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ramblr37's review
challenging
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.5
Not politically correct, challenging and inspiring but focused on personal responsibility
matejpodzemny's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
3.5
dragos_d's review
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
A book I would recommend to anyone and I wish I had read it when I was 20-25. It may appear as nothing groundbreaking given our access to similar self help and improvement materials, but I feel that this book is the grand daddy of all such contents. When it was first published it must have been a novelty.
heyitstim's review
2.25
Ehh, probably groundbreaking for 1903 but not terribly relevant in 2023. Nicely written and fun to read
jakekilroy's review
4.0
I sometimes take for granted what I know and understand about my brain as someone living in the 21st Century that's also gone to therapy. What may seem so profoundly obvious to me was not always the case for humanity. Extinction was still a wild concept up for debate in the 19th Century, so self-help back then was not exactly a thing. James Allen looks deeply inward and professes a kind of divinity for each of us. We are able to think and feel, and therefore we are, in a way, our own gods. Selfhood is radical religion of one and we think it's so mundane because it's too big to really worship at its altar. It's responsible for so much, everything in fact, and it's not until you really break down the incredible and weird of it that you can truly unpack what you're capable of as a person. It wasn't until I went through a sort of existential collapse that led to therapy and my subsequent ego death that I truly, fully breathed in what could make me stable and happy. In retrospect, it's bonkers to look at how I was living, confused that I could not be radiantly joyful when I allowed negative thoughts and harsh feelings to dominate me. Of course a bad diet leads to reactive feelings. Of course good thoughts leads to greater wonder. These things are obvious when you consider them, but we so often don't. Or we take them as abstract for humans, yet not ourselves personally. This book is really lovely because it makes anything seem possible in a way that is not cheap and silly, nor a grifter's ploy. It's philosophy that would eventually shape the self-help movement. It's the connection between the two. What defines happiness and unhappiness? What makes us happy or unhappy? Can we not totally and radically reinvent ourselves to be better by really taking into consideration what our thoughts, feelings, and actions are capable of? These are the questions. These have always been the questions. Just gotta ask 'em, I guess.