Book Review: Life Strategies by Phillip C McGraw, Ph.D.

 

You are probably familiar with Dr. Phil from The Oprah Show. Dr. Phil offers you advice on doing what works and doing what matters in your life.
He offers stories about people he’s chatted with and shows how they have determined what they need to change in their lives to be happier and make their life work.
Ten “Laws of Life” are offered, with suggestions of how to implement them. He gives you questions to answer, makes you look internally at how you really feel, tells you that YOU have to make the change, and then gives you tools to be able to do it.


There is a seven step process for achieving your goals in the book, which will walk you the process and make you focus on what’s important along the journey.
If you are: capable of more than you are accomplishing; frustrated that you are not making more money; stuck in a rut and not getting what you want; bored with yourself; silently enduring an emotionally barren life or marriage; trudging, zombielike, through a dead and unchallenging career; just “going through the motions” of your life with no passion, no plan, and no goal; living in a comfort zone that yields too little challenge and too little of what you do want, and too much of what you don’t want, or living a lonely existence with little hope for change – this book is for you!
It’s easy to read, has steps that are doable, and can help you analyze what’s wrong in your life and how to make it better. It’s a good place to start with making changes in your life if you need to.

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Hyperion; 1 edition (January 7, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786865482
If you’d like my copy of this book, visit www.bookfaerie.com and use the contact button on the left hand side of the menu to send me a message and tell me why. I’ll pick a winner in a week or so!
Book written by Jo Ann Hakola, The Book Faerie, for © 2008 butyoudontlooksick.com

  • Good review, thanks!
    I think this book would appeal to people who watch Dr. Phil regularly. Having seen the show a few times, I know one of the things he does is attempt to defuse some common codependent patterns at the source.
    The best therapist I’ve ever been to once said “Real dependence attracts codependence.” We spoonies run into it constantly from health care workers to, tragically often, family members who wind up providing needed care.
    I half think that codependence is a cultural pattern that sometimes sinks its roots in because people don’t learn any other way of how to live with an adult who’s dependent in any way. It can be brutal. Dr. Phil’s book is bound to be educational on the subject.
    Reading it may help identify some of the problems that happen with caretakers and identify some of the triggers and cues that set off codependent patterns. That’s one way it can help. If you pass it around to everyone you live with, it may spark discussion and even if that becomes difficult, it’s a way of working things out in a better direction.
    Good choice of a rewiew book. Dr. Phil is trusted by more mainstream people than most mental health experts because of that television show, he’s demonstrated expertise with any number of ordinary yet obnoxious people. Nothing was new to me when I watched it, but he dealt with the problems in a good sensible positive way and put things into terms where people could understand vicious circles and break them.
    Robert