This is no doubt one of the best self help books ever written.. Miss Wong has created a practical guidebook into living a life that that is meaningful and fulfilling. This is done by realizing that we already have within us the potential to create the life we want. We only have to recognize and accept it. By accepting and developing what is already within us, we don't have to go searching elsewhere for answers and make things more difficult..

Wow, wow, wow.

This was the best self-help book that I have read in so long. I loved Amy's logical and mathematical approach to changing habits and identifying those lies that we believed as young kids,

I am finally figuring out the crazy things my brain say to myself and getting to the root of it.

Thank you so much to Amy and Netgalley for my advanced readers copy. This is one fantastic book. Well done.

The advice provided is somewhat generic and can be found in any number of other books. The narrative style feels more like biography or memoir, which seems to be an increasingly popular (but, for me, unappealing) trend in wellness books. Personally I prefer works that emphasize the science of wellness or, when privileging personal experiences, provide more universal framing.

I found this book to be very enlightening. The author shares her story, her vulnerabilities, and fears of being good enough. Those doubts and fears have nothing to do with whether you felt unconditional love and acceptance from your parents or anyone else, but is something many of us have and face. She has a lot of insights in this book, coupled with suggestions and her own stories of finding purpose.

I set an Asana task to review this book with the heading "Read NetGalley career book." That's not what this book is; it's bigger than that. It's Yet Another Book trying to get at the desperately important core of how to be human and get out of our own way... for those of us with faith in a personal God, how to get out of His way. And it's a good title in my experience of that genre. I am grateful for the chance to confront these truths again as I continue to navigate my own *not* tremendously successful life.

I did have some difficulties with this book. Not only am I a believing Catholic, I was also brought up on an isolated farm in Indiana with chiefly books from before 1960 for company, so in a lot of ways, the colloquial, Californian, quasi-New Age language of this book feels like something thick and obstructive that I have to wade through. I ended up translating the five choices for myself as follows:

1) Choose to accept that your feelings are telling you important things you can't possibly figure out "rationally." [In so many cases we aren't really figuring things out in any way that deserves the title "rational" anyway.]
2) Choose to reject the preformed and prejudiced ideas on how your life "should" be (that come from other people's apparent expectations and our own tortured reinterpretations of those expectations).
3) Choose to accept that Providence is and always has been working in your life. The mess, real or apparent, was foreseen and has been provided for; there is and always has been a plan for you.
4) Choose to accept that you are whole and complete, or perhaps better, that you are tapped into wholeness and completeness and nothing outside yourself can block that connection.
5) Choose to accept that you're human and you belong... rather than looking for proof that you do.

As you can see I've substituted "accept" for "know" in a number of places. Amy goes off on this tirade about "belief" versus "knowing" that feels completely off base to me. She has apparently internalized, and presumably talks mostly with others who share, a very different set of definitions for these terms. Of course I want proof of things, or evidence is a better term, before I "know" them!... and if the evidence available changes, my knowledge changes. In any case, there is no real getting away from proof. The good thing is that these choices are grounded on self-evident truths that we can know about ourselves, remember, and return to clear focus, not arbitrary choices based on nothing or just our own preferences.

It's interesting that Amy presents herself as someone with great parents and yet someone carrying this massive attachment wound from childhood anyway. Her lists of attachment wounds seemed to be centered around "I'm not good enough and especially not smart enough" type of wounds. When I read through the book, as someone working a program for codependency who definitely did not get the kind of loving parenting Amy describes, I found I could not bring up a single memory of an early episode of attachment disruption, but I could dredge up a list of attachment wounds as long as my arm, including things around "I'm selfish, I want bad things, I've ruined my life and the lives of other people" as well as the type of things Amy proposed.

This book had some good advice, but there was way too much background narrative before getting to the meat of the book. I appreciate some context in books such as this, but I really didn't need to hear the author's life story before getting the motivational message.

This is a must-have resource to help one improve mental health, resiliency, and live a more full and happy life. It is full of great strategies, advice, and easy to implement ideas. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

I tried reading this book, both the author's introduction and the first couple of chapters. It just seemed so much about her and not a particularly interesting story at that. Doesn't seem to have much original to say.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s full of important information, and it made me gain a little more perspective on life in general.

This book did nothing for me. It has no impact on my life. I felt It just wasn’t right for me. I would try to read another book by this author.

I enjoyed my time and thought it was a thought provoking book - I also read it at a time I am more receptive to the ideas posed. I didn't find the examples to be particularly relatable , and there was a lot I had heard before, but it had impactful moments and some relevant themes. Overall I would recommend if interested in a self help book and in the mood for some personal reflection.
I read this as an ARC on netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I read an advanced copy of this book thanks to #NetGalley. I was very excited and had high hopes for this book, but it fell a little flat for me.

While the book uses a different approach, it still covers the same topics as every other personal development book; it might change the wording and the presentation but it’s the same. Also, I found the writer to be very repetitive which I personally don’t like.

Overall I enjoyed reading this book. It caused me to do some deeper personal reflection so I think that's a sign that it was impactful for me. I try to approach new (to me) ideas with openness, and while not all of this resonated with me, that doesn't mean it won't be useful to others. I'm not a very spiritual person, and I don't believe that coincidences are actually a sign from the universe, or that everything happens for a reason. However, one of the ideas in the book is that you can learn and grow from unfortunate events if you recalibrate your frame of mind, which is useful no matter what you believe about why a certain event happens. I felt lighter after considering some of the ideas in this book, in particular the part about getting rid of the word "should" because there is no way your life "should" be or should not be.

A major theme of this book is dealing with imposter syndrome and how reframing your mind can help you overcome it. I was hoping there would be more discussion about how external factors contribute to imposter syndrome, and how to separate what you can control (intrinsic factors) from what you can't control (extrinsic factors).

The primary target demographic for this book is white, highly driven, upper-middle-class women. Some of the examples involve a lot of privilege, such as being able take a 3 month maternity leave, having a partner who makes enough money that you can choose to not work or to completely change careers, having a stable family situation, and just in general not having your state of being defined within the context of systemic discrimination and racism.

The part of the book that was most impactful to me was at the end, and it's the idea that once you know that you are whole and complete, your actions don't need to be about proving yourself and your worth, so you can focus on helping and being more compassionate toward others. The world would be a better place if we could all live by this.