Previously published as The Myth of Stress, this book boasts a seven-step program that will change the way you think about stress, and hopefully drastically reduce it in your own life. After the deaths of loved ones at a young age, Bernstein set out to discover the root of stress in our lives and deduced that it doesn’t actually come from outside factors, but our thoughts. This book presents the culmination of his research and thinking to dismantle such thoughts in our lives.

As a chronically stressed person, I gave this book an honest shot, and I was at least 98% with Bernstein for a solid 40% of the book. Once I reached the chapter on money, however, he kind of lost me and never really got me back. Though I found meaning in what he was saying and think that these strategies will work for many people in many situations, I do think there are certain situations in this book where this could still work, if you put aside some things. For example, the money chapter seemed to disregard important factors when trying to explain that we don’t know if we’d be happier if we had more money. The statement itself is true, but some of his evidence didn’t consider factors such as most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and most can’t pay all of their bills. Also, he talks about situations all over the world, and the standard of living where people make less and tend to be happy isn’t addressed at all.

The last chapter is the “black diamond” as he calls it, and it deals with death. This could just be my own thought patterns rearing their heads, but I didn’t agree with lots of phrasing. I think he used the words “should” and “should not” a lot, and in many instances, it seemed to me that these explained why things DID happen but not necessarily why they should have happened.

The Q&A at the end is somewhat helpful, but he mentions his online program a lot. I appreciated that he didn’t really bring it up until the end, but then he hit hard with it for the conclusion and appendix. Overall, I think this book might be helpful in dealing with some of the smaller things that we let plague our thoughts, but for real issues, not being able to put food on the table, pay bills, or daily threats to existence, I wouldn’t pick this one up.