| One of the things about the information age is that something big happens every 18 months or so (it's some law, or sigh, or whatever). | |||
| "Gimme a hand, willya?" you could've said a year and a half ago, and got clobbered as an escaped caveman putting civilisation at peril. Getting help has become much easier since. | |||
| Say "Gimme a hand, willya?" now, and you'd only be snubbed as an illiterate who knows nothing of invisible economics. Now that's evolution. And to help cope with it, you have self-help books. | |||
| This one should be of special interest to someone with an acute irrational fear of labels, though of general interest to others as well. Written by a psychologist and an executive coach, and aimed at people with assorted problems, it is a marvel of packaging. | |||
| The book's cover title hits you squarely between the brows: It's Your Life. What Are You Going To Do With It? Below this is affixed a glossy little patch that looks like something peeled off a medicine jar. "Coach yourself", it urges. | |||
| And then: "Dosage: daily, as necessary. Ingredients: hundreds of ways to work out where you are, clarify values, set effective goals, deal with negativity, develop fuzzy vision, stay focused and stick to your plans. Side effects: real changes, clear goals, positive mental attitude, focused thinking and a new you! WARNING: should your symptoms persist, consult the publisher." | |||
| That label could charm the most phobic of label-phobes. Most of the pages inside are quite corny, but not so corny as to stop you reading. Moreover, it's difficult to turn down the publisher's offer of "real change" without even the courtesy of a day's trial dosage, is it not? | |||
| Full of "scientifically validated" techniques, this book makes the proposed conversion seem like the logical outcome of a process plan. It offers some nice thoughts. "Great achievers usually have a vision that they will succeed," says the bit on fuzzy vision, "but perhaps not too clear a vision." It offers some nice quotations too. The sort to think about. "Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it," from Don Marquis. | |||
| "Everything can be taken away from man but one thing""to choose one's attitude," from Viktor Frankl. And "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking used when we created them," from Albert Einstein. | |||
| To win, though, you must enter the shadowy recesses of the cavernous mind. You're advised to take on subconscious beliefs that act as self-limitations, and transform "automatic negative thoughts" (ANTs) into "performance enhancing thoughts" (PETs). You must strive to overcome fearsome fixations of the human mind's own projection. Hmmm. | |||
| It's your life. What are you going to do with it? | |||
| Well, after four days of therapy, I detect something. I have developed a faint fondness of labels. | |||
| At least on bottles. One bottle anyway. Containing 500 ml of Coca-Cola. With a Swedish wrap-around label. Featuring, from one dreamy angle, this lilting-look balcony singer rock-set in a yellow lycra jacket ... hey, wait-a-minute, this doesn't count. | |||
| Sure, four days is too little. | |||
| But still, how do you consult the publisher""the website? Is there a form to be filled? Who you are, how you are, what you are... aaarrh!
IT'S YOUR LIFE. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH IT? COACH YOURSELF: MAKE REAL CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE Anthony Grant PhD & Jane Greene Momentum: imprint of Pearson Power Price: Rs 250; Pages: 274
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The cave wall
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First Published: Oct 19 2005 | 12:00 AM IST
