“Shortcut Through Therapy”, By Richard Carlson

Another of self-help books by Richard Carlson. I got hooked to his more famous book “Don’t sweat the small stuff…” and I have recommended that to many of my friends. “Shortcut through therapy” is little different. He talks about 10 principles of growth-oriented contended living. Main idea in the book is about people who seek therapy do not understand that the way psychological therapy is practiced by most of the professionals can do more harm than providing any relief.

Most of the time when people seek out a shrink to deal with their mental health problems, they are made to go over their issues and the root cause behind those issues again and again. This actually causes them to get into a downward spiral. They are now reliving their horrors again and again without getting any idea from shrink about how they can leave the past behind and move forward in life. This book provides those ideas that people can use to move forward. You cannot change the past but the future is in your hands and it is shaped by what you are thinking today.

Most of the suggested principles are similar to what he had suggested in “Don’t sweat the small stuff…” and are actually similar to what is suggested by most of the self-help books but still reading this book was fun for me. “Make yourself happy”, “Count your blessings”, “Now is the time to live”, “It’s okay not to be perfect”, “Look for the silver lining”, are such universal common sense themes that you find in all self-help books. At the same time, it is so difficult for people to practice these and we find ourselves doing things that are exactly opposite to these words of wisdom.

In a way it is good to keep reading same things in different books. Some of it will always rub on you and will help in long run.

“Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff….And It’s All Small Stuff”, by Richard Carlson

I guess I was trying to put off writing on any Self-Help books because it sometimes is very difficult to write about them. How these books affect or not affect individuals is very personal in nature. But then these books have also been an integral part of my life and this blogging will not be complete if I do not write about them. This book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and It’s All Small Stuff”, has been a great influence on me. The title of the book says it all. The book  is a collection of 100 different things that author has mentioned. Each of them is a piece of advice targeted to tell the readers that what small steps they can take in life to make their life better and stress-free.

Even though it is a self-help book, it is written in a very simple form and does not sound very preachy. The content is simple, sometimes may look too simplistic to make any difference. But it is great advice. One of the best that I liked was “Allow yourself to be bored”. It is a very simple statement but it suddenly changes the way you look at your relaxation time. In today’s world people want to “enjoy” their relaxation. They want to “do” things so that they can relax. But the thought that just doing nothing and getting bored can be a great form of relaxation is extremely liberating.

Another one of my favorite is “Get comfortable not knowing”. This is truly another form of “Ignorance is bliss”, something that I have always believed in. Most of the time we want to get as much information as possible and want to know everything, but it is actually good to not know everything. The burden of information can sometime kill us in more ways than one.

There is another which is very simple and very practical that says “Don’t interrupt others or finish their sentences”. Once again the simplicity of thought is amazing but the impact can be tremendous.

There are total of 100 such pieces of wisdom. I cannot write all of them here. For that you will need to read the book. Everyone may not agree with all of them but I found that it is not necessary as well. Even one or two can bring a change as long as we realize that we are always sweating the small stuff.