This book was excellent!

I have been very burned out on the personal development genre for quite a while, in part because of the incessant insistence that your attitude and affirmations are the real difference maker in success. “Believe it strongly enough” and it will happen.

Attitude IS important, but so is action, and even with complete belief, focus, and dedication, you can still fail.

This book is much deeper than that. The positivity “movement” has crept into healthcare, big business, religion, and can affect whether you are hired or get to keep your job, and your friends who read positivity books might “cut you off” if they get this message in their head (I cut people off, regretfully).

Barbara is a great writer, the book is funny, well researched, entertaining and enjoyable, but I think it is also very important. It’s been almost 15 years since it was published and the problem is still growing. I was caught up in this and many of my friends are still practically banking on their affirmations to change their circumstances.

I for one would be happy to see the return of critical thinking, appropriate cynicism, and challenges to the status quo in business, science, and popular culture. To devote to positive thinking is to ignore reality. Sometimes things are in fact not “all good”.

I highly recommend this book.