto parents, teachers, the government. But, when we realize that we cannot remain passive in our fight, we can rise up out of our ashes.

When the race is on, only you are accountable for winning. No one moves your legs. You do. And when you cross the finish line, you'll feel the victory that much sweeter. McGraw emphasizes our need to do our own running and fighting.

He challenges the reader to be honest about stupid decisions, and foolish patterns. The solution becomes clearer when the problem is is clearer>

Logical, plaintalking information? Yes! But sometimes we need to hear it again.

I fully recommend, "Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters."

Anthony Trendl

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Summary: Don't waste your time - try philosophy.
Review: Don't bother reading another "selp-help" book; rather, seek the well known philosophers of the Western and Eastern intellectual traditions. Or try Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, et cetera. Life is full of contradictions: things go up, things go down, we live, we die. Perhaps we ought to learn how to suffer "a little." Learn to accept the minimums. Try developing your critical abilities. Try the philosopher Spinoza. Using a "selp-help" book to aid your "problems" is not useful when you are really trying to fill your "pathological void." Your "problems" are rooted more in your culture and its/your web of belief. Self may matter but don't be a egotist! By the way, someone who consents to have his picture on the front cover makes some of us suspicious of the author's motivations and true intentions.

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Summary: Save Your Money - Read the Back Cover
Review: While this book isn't terrible, it is unnecessary. Certainly it's unnecessarily long. It would have made a great pamphlet.

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Summary: Well..
Review: I thought it was a good book with more-than-common-sense ideas, but well, I can't really say this book CHANGED my life in any way (as much as I wish it did.) For some of you, it might be different. This is a good book, but didn't make it up to my expectations.

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Summary: Without buying it, still the chance to get to know yourself.
Review: I got his book after I bought other "self-help" books and I liked it a lot more than the others. Okay his style is very direct and rude frequently, but it's to get to you, so you don't stop hiding behind lies and misconceptions. The reason why I gave this review it's title, is because on Oprah.com an online version/ workbook can be found under the name Get Real Challenge, so you still can get to know yourself without spending any money! I've changed my rating, because in the mean time I've read a book called Pulling your own strings by Wayne Dyer and that one was earlier published, but did have a lot of the same ideas, so maybe McGraw has copied it?!

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Summary: Hup, two, three, four ...
Review: The subtitle to this book is "Stop Making Excuses!" It should have been: "Boot Camp-style self-development."
Take this nifty little mental straightjacket that the reader is invited to lace themself into around page 28:

Assignment #2: ... I want you to sit down and write a story. The story is entitled: "The Story I'll Tell Myself if I Don't Create Meaningful and Lasting Change After Reading and Studying This Book.
... I suggest that you begin it by writing: "After reading and studying this book, I did not create meaningful and lasting change because ..."

In psychology this kind of stuff is known as a 'double bind'.
- If you do what you're told then you are admitting, with literally 90% of the book still unread, that the only way it can't work is if you refuse to let it work.
- If, on the other hand, you turn down the invitation then obviously the book can't be expected to help you, because you've only read 10% of it and already you're refusing to co-operate.
Either way, if the book doesn't revolutionise your life then it's no one's fault but your own! Neat, huh?

Anyway, let's say you march willingly into the boot camp, you may want to unload your thinking abilities at the gate in order to get through the next 254 pages.

For example, it will help you to overlook all the nonsense statements, like:

"Life Law #7: Life Is Managed; It Is Not Cured" (page 167)

What that means, as far as this book is concerned, is that the only way you'll ever get a life is by producing great reams of lists. In fact you'll be asked to create so many lists that you'll need to have to create a set of "summary sheets" just so that you can "see the 'big picture.'" (You don't get this thrilling bit of news until Chapter 12 - I wonder why?)

As to the so-called Life Rule, rightly or wrongly, I had been under the impression that "life is for living" rather burying yourself under mountains of paperwork. But hey, what do I know 8)

Of course the author does have a rather unique personal philosophy:

"I cannot think of a single time in my life where my experience has been enriched or the quality of my life enhanced by my saying 'no'. I can think of dozens of times when my life has been enhanced simply because I said, 'Okay, sure: I'll give it a try.' " (page 81)

I guess someone must have spotted what a no brainer that one was, because in the very next paragraph we read:

"If someone is saying, 'Hey, try some cocaine; you'll love it,' that's obviously not the time to be a willing spirit."

On other occasions the illogicality of the instructions in the book takes on a life of its own. For example, on page 166 we are told that:

"There is no reality; only perception. Let your perceptions be fresh and new and grounded in fact, not in history."

'Scuse me? If there is NO REALITY just where do these facts come from?
And if there is "no reality, only perception", what sense does this next instruction make (page 234):

"Writing it down adds important objectivity to your self-appraisal."

If there "is no reality, only perception" then everything you think must by definition be SUBJECTIVE. So how can writing things down "add ... objectivity"?

But the book isn't just off-beam. It is deeply pessimistic. On page 73, for example, the reader is told to:

"Honestly evaluate your style of engagement [with other people], and you will begin to understand why the world responds to you as it does. To help you, here are some examples of engagement styles to which the world reciprocates very predictably."

We then get 18 examples - and every single one is negative (pages 73-80).

The trouble is, it seems, that the book is not sufficiently informed by modern psychology. Thus on page 50 we find this apparently simple statement:

"Having read this list, you may be thinking, 'Boy, this guy is a pessimist about people.' Not true. I'm not a pessimist; I'm a realist."

Actually those two qualities frequently go hand-in-hand. As Martin Seligman observes, in the best-selling "Learned Optimism" (a book which is based on about a quarter of a century of solid scientific research):

"Overall, then, there is clear evidence that non-depressed people distort reality in a self-serving direction and depressed people tend to see reality accurately."

And in psychological terms, as Seligman points out, depression is the *real* epidemic sweeping the Western world. Not because someone *thinks* it is - but because there is indisputable clinical evidence to show that it is so.

So, if you like being verbally beaten about the head, if you find it comforting to imagine that the whole of life can be reduced to just ten short rules, if you believe in slogans like "No pain, no gain", you'll certainly like this book.

If, on the other hand, you're still in the mood to think for yourself, I'd suggest that you'd be far better off with Maxwell Maltz' "Psycho-Cybernetics" (the original, not the re-write), or if you have problems with depression, Martin Seligman's "Learned Optimism".

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Summary: Invaluable insights for dealing with what life has to offer
Review: Psychologist Phillip McGraw deftly explains how to define and achieve goals in life and work in Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters. Written in a candid, "tough-love" approach, the reader is offered practical, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps advice honed by the author's own personal experiences such as McGraw's account of how he helped Oprah Winfrey survive and win the 1998 "Mad Cow" lawsuit in Texas. This is a highly recommended work that will provide invaluable insights for dealing with what life has to offer both on and off the job. Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters is also available in hardcover, large print, abridged Audio Cassete and Audio CD, as well as Audio Download formats.

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Summary: What a great guy
Review: You just have to love Dr. Phil. Reading his book is similar to watching him on TV. He grabs your attention, he doesn't sugarcoat anything, and you feel you can trust him and based on his vast experience. He has the energy of a charismatic coach who wants to share his knowledge. The main message is that you need to bring awareness to the way you live your life and interact with people, in order to make your life experience truly fulfilling. Throughout the book, he gives the readers assignments to help them develop the critical awareness that is key to an empowered life. I also highly recommend "Open Your Mind, Open Your Life: A Book of Wisdom" by Taro Gold.