I'd Change My Life if I had More Time

By Vernon Marshall View Profile
This book follows ideas that have been promoted before, but now Doreen Virtue expresses in ways distinctive to her. The subtitle of the book is 'A Practical Guide to Making Dreams Come True' but that aim of the book is only effective if one can overcome the mental blockages that the author acknowledges. Virtue is good in identifying those mental blockages, although I feel she sometimes underestimates the sheer enormity of the task of changing one's mindset. To tell oneself to change one's ways of thinking requires months of training. If one can do it then some of the practical exercises in the book can be helpful. There are a few of the strategies that I simply cannot endorse, however. Watching the television whilst doing some work, for example, is rarely a useful way of operating, in my experience, doing the ironing being an exception. Also, the suggestion that the family could have a picnic on the lounge floor whilst watching television goes against everything I have tried to instil in my family. Meals are times for sharing conversation, as far away as possible from the television.

Other parts of the book are useful. Learning how to say 'no' when you are busy, for example, and being encouraged to delegate tasks are both principles I need to adopt in my life. The book is well laid out, with chapters broken down into easily readable sections, with lists of exercises and bullet pointed summaries at each chapter end. The Self-Help Resources section, alas, refers only to American agencies although some of them have very useful websites. The Bibliography is extremely wide-ranging, with books from the self-help and human potential tradition alongside works from Theosophy, Christian Science, the Self-Realization Fellowship and classics such as Emerson's 'Selected Essays' and even the Bible.......more