circularcubes's review
4.0
Why, yes, I chose to read a self-help book on the plane during my cross-country move. It seemed appropriate.
This was more well-written than I was expecting, and I enjoyed getting a glimpse into Harris' thoughts. The ending notes on meditation were great, and I'm honestly inspired to maybe give meditation another try (even though it might take a few tries to actually get it to stick... developing good habits can be hard
This was more well-written than I was expecting, and I enjoyed getting a glimpse into Harris' thoughts. The ending notes on meditation were great, and I'm honestly inspired to maybe give meditation another try (even though it might take a few tries to actually get it to stick... developing good habits can be hard
drew1013's review
4.0
Straight-forward style and helpful. I’d done some meditation in the past, but I was missing an important detail about why it’s useful: the all-day benefits of practiced mindfulness.
This book has brought me back to meditation with a new goal in mind. Not just to do it for relaxation or for its own sake (though those are still valid reasons), but to train the mind to handle day-to-day challenges, to be more resilient to stress, and to make your own happiness.
Ok, so it’s not a wonder drug. It’s a practice. It can be difficult. But so is exercise, and this is brain exercise. This book offered great perspective on the usefulness of meditation via an honest and sardonic personal story. It scraped the crunchy granola crust off the practice of meditation and recontextualized it as a means to achieving self-control and 10% more happiness.
This book has brought me back to meditation with a new goal in mind. Not just to do it for relaxation or for its own sake (though those are still valid reasons), but to train the mind to handle day-to-day challenges, to be more resilient to stress, and to make your own happiness.
Ok, so it’s not a wonder drug. It’s a practice. It can be difficult. But so is exercise, and this is brain exercise. This book offered great perspective on the usefulness of meditation via an honest and sardonic personal story. It scraped the crunchy granola crust off the practice of meditation and recontextualized it as a means to achieving self-control and 10% more happiness.
thesdbooktrovert's review
3.0
I think the title can be a bit misleading. I purchased the book mistakenly thinking I would learn more about meditation and ways to calm the critical self talk.
However, that is not the main purpose of this book so if you are looking at it for that, I suggest moving on. It does have a few pages of meditation info in the back about how to start a practice for yourself so, I wasn’t totally wrong. It’s just not a book all about meditation as I had thought it was for some reason. Overall it was a good read though.
However, that is not the main purpose of this book so if you are looking at it for that, I suggest moving on. It does have a few pages of meditation info in the back about how to start a practice for yourself so, I wasn’t totally wrong. It’s just not a book all about meditation as I had thought it was for some reason. Overall it was a good read though.
savage_pancakes's review
3.0
Enjoyable and useful book. I expected quite a bit more info on meditation, but it was mainly a book detailing the author's journey to finding meditation useful. I liked it because I agreed with many of the issues he had about Buddhism, which he later explained. It did have plenty of practical information, but there was not a ton of information that I saved or highlighted. Part of that may just be that meditation is not overly complicated. The book does have a great appendix with meditation exercises in it.
bookedrightmeow's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
• An elusive re-read! I read the original version the first time; this time it's the revised edition
• I'm working on getting back into a regular meditation habit. This is a great refresher/intro to how mindfulness can help calm anxiety and panic attacks
• Do read the book; do give Harris' meditation app a free trial. I hesitate to recommend the subscription because it's rather pricey and there are other great meditation apps that are free. Highly recommend this book, though!
• Harris isn't into woo, which I appreciate since folks in the meditation field can be all over the place and I always question their credibility
audrey_nester's review
4.0
Although it took me almost 3 months to read this, I was intrigued the whole way through. Mediation is something that I've started doing more recently and this book gave me the inside look on how someone went through their mediation journey and there ups and downs they experienced. I originally picked up this book thinking that it was about anxiety and never looked up what the book was about but I was surprised, happily, that the book covers mediation. It feels like I read this book at the right time where I was thinking about really trying to stick to mediation and it made me restart something I've always let fall away after a few days.
candority's review
2.0
This is the first "self-help" type book that I have ever read, as I have never had the desire to read them and still don't. However, I read this as part of a readathon I'm doing, in which I was matched with a reading buddy and provided with a list of their favourite books of 2018 to read.
As a Canadian, I have never heard of or seen Dan Harris, an American news anchor, before picking up this book, and perhaps I would have enjoyed his story more if I could put a face/personality to the words. I also had limited interest in his discovery and exploration of meditation. While I appreciate that he was a skeptic of self-help and meditation at first, but I found his personal anecdotes a bit boring.
As a Canadian, I have never heard of or seen Dan Harris, an American news anchor, before picking up this book, and perhaps I would have enjoyed his story more if I could put a face/personality to the words. I also had limited interest in his discovery and exploration of meditation. While I appreciate that he was a skeptic of self-help and meditation at first, but I found his personal anecdotes a bit boring.
scrabblerz's review
4.0
I listened to this on Audible, and ultimately thoroughly enjoyed it. At various points along the way, I would have given this fewer stars, but it kept bringing me back in, and as a whole, in hindsight, I might even go to a 4.5. The author himself reading the memoir added something that I think would have been lost on me had I read it on my own (a plus even when his voice grated on me a tad, usually when he was being snarky).
Harris's memoir is hilarious, engaging, and blunt. He looks with a skeptic's eye at the practice of meditation ("a radical internal jiujitsu move that was supposed to allow you to face the asshole in your head and peacefully disarm him...") and takes the reader/listener on his personal roller coaster ride of ups and downs: embracing, rejecting, re-engaging, refining, and ultimately whole-heartedly endorsing meditation as a super-power. He's funny, cocky, vulnerable, and honest. The tales of his career in TV journalism make for a very interesting look inside that industry. I laughed out loud several times and found myself nodding in agreement and shaking my head in disbelief as he told his tale; I'm glad my version had the epilogue. I'm going to try to not be an annoying evangelist for meditation and the precepts of Buddhism, any more-so than I may already be, but I really think this memoir of one person's skeptical journey could ignite something in so many friends' and loved ones' lives, to their benefit and the benefit of all those around them. I want to find ways to share it!
I was delighted a few chapters in to learn that Dan Harris is a fellow Mule (Colby '93). Although our years on Mayflower Hill did not overlap at all (being an '88 myself), his descriptions of life in Maine had me waxing nostalgic and grateful (again) for the priceless experiences I had through Colby and the dividends they continue to pay in my life. He puts the blame for his allergy to anything remotely "woo-woo" or "hippy-dippy" squarely at the door of the privileged, patchouli-scented, hacky-sack playing souls from suburban Massachusetts and Connecticut he encountered in his Colby years. While that subset of the student body never had quite the negative connotations for me as they did for Harris, I do have an amusing anecdote about having to step over a rather unkempt and fragrant young man laying supine across my freshman dorm room door, mesmerizing himself with the bracelet he was weaving utilizing fingers AND toes; the Grateful Dead were playing in Augusta that weekend, the network of Deadheads held promise of free digs to crash at Colby, but I had Prof. Moseley's 8 a.m. Intro to Macroeconomics class to get to, excuse-me-please-and-thank-you-very-much!
I loved the passage below so much, I replayed it until I could transcribe it accurately. I knew we were fellow travelers, Colby connection not yet made, when he described his initial engagement with the Buddha this way:
I continue to be intrigued. Meditation is my super-power.
Harris's memoir is hilarious, engaging, and blunt. He looks with a skeptic's eye at the practice of meditation ("a radical internal jiujitsu move that was supposed to allow you to face the asshole in your head and peacefully disarm him...") and takes the reader/listener on his personal roller coaster ride of ups and downs: embracing, rejecting, re-engaging, refining, and ultimately whole-heartedly endorsing meditation as a super-power. He's funny, cocky, vulnerable, and honest. The tales of his career in TV journalism make for a very interesting look inside that industry. I laughed out loud several times and found myself nodding in agreement and shaking my head in disbelief as he told his tale; I'm glad my version had the epilogue. I'm going to try to not be an annoying evangelist for meditation and the precepts of Buddhism, any more-so than I may already be, but I really think this memoir of one person's skeptical journey could ignite something in so many friends' and loved ones' lives, to their benefit and the benefit of all those around them. I want to find ways to share it!
I was delighted a few chapters in to learn that Dan Harris is a fellow Mule (Colby '93). Although our years on Mayflower Hill did not overlap at all (being an '88 myself), his descriptions of life in Maine had me waxing nostalgic and grateful (again) for the priceless experiences I had through Colby and the dividends they continue to pay in my life. He puts the blame for his allergy to anything remotely "woo-woo" or "hippy-dippy" squarely at the door of the privileged, patchouli-scented, hacky-sack playing souls from suburban Massachusetts and Connecticut he encountered in his Colby years. While that subset of the student body never had quite the negative connotations for me as they did for Harris, I do have an amusing anecdote about having to step over a rather unkempt and fragrant young man laying supine across my freshman dorm room door, mesmerizing himself with the bracelet he was weaving utilizing fingers AND toes; the Grateful Dead were playing in Augusta that weekend, the network of Deadheads held promise of free digs to crash at Colby, but I had Prof. Moseley's 8 a.m. Intro to Macroeconomics class to get to, excuse-me-please-and-thank-you-very-much!
I loved the passage below so much, I replayed it until I could transcribe it accurately. I knew we were fellow travelers, Colby connection not yet made, when he described his initial engagement with the Buddha this way:
Notwithstanding my confusion, the more I learned about the twenty-five-hundred-year-old historical figure known to me previously as a lawn ornament, the more intrigued I grew.
I continue to be intrigued. Meditation is my super-power.