How I came to try this book was because I'm a big fan of The Tapping Solution app (consisting of Emotional Freedom Technique) and the creators incorporated ideas & affirmations from this author.
So I therefore thought this book might be worth trying out. I was wrong.
For me, you see, it comes across as far too Christian. I've a large degree of Christianity 'baggage' and it makes me very resistant to content which speaks of Christian ideas.
So phrases such as "I am one with the very Power which created me" (as an affirmation), "The Universal Power Never Judges or Criticizes Us" and "knowing there is only One Intelligence in this Universe" just really put me off.
I'm also very contrary, so I really resent assertions such as: "we are all 100% responsible for everything in our lives".
These factors put me in a not-very-receptive frame of mind leafing through the book and starting in on chapter one.
I even found myself annotating in the margins: "Is this a self help book?"; as the author states that we all have: "foolish, outmoded, negative ideas".
The point is a valid one, but I felt it wasn't very sympathetically expressed, given that the author is meant to be this fount of compassion.
The author also made some sweeping claims with no substantiation or evidence, such as: "All Disease Comes From a State of Unforgiveness" and "Resentment that is long held can eat away at the body and become the disease we call cancer" and "Criticism that is long held can often lead to arthritis in the body".
I'm aware that research does in fact continue to affirm the theory of the mind-body connection, but the author cites none of this in this chapter of the book.
Anecdotal evidence is still evidence, I guess, but the sample size is likely statistically insignificant - and none of the author's own research (if any were undertaken) is presented, not even as case study, in this first chapter.
So it had me thinking, where's the evidence for these very specific observations? There are reading recommendations at the back of the book, but there's no bibliography of sources from an evidentiary perspective.
"I have found that forgiving and releasing resentment will dissolve even cancer."
I'm sorry, no, that's potentially harmful advice in my view.
Then there's the bit about how we all choose our own parents and when/how we get born i.e. we pick our own lives & circumstances.
You want to tell readers who might have been through some really horrific things that they picked that life at their moment of conception? No. Just doesn't mesh with my own beliefs, and provokes irritation in me.
So I hadn't even finished chapter 1 and I'm so resistant to the ideas being presented in this book. I felt I had to continue reading, though, in order to write this book review.
Chapter 2 began with lists of concerns the author's client's had presented to her during her practice. Four paragraphs of same. A page and a half, almost.
For me, for a self-help book, that's too much dwelling on the negative. I guess it might work for some readers, who maybe need to read through that stuff to identify with why the book could be helpful.
I couldn't keep reading the book, not even to provide a full book review. (In fact, I couldn't even gift it to someone or give it away 2nd hand. I dismantled it to use as junk-journaling fodder.)
So this isn't really a book review, it's a chapter and a half review. Sorry. But I just couldn't keep putting that stuff into my mind.
In summary, you might get on better with this title than I if, say, you don't mind stuff with a bit of a Christian flavour and which isn't terribly science-backed. If, say, you'd just like a few affirmations in print (actually, it that's what you want then you might want her other title Trust Life.
But otherwise, I feel there are likely more helpful titles out there. For example: Why has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr Julie Smith, for one.
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